Student Experiences
Life at Pembroke
You will get a good idea about what it is like to be a student at Pembroke from the JCR Website (for undergraduates) and the MCR Website (for graduates).
However, we thought we would ask some of our undergraduates their answers to some of the Frequently Asked Questions about College life. Here are the answers of five of them:
The Students
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Adam Alagiah (History & Politics) |
Rachel Drake (Modern Languages: French and German) |
Faye Jones (Modern Languages: French and Italian) |
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Piers Holden (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) |
Dean Rodrigues (Economics and Management) |
The Questions
What is about Pembroke/University that makes you happy to study here?
The atmosphere is friendly and laid-back. Pembroke is a small college so interactions with staff and tutors have a more personal tone than perhaps in some of the larger colleges, which creates some sense of community amongst the students. (Adam Alagiah) .
Pembroke has such a friendly atmosphere that it was easy to settle in quickly and make friends. The best thing about studying at Oxford is the people you meet, students who are all passionate about something, motivated and dynamic. Everyone is slightly eccentric but you don't really notice! (Faye Jones)
While the university provides all the resources you could ever need to for your degree, Pembroke is an amazingly friendly environment in which to go about your day-to-day academic life – the college's atmosphere is naturally warm and open and the support of staff and fellow students is a massive benefit (Dean Rodrigues).
Oxford terms are pretty hectic but that means that there is always something to do and you meet hundreds of different people. I don't think I've ever been bored at Pembroke and the atmosphere that comes from living in a college with people from all over the world doing different subjects is amazing (Rachel Drake).
Do you think the standard of food and accommodation in college is good? Do you enjoy living out?
The standard of accommodation is heavily dependant on which band of room you choose, but even the lowest band is perfectly acceptable, if a little dreary. The evening meals are healthy and tasty – no complaints there (Adam Alagiah).
I've been really lucky with my accommodation and the room is quite big with an en suite, much nicer than the rooms that my friends at other unis have. By and large the food at Pembroke is very good, the chef is quite inventive and as a vegetarian I usually have a good alternative to meat (Faye Jones).
The standard of food and accommodation in Pembroke, while on the expensive side, is very good indeed, so it is often good value for money. At the same time, living outside college in the second year is a great experience in that you are forced to become more responsible for your life (Dean Rodrigues).
The food in Pembroke is surprisingly good, although it doesn't quite compare to mum's cooking.... (Piers Holden).
How would you describe the atmosphere at Pembroke? Why should people apply to Pembroke?
The student body at Pembroke is very diverse and consequently welcoming and open to different people with different interests and backgrounds. I think the fact that the site is quite small and that everybody eats in hall 6 nights a week means that you very quickly feel part of the community. Pembroke very quickly comes to feel like home (Rachel Drake).
The atmosphere at Pembroke is one of the best university environments of anywhere I have been/seen. People are incredibly friendly – friends transcend friendship groups and it is so much easier to work when you have so many other people in the same boat as you supporting you along the way. The college is vibrant all year, but in the summer it takes on a whole new level as everyone is able to laze around on the beautiful Chapel Quad in the sunshine (Dean Rodrigues)
What do you do apart from studying, and how does Pembroke/ Oxford University facilitate your partaking in this activity?
I play a fair amount of sports. The range of sports and facilities are impressive, as is the standard in most areas. I also often go to hear debates at the Oxford Union if the topic interests me (Adam Alagiah).
I row for Pembroke and this is good fun (mostly!) and really easy to get into, even though I wasn't at all sporty at school. As a member of the Union I have seen some good speakers like Cherie Booth and Tony Benn. The debates are also very entertaining with often witty speakers such as Peter Stringfellow and Boris Johnson (Faye Jones).
Do you feel that Pembroke offers a good range and standard of travel grants / bursaries / hardship funds / scholarship awards / collection prices? If you have applied / received one please describe the experience.
I received a college travel grant of £150 which I put towards the cost of an Italian course in Rome over the Easter vac. The course itself was very helpful as we covered a lot of difficult grammar points etc and as I was staying with an Italian family I was able to spend my free time socialising with Italians my age and practicing spoken Italian (Faye Jones).
Pembroke does have a good range of financial incentives/grants for students. I have personally benefited from a collection prize of £50 for Hilary Term, which definitely increases your incentive to do well again in the future (Dean Rodrigues).
The Collection prizes are definitely a nice touch. The number of travel grants and bursaries seems to be quite high which can only be a good thing, they are also well advertised which helps to make them more accessible (Piers Holden).
What did you expect University to be like? How does Pembroke/University compare to this?
I expected Oxford students to conform much more to the stereotype of posh, stuck-up, driven and competitive people with public school backgrounds. Happily I have been proven wrong and in fact a large number of my fellow students also harboured the same apprehensions as I did before coming! In terms of workload, there is possibly less than I expected, although the intellectual rigour is just as you would expect from a university with a reputation like Oxford's (Adam Alagiah).
I didn't really expect the work load to be so great, everyone had warned me about it but I still didn't expect it. However, I also didn't realise how this would make me learn to make use my time really well, so that I can still do all the socialising / extra curric stuff that I want to do – and how to survive on little sleep! I haven't been bored here once, there is always something to do (Faye Jones).
Did you have any worries before you came to University? Now you are at University do you feel that these worries are still present? What stopped them?
I was worried that I might be homesick as I had never lived away from home before but I very quickly settled in and now I'm more likely to get “Pembroke sick” when I go home (Rachel Drake).
I was worried that I would be the worst in the group and wouldn't be able to keep up. However most people are around my level, no-one is superhuman and we all just seem to muddle through it together (Faye Jones).
Coming from a state school, my only concerns were that the higher-than-average number of public school kids would form self-contained cliques that would become “the cool crew” of college. However, this could not be further from the case and some of my best friends in college come from background that I would never have imagined myself socialising with this time a couple of years ago. Oxford provides a great experience to interact with people from all over the country, from all sorts of schools and indeed from all sorts of countries and cultures, and it really opens your eyes to the bigger picture of life (Dean Rodrigues).
My main worry was that I would get here and find out that everyone was more clever than me and would have no interests in anything outside of their course. Thankfully everyone seems to be pretty normal, there are very few people who actually live up to the unfortunate "Oxford Stereotype" (Piers Holden).