Graduate Student Life
Graduate students at Exeter College are an amazingly international group. About two thirds come from abroad, from more than 20 different countries including the USA, Japan, India, China and Turkey. They study a wide range of subjects, sometimes for a one-year degree and sometimes for a longer programme, such as a doctorate. All belong to the MCR (Middle Common Room), which is the focal point of all graduate activity in College.
Academic Life
Teaching and supervision generally takes place in a student's academic department or in the University laboratories. But every graduate has an adviser who is chosen from among the Fellows at Exeter. An adviser can help a graduate sort out difficulties with studies or a supervisor, as well as helping with purely College issues. The College also has a Tutor for Graduates, who has an overall responsibility for the needs and welfare of graduate students. And every graduate also has an annual meeting with the Rector and the Tutor for Graduates to review his or her academic progress. This means that you will have more assistance and advice than you would enjoy at many other universities.
The Graduate Year
Nearly all graduate students remain in Oxford for most of the year. University libraries and laboratories are usually open all year apart from public holidays. All the same, terms have some importance even for graduate students: they are the time when the University requires you to be in residence, and when academic activities (e.g. lectures and seminars) are more thickly concentrated.
Social Life
Being a graduate can easily be a lonely experience. But nearly all graduates live for their first year in Exeter House, our graduate accommodation on Iffley Road, which gives you an instant set of friends, and you will make plenty more through the Middle Common Room, which has its own comfortable sitting room in the main quadrangle of the College.
The MCR runs all sorts of social and sporting events, and has a welfare officer to help students with problems. It also has a special programme for married graduates. Exeter goes to greater lengths than many other colleges to bring graduates and undergraduates together for a wide range of activities, whether listening to prominent speakers at the Rector's Seminar series or attending College celebrations, which range from dinners to mark America's Thanksgiving Day to Diwali events and a Burns' Night Supper (complete with bagpipes and - if you dare! - haggis).
