Students sit in the shade of a tree in the sunny quad at Mansfield

Visiting Student Programme

Mansfield College has a long-established Visiting Student Programme with a high academic reputation.  It offers students both full membership of the College and an official status within the University of Oxford. 

Welcome from the Director of the Visiting Student Programme

As Director of the Visiting Student Programme, it is a great pleasure to welcome new Visiting Students to Mansfield each year. My role is to liaise with universities around the world and to help international students consider whether they would like to study at Mansfield College as part of their degree. I welcome enquiries about the programme and I am happy to email prospective students or discuss any queries you may have via Microsoft Teams. 

Dr Helen Lacey

About the Visiting Student Programme

Visiting Students play an integral part in the College’s academic, cultural, and social life.  Although they study at Oxford for a year, they are members of Mansfield College for life, and we are pleased that many former visiting students return for visits and alumni events.  

The Mansfield Visiting Student Programme aims to replicate as closely as possible the Oxford undergraduate experience. The Oxford system of undergraduate teaching is based on the weekly tutorial, at which one to three students meet with a tutor for a period of concentrated study. Tutorials are backed up by University lectures and Oxford's rich library resources. The system thus places great emphasis on individual students developing skills of critical evaluation and reasoning, whilst exploring the chosen discipline in depth.

The Visiting Student Programme offers suitably-qualified students the opportunity to come to Oxford as members of Mansfield College and Registered Visiting Students of the University of Oxford.  We aim to admit c.40 VSP students per year, from Ivy League and other top US institutions, and from other countries around the world.   Students study arts, humanities, and social science subjects for one year.  Places are occasionally available for study in Hilary and Trinity terms only (Spring Semester).

Visiting students have access to all College facilities and are members of the JCR (Junior Common Room - the undergraduate student body).  As Registered Visiting Students of the University, they also have access to a wide range of University facilities, including the Bodleian Library, Faculty (subject) libraries, the Oxford University Computing Services, and the great wealth of lectures organized by the University throughout the academic year. 

We hope, in essence, to give visiting students the chance to experience the unique opportunities provided by study at Oxford while earning credit for their home institutions.

Mansfield's Partner Institutions

Mansfield is delighted to count several overseas universities among its partner institutions, including Barnard College, Boston College, Georgetown University, Wheaton College, George Mason University, Washington and Lee University and – our first and longest association – the College of the Holy Cross. In recent years, we have welcomed students from as far afield as Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, and the range of countries our Visiting Students hail from is increasing.

In 2023-24, our Visiting Students include undergraduates from Boston College, Brown University, College of the Holy Cross, Dickinson College, Franklin and Marshall College, Georgetown University, Haverford College, Northeastern University, Northwestern University, Santa Clara University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), Tsinghua University, University of Iowa, University of Konstanz, Wellesley College, and William Jewell College.