Consider putting Mansfield down as your college choice when you apply to undertake graduate study at Oxford. If you secure a place, your teaching and supervision arrangements are made by the faculty. However, colleges provide you with a social base other than your faculty, provide you with the opportunity to meet and mix with students in other subjects, with amenities from laundries to small research, travel or book grants. So the decision about a college is often about looking at the kind of environment which would suit you best. So let me tell you a bit more about what it’s like here at Mansfield.

The graduate community numbers between 50 and 60 at Mansfield. Each year we admit about 30 new students, a combination of those taking taught and research courses. It is our policy to admit students in subjects where we can provide a college ‘advisor’ (a faculty member) who is conversant with the programme of study and the discipline more generally. Mansfield is a small college which does not take in every subject so look at the list of subjects on our Graduate Admissions page to check whether you are eligible. You will usually find yourself with one or two other students in the same discipline and sometimes taking the same taught programme.

The college is a friendly place and graduates have their own common room (the MCR) where they hold social engagements or can just spend time when they are in town engaged in their studies. There are laundry facilities, excellent lunches and dinners, computing facilities on the college site. There is a beautiful galleried library with good holdings in the major subjects. The college provides grants for research trips for its research graduates and small book grants to help with the purchase of expensive texts to all our graduates.

The graduate membership is diverse, with students from all over the globe coming together in their studies. It is a lively friendly community which welcomes its new members each year with enthusiasm. We look forward to meeting you.