Course Offered : Current Fellow
Dr Nathalie Seddon (Tutorial Fellow)
Admissions
We admit on average two students a year to read Human Sciences and look for enthusiasm and commitment to this unusual combination of disciplines.
The Course
The Human Sciences course ranges over a wide spectrum from Social Anthropology and Sociology to Human Genetics. Many of the lectures are shared with other courses, so you will move around Oxford between departments during a typical working day.
Much of the specialist teaching is carried out by tutors from the relevant departments, as will be the case in most colleges. Students taking Human Sciences have two tutorials a week until the preliminary examination. During their work for final exams, they have three tutorials a fortnight. The syllabus is a mix of biological and social science that is not found in other universities. An important part of the third year is an extended dissertation of 10,000 words, which must combine at least two of the main subject areas of the course.
Further Information
You can obtain further information about studying Human Sciences at Oxford online from the Human Sciences website and from the University's Undergraduate Prospectus. Student Profile Liam Crosby, 2nd Year  Right up to a few weeks before I sent in my UCAS form, I was completely unsure what I should apply for; I was good at science at school, but really interested in contemporary problems facing people and societies worldwide. Not surprisingly, when I finally searched through the Oxford prospectus, the Human Sciences degree jumped right off the page. The course is a really interesting mix of 'proper' science (as my mates who do chemistry call it) and social science, and it's incredible how quickly you begin to see the inter-connections between the different disciplines which at first seem worlds apart!
The workload is quite challenging, especially at first, but luckily on a human sciences course the essay topics are really interesting (things like the effect of AIDS on populations in sub-Saharan Africa, or what patterns of variation in our genomes can tell us about human evolutionary history), and often the reading lists include popular science books that I would probably have wanted to read anyway! I've really enjoyed the lectures as well, and as the course is quite small you form quite a close year group with the people from other colleges who you see every day.
After choosing Human Sciences, it was time to pick a college. For me, it was a bit of a lucky dip, I didn't know anyone else at Oxford and so they all seemed pretty similar, but looking back I’m so glad that I ended up picking Wadham. Here we’ve got rid of most of the ridiculous traditions that had originally put me off the idea of applying to Oxbridge (no formal halls, for example), and this, along with Wadham’s liberal and progressive tradition, results in the most laid-back, friendly college in Oxford. During my time so far I have had a great time getting to know people from all walks of life in a really accepting and dynamic environment. Whether it’s the sport, the music, the politics, the drama or whatever, there’s a reason (probably at least twenty) for everyone to pick Wadham.
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