Applying to Study English at University: Three Habits to Cultivate, Three Habits to Jettison

This is about the time of year when many students in Year 11 begin to consider their applications to university in two years' time. Students in Year 12 will be refining their preparation for applying later in the year.

One of the services that I offer is a long-term programme of mentoring for students who are applying to study English at university, particularly those applying to Oxbridge. I was delighted when, about a month ago, SM, whom I had mentored throughout 2021, contacted me to tell me that she had received an offer to study at the University of Cambridge.

The following advice is designed to help students develop an attitude to learning that will help them to advance to excellent universities. It's designed for those who want to study English degrees, including those considering applying to Oxford or Cambridge. It should also prove useful to those applying for other courses in the arts and humanities. It's advice that I wish that I had received myself before I applied to study English.

Three habits to cultivate

* Taking pleasure in analysis. 'Analysis' ultimately derives from the Greek for 'unfastening' or 'unfixing', an etymology that identifies the core of analytical practice.

The analytical temperament thus refuses to accept any phenomenon as an unquestionable fixture of reality. Instead, such a temperament is excited by any opportunity to understand the causes of phenomena and their manifold effects. The analyst might be drawn to contemplate practical problems: how cancerous tumours might be grown in laboratories, for instance. S/he might equally be galvanised by questions of social habit: why do we give gifts?; why do different dialects exist? These questions are analytical because they refuse to accept the occurrence of cancers, gift-giving and dialectal variety as 'fixtures' whose statuses are beyond question. To such a temperament, any phenomenon can become the focus of sustained and detailed investigation. This isn't to characterise the analyst as an iconoclast who wants to automatically dismantle familiar customs and institutions. The analytical student is, however, drawn towards contemplating those details that might easily be ignored in the everyday course of life. As an English teacher, I've found that some of the most refreshing class discussions are preceded by a student uttering the phrase 'I might be over-analysing this, but...' Such a phrase usually signals that students are challenging themselves by considering the origins or effects of a detail that they once accepted unquestioningly.

* Sharing knowledge. The most significant developments that I have made in my thinking have come when I have been asked to explain a phenomenon to someone else, both in the classroom and beyond. This is because the task forced me to contemplate these phenomena (and the assumptions I had held about them) in clear terms. Opportunities to share knowledge or ideas at length are therefore always useful in helping you enrich your understanding of a subject. Some schools offer mentoring programmes whereby sixth-formers can formally coach those in lower year groups in particular subjects. Students who mentor others must invariably engage with unexpected questions which allow them to consider aspects of a subject that they previously took for granted. Even if you don't have such formal programmes available to you, it's useful to seek out arenas in which to share knowledge and ideas with fellow enthusiasts of your chosen discipline.

It's also useful to abandon any notion that knowledge is something to be 'hoarded' for personal benefit. At university, you will be part of an intellectual community; adopting a more communitarian attitude to learning equips you well for this.

* Developing an inter-disciplinary approach to learning. The longer I spend teaching, the more I appreciate the interconnectedness of different academic disciplines. At school, I spent much of my time eager to jettison any subject that didn't involve studying literature. This was partly the result of the narrow, instrumentalist way that science, languages and history were taught at GCSE. However, I would urge students of literature to sustain some interest in other disciplines regardless of your experience of studying them formally. Leaving aside broad epistemological questions about how analytical practices transcend specific branches of knowledge, one's understanding of literature will be nourished through acquaintance with other types of discourse. For example, my appreciation of the novels of Thomas Pynchon grew fuller when I sought out a colleague who taught Physics to explain the concept of entropy to me. My ability to comprehend some of the work of J.H. Prynne – a poet whose writing I admire but whose work resists easy comprehension – is limited by my narrow acquaintance with much scientific discourse as well as my status as a monoglot.

Three habits to avoid

* Pithy dismissals of others' positions. There's a uniquely hollow pleasure to be found in rubbishing other peoples' ideas but it's incompatible with academic excellence. If you're proposing an argument, you need to understand the rationale that underpins opposing viewpoints and engage with it seriously. There's a growing indulgence in some circles – notably debating competitions – of students lambasting each others' views as 'deplorable' or 'foolhardy'. Such language is imprecise and suggests a superficial engagement with the topic under discussion. Avoid it.

* Seeking intellectual comfort. It's easy to get into the habit of only reading texts which broadly support your current views. Such an approach doesn't help you enrich your understanding of your chosen field. The fact that others have expressed similar ideas to yours doesn't validate those ideas. Successful applicants will have sought out a range of considered views on a given topic and remain receptive to their merits and shortcomings. Such students will also accept the fact that any opinion is the product of a matrix of circumstantial influences. 'Why do I hold this view?' should be a question we ask ourselves routinely.

* 'Showcasing' your learning. Some students mistakenly believe that their primary task is to show off the breadth of their learning or vocabulary. I used to do this myself when I was studying English at A-Level. My first instinct, when reading an unseen text, was to look for details to which I could apply literary terms. My opening remark in a discussion would often be to identify an example of, say, anadiplosis in stanza four. It was almost as though I were performing an anatomical dissection on a text, carving it up into its constituent tropes. This approach is misguided because it marginalises the important question of how a poem's meaning is generated. Answering that question involves contemplating some basic subsidiary questions: how do we respond to the poem's title?; what is the poem's focus?; is that focus sustained? etc.

Some students worry that asking these questions represents too basic an engagement with the text but this isn't so. I came to realise that my 'labelling' approach was evidence of timidity. I lacked the confidence to engage fully with those 'basic' questions so sought consolation in showing off recently-acquired lexis. My approach also divorced my study of English from my emotional responses to text, making it significantly less enjoyable.

Intellectual perspicacity isn't a matter of parading your pre-existing knowledge but of analysing evidence and ideas precisely and in detail.

I hope that you find this advice useful. I can also recommend the YouTube channel of Dr Matt Williams, the Outreach Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, whose advice is always excellent.

If you would like any advice or mentoring in your application to study English, please feel free to get in touch at swlondontutor@yahoo.com.

My blog features several other articles useful to those planning on studying English at Oxbridge and elsewhere.

All the best with your application!

swlondontutor@yahoo.com