Sat 13 Dec 2008
WEPO Details
Posted by David under Williams Exeter Program at Oxford University at 6:50 am
Harsh Sodhi ‘10 kindly sent in this background information on Oxford and the Williams-Exeter Programme at Oxford University (WEPO). (See also yesterday’s post from Arjun Ravi Narayan ‘10.)
The average Oxford student takes 1.5 tutorials every semester. WEPO people have to take a minimum of 4.5 tutorials which get counted twice over – 4 grades for the fall, one for winter study and the remaining 4 for spring. Most departments count one tutorial as one credit though some, such as Religion and English, count them twice over.
The biggest difference between WEPO and Oxford is that for the Oxford kids their essay grades don’t matter. Tutors here like Williams kids because we put in a lot more effort since the grades do count.
The second difference is that we take final exams at the end of each term, while Oxford students take them at the beginning of the next term. I’m not sure how they do this in the third sem (Oxford follows a trimester system) considering the summer break and all. Williams wants us to make the most of our time here – it wouldn’t be particularly enjoyable if we had exams just after winter break. So we’re currently in finals week and then we get 5 weeks off to do whatever we like.
The current system where our essay grades matter is a good one. If we did what Oxford students do the program would not be academically sound enough and it would be hard to justify the fact that this is the only study away program besides WNY where grades add to one’s GPA. On the other hand, I think finals are a waste of time – if you don’t know your stuff after writing 8 2000 word essays there’s no point going to school. A 3 hour exam at the end doesn’t measure anything. At present WEPO leaves it up to the tutor but “strongly recommends” some sort of final exam / assignment / paper.
Oxford kids are straight jacketed into particular subjects or streams though there is some flexibility within each stream. When the kids here apply for college they apply for a specific subject / stream. PPE for example stands for Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Thus kids in the PPE program take a certain number of classes in each subject (similar to our Div requirements I guess but they we are much more flexible) and then specialize in one of the three. We WEPO students aren’t subject to any such constraints.
Thanks for the details.
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7 Responses to “WEPO Details”
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Larry George says:
“[T]his is the only study away program besides WNY where grades add to one’s GPA. ”
The Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program grades also add to one’s GPA. Perhaps a current or alumnus/alumna student of that program would give us an overview of the academics, schedule, curriculum, and different types of teaching/courses. The Mystic program is far more experiential than the typical Williams course of study. From the Mystic program’s website and reading Diana’s postings about it, I take it that the program has a large travel component, both locally and in terms of visiting the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico coasts and waters. The Mystic program, now about 30 years old, is the original surviving Williams study away program.
http://www.williams.edu/williamsmystic/
December 13th, 2008 at 8:30 amVermando '05 says:
As I understand it, the Oxford kids don’t take exams that matter until the last year of their degree – they take all of their exams for all of their courses in one frenzied month their last year of school. At least, that’s what I remember, but it has been awhile…
December 13th, 2008 at 10:07 amArjun says:
They take exams each year at the end. But the final year exams are the ones that really matter – as thats what most people look at.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:21 pmcurrent eph says:
Arjun et al, that’s not necessarily true. Different majors at Oxford weight each end of term grade differently. Whether one gets a “1st” or a “2nd” in graduating is almost always dependent on a combination of the end of 1st, 2nd and 3rd year exams, and it is that that people look at. Some majors will weight 1st year exams 20%, 2nd year 20%, and third year 60%. Other majors will weight them differently. Some majors at Oxford are four years long (many of the hard sciences), although most are three. However, you are all right in saying that it is the end of year exams that generally determine Oxford students’ futures, and not any work that gets done mid-term.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:39 pmDiana says:
Yes, Larry, W-M grades also go into the Williams student’s GPA. For lots and lots about the program, see my Williams-Mystic blog that I wrote while I was there.
Every student at Williams-Mystic takes four classes:
Literature of the Sea (counted as a Williams tutorial [?])
American history from a maritime perspective (I forget the real title)
Marine Policy
and Oceanography OR Marine Biology.
There are three trips: the 10-day sailing ship, the week in the Pacific northwest (CA or WA depending on semester), and four days in either New Orleans or the Chesapeake (depending on whether Katrina is currently hitting the area).
These are rigorous courses. I got about the same GPA, or a little lower, at Williams-Mystic as I was getting at Williams. There are no tests during the trips, but on the final exams you are responsible for knowing the stuff you learned on them. For instance, in my oceanography class one of the questions on the final was what kind of fault is present in San Francisco (the one that causes their frequent earthquakes), which was something we discussed a lot when we were in CA, but not when in CT.
English is taught the same way as the other courses, with all 19 students sitting in a circle in a seminar room, with the professor sometimes lecturing and also discussion sometimes. (The science classes have 10 students and are taught in the science lab building.) I don’t know why it was counted on my transcript as a tutorial.
December 13th, 2008 at 4:38 pmeph '07 says:
Has the WEPO grading system changed? I remember hearing as a student that since Oxford doesn’t grade tutorial essays, but it is a Williams study abroad program so the grades count toward GPAs, the WEPO kids get a year full of As (barring catastrophic failure, it’s assumed they were admitted as good students and performed to that standard).
December 13th, 2008 at 9:04 pmcurrent eph says:
eph ‘07–that’s actually not correct. The Oxford grades do count towards the GPA, but it is far from a set of guaranteed As. I don’t know where this is exactly, but roughly 5-10 years ago there was a report on the WEPO program that Williams did which found that the average WEPO students’ GPA went up between their sophomore year (at Williams) and their junior year (at Oxford), but not more than the average junior’s GPA goes up (students’ GPAs generally go up year by year at Williams). Generally the students admitted to the WEPO program have very high GPAs both before and after WEPO (ie: mostly As). As such, WEPO grades tend to be mostly As, but not because WEPO is easier. I think you’ll find talking to a group of WEPO alumni that most of them worked significantly harder at WEPO than at Williams. I certainly did, and my grades were a tid bit higher than my sophomore/senior year grades, but probably less so than one would expect given the hours-per-week more that I worked.
December 14th, 2008 at 12:18 pm