Access DVD - Studying Law at Oxford

Transcript

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What were interviews like?

Andrea: Typically what'll happen is you'll come to Merton for two or three days. You'll have two interviews, sometimes a third, with the law tutors at Merton, and sometimes DPhil student as well. During the law interviews, what typically occurs is you get given a case excerpt and sometimes a discussion of a case. You'll have a certain amount of a time to read that then you go into the interview. For the majority of time you'll be discussing case. It's like a mini tutorial. Sometimes they end with personal questions - typical things: how do you study, what would your worst enemy say about you, but apart from that it's law for the whole interview.

What is it like to interview as an overseas student?

Andrea: My interviews weren't exactly typical because I applied from the United States. When you apply from anywhere from North or South America, if you're on the east coast they're going to ask you to fly up to New York, if you're on the west coast they're ask you to fly up to Vancouver. You'll going to an interview with a subject tutor from any college - not necessarily the college you've applied to in Oxford. That's going to be a short interivew - about 20 minutes. If the feedback your law tutors get from that is good, they'll ask you to do a video conferencing or a telephone interview - about an hour or an hour and a half discussing an actual law case. Finally they'll ask you to do a writing sample.

What is the LNAT?

Andrea: The LNAT is a reading comprehension test that has about 10 passages and 3 questions each. It ends up with an essay. You pick 1 of 5 questions. The LNAT is sent directly to whatever universities you are applying to that use the LNAT. The tutors will look it themselves and decide how they like it.

What is the workload like?

Andrea: Because you're taking one and a half subjects a term, you'll have 1 tutorial one week, 2 tutorials the other. It alternates. You're expected to write an essay for each tutorial. Usually for mods subjects it's a 1500 to 2000 word essay. You will usually take your essay to tutorial - though some tutors ask you to e-mail it ahead so they can grade it. Then in the tutorial you'll discuss it. Some tutors like you to read out your essay and discuss it as you go along. But most of them like a question and answer based on what covered in the essay.

How many lectures do you go to a week?

Andrea: It really varies. During the first term I probably had about 10 lectures a week I was supposed to go to. Didn't go to all of them. It's a very good idea to go to the first lecture of each lecture series, because you can really evaluate from the first lecture whether it'll be useful. It depends on the professor lecturing whether it'll be a good series. This term I only have 2 lectures a week, so I'm going to both lectures each week!

Many thanks to Andrea Gewirtzman for this interview!

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