Six Dickinson College Students Accepted Into Highly Selective Program at Oxford University
Photo courtesy of Mansfield College.
Mansfield Visiting Student Program accepts all 2020 Dickinson applicants
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
Six students will fly across the Atlantic next fall to take part in a select study-abroad experience in England. Class of ’22 members Julia Barone, Julia Chandler, Mohala Kaliebe, Tra Pham, Linh Nguyen and Erin Lowe will enroll in the highly competitive Mansfield Visiting Student Program at Oxford University, one of the most prestigious higher-education institutions in the world.
The Mansfield Visiting Student Program offers exceptional students the chance to take advantage of Oxford University's world-class resources. Only 35-40 undergraduate students, chosen from Ivy League and selective liberal-arts colleges and public universities in the U.S. and the European Union, are admitted to the program each year. Each must have maintained a 3.75 grade-point average or higher and must be recommended by their referring institutions.
Dickinson students have attended Mansfield College, Oxford, through the Mansfield program since 2013, and they have had an impressive acceptance rate every year since. This year, every student who was recommended by Dickinson faculty was accepted into the program.
While in England, the students will be enrolled as full members of Mansfield College and as registered visiting students of the University of Oxford.
Like their English counterparts, they will take part in the tutoring model of education, which centers on intensive weekly meetings with tutors in the arts, sciences and social sciences, rather than on lectures and classroom discussions. This emphasizes in-depth, self-directed learning and the development of independent critical-thinking skills.
“I’ve heard wonderful things about the tutorial system and the freedom it allows,” says Lowe, who majors in philosophy and political science and hopes to take additional courses in ethics, metaphysics and aesthetics while abroad.
“The self-oriented way of study, in which students are allowed to explore the subject in their own way with the guidance of professors and tutors, is what interests me most,” agrees Nguyen, a quantitative economics major.
“It will be a step outside of my comfort zone,” says Pham, a double major in economics and sociology who anticipates an excellent match with Mansfield’s Philosophy, Politics and Economics Curriculum, “but I am ready for the challenge.”
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Published March 9, 2020