Gain all the benefits of an Oxford education as a registered Visiting Student at Worcester College: from access to the University’s world-renowned facilities to the most distinctive feature of your Oxford education, the personalised tutorial.
As a Visiting Student you’ll study one ‘major’ and one ‘minor’ tutorial per term and you’ll design your bespoke course of study with our Programme Director. Your first term’s courses are determined by your choices made on your application form but, once in Oxford, you’ll have greater guidance and flexibility in choosing other term’s tutorials.
Alongside your tutorials, we also offer the option of an in-depth September Seminar in the Humanities designed for Visiting Students. This is a great way to settle into Oxford and life in the UK before the start of term, as well as offering engagement with critical analysis in a group setting.
How is Oxford different?
At Oxford we don’t offer liberal-arts degrees. Instead, our undergraduates study just one subject (or two related subjects) in-depth for three or four years, usually after already having studied it intensely in high school. The Oxford undergraduate programme aims for this depth and rigor rather than breadth or “well-roundedness.”
The Oxford tutorial
Alongside seminars and lectures in your field of study, at Oxford you’ll also have tutorials. Tutorials are highly personalised, discussion-led, one-on-one tuition with subject specialists. They are individually tailored and your tutors will expect you to dedicate a great deal of time to independent study so that you can demonstrate intellectual autonomy at a high level. Students accustomed to larger classes and lectures often find tutorials more rewarding precisely because they are more challenging: the tutorial format places you in close and frequent contact with experts who push you to think.
When applying to be a Visiting Student at Worcester, you’ll select a ‘major’ and a ‘minor’ tutorial per term. Almost all major tutorials meet for one hour each week (eight meetings a term) while minor tutorials meet for one hour every other week (four meetings a term). When selecting your tutorials, we recommend that you select topics which fall within the same discipline, or within two closely related disciplines, of your major at home, due to the high level of expertise expected.
world-class resources
You’ll find over 100 libraries in Oxford covering all subjects of study and, as a Visiting Student at Worcester, you’ll have access to them all. In addition, our own College libraries hold over 65,000 books and provide study spaces 24 hours a day. Ever fancied working in a Georgian library filled with priceless manuscripts? This is your chance.
As well as libraries, you’ll also have access to all of the open lectures across the University, from Archaeology to Zoology, so being in Oxford is the perfect opportunity to dip in and out of all the subjects you might be interested in.
September Seminar in the Humanities
Join our September Seminar to benefit from an intensive course that helps you get to grips with Oxford tutorial teaching before the start of term. The month-long programme also means you’ll be able to extend the length of your stay to match a US semester and offers cultural experiences to really make the most of your time in the UK.
Contact our Programme Director
Director of the Visiting Student Programme
Dr Michael Mayo
Dr Michael Mayo
Director of the Visiting Student Programme
Governing Body Fellow
Education
MA (Harvard), MSc (Edinburgh), DPhil (Oxford)
I run Worcester’s Visiting Student Programme, which welcomes about 28 students from around the world each term. I organize a reading group for undergraduates, graduates, staff, and guests to study Marx’s Capital. I was the first person in my family to go to university; I started a free, state school for inner-city children back in my Boston (US) neighbourhood; and I am involved in a range of programmes to increase access to Oxford.
I lead tutorials in Anglophone literature from 1830 to the present day, and I have supervised many undergraduate dissertations on subjects ranging from Working-Class Film in Scotland and Wales to Prison Literature of Northern Ireland to musical composers who use tweets as orchestral scores.
My research focuses on the work of modernist writers and their engagement with religion, psychoanalysis, and ideology. My book, James Joyce and the Jesuits (2020, Cambridge UP) examines the ways James Joyce used The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola to produce a certain kind of labour for his readers, a labour that engages the psychoanalytic transference to unravel our understanding of what ‘believing’ means, especially when it comes to representation, language, and social relations. I’ve also published work on literature about the Sacco and Vanzetti case as well work on Arthur Conan Doyle and others.
