Current Students
For our current students we share a weekly update in the bulletin which is sent to families via Weduc and students via Google Classroom. This includes signposting of events and opportunities that will support career progression and university applications. Below are some links to support students as they explore their future options.
Useful Links
Employability
Employability Skills | Young People Job Skills| Life Skills (barclayslifeskills.com)
Oxford / Cambridge and other useful Higher Education links
Sutton Trust Summer Schools - Sutton Trust Summer Schools
Uniq Summer School - UNIQ - University of Oxford
Cambridge University Masterclasses - Subject Masterclasses | Undergraduate Study (cam.ac.uk)
Nuffield Science Placements - Nuffield Research Placements | Student Programmes | Nuffield Foundation
MyHE+ - Super curricular resources across the curriculum - HE+ (myheplus.com)
Insight into University (for STEM studies) - EDT Insight into University (Headstart & Inspire) (etrust.org.uk)
Further maths support programme - Home | AMSP
Wider Reading
Widen your interest outside of lessons
Wider reading... the following list of suggested reading is a combination of books suggested by Oxbridge tutors and a selection added by your very own subject teachers. When it comes to writing a personal statement as part of your university application, a better candidate would have attempted to read outside of lessons.
Architecture
A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander
The Penguin Dictionary of Building, James H MacLean and John S Scott
Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, Gitta Sereny
Modern Architecture, Kenneth Frampton
Art / Photography
Micheal Freeman, The Photographers Eye, Ilex
Micheal Freeman, The Photographers Mind, Ilex
Micheal Freeman, The Photographers Perfect Exposure, Ilex
Andrew Graham Dixon, Art the definitive Visual Guide, D&K
Edward Lucie Smith, Art Today, Phaidon
Art Now, Uta Grosenick, Taschen
Alan Pipes, Foundations of Art and Design, Lawrence King
Biological Sciences
Climbing Mount Improbable, The Greatest Show on Earth, The Evidence for Evolution, or The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
The Single Helix, Steve Jones (A few years old now, so not fully up-to-date but still fascinating.)
Darwin’s Island, Steve Jones
Bugs Britannica, Peter Marren and Richard Mabey
Business Studies
The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE – Tom Peters
In search of excellence – Tom Peters and Robert Waterman
Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us – Daniel Pink
Essential Drucker (classic Drucker collection) – Peter F Drucker
Chemistry
Elements of Physical Chemistry, Atkins
Inorganic Chemistry, Shriver and Atkins (you will also use this during the course)
Foundations of Organic Chemistry, Hornby and Peach
Computer Science
Computer Science: A Modern Introduction, Les Goldschlager and Andrew Lister (Prentice-Hall, 1988)
The Pleasures of Counting, Tom Körner (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
The New Turing Omnibus, A Kee Dewdney (Computer Science Press, 1993)
The Mythical Man-month, Fred Brooks (Addison-Wesley, 1995)
Economics
The Keynes Solution, Paul Davidson
Understanding Modern Money, L. Randall Wray
Keynes: The Return of the Master, Robert Skidelsky
The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy, Warren Mosler
The Return of Depression Economics, Paul Krugman
Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The State We’re In – Will Hutton
Freefall – Free markets and the sinking of the global economy – Joseph Stiglitz
Engineering
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Adrian Vaughan
The biography of one of the greatest engineers who ever lived.
Mathematical Methods for Science Students, G Stevenson
The New Science of Strong Materials and Structures, J E Gordon
Cats’ Paws and Catapults, Steven Vogel
What Engineers Know and How They Know It, W G Vincenti
English
Anything and everything by David Crystal for English Language!
The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
Listen to your Child, D. Crystal
The language Instinct, S. Pink
The Adventure of English, M. Bragg
Literary criticism
David Lodge's The Art of Fiction is a good place to start.
What is Literary Theory? Terry Eagleton
Norton Anthology of Criticism – great selection of literary theory used for undergraduate courses
The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald
An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle
Bertens Literary Theory: The Basics
The English Studies Book’ R. Pope
Quirky novels which stand out from the crowd
Oroonoko, Aphra Behn (seventeenth century, slavery, racism)
The Monk, Matthew Lewis (18th century gothic)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Lawrence Sterne (18th century, experimental narrative, funny)
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James (Freudian late Victorian)
The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (short, Victorian, feminist)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles or Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy (Victorian, dark)
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (nineteenth century love, violence)
The Waves, Virginia Woolf (experimental modernism)
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (feminist modernism)
Tender is the Night, F.Scott Fitzgerald (American, 1930s)
Finnegans Wake or Ulysses, James Joyce (modernism for the ambitious!)
The Unicorn orThe Bell, Iris Murdoch (modern female philosopher – good and evil, sexuality, consciousness)
Guerillas, V S Naipaul (post colonial)
A House for Mr Biswas, V S Naipaul (post colonial)
A Child in Time, Ian McEwan (modern)
Anything by Haruki Murukami (modern, quirky Japanese lit)
Disgrace, J. M Coetzee (modern South African)
Decent Poets: WB Yeats, Walt Whitman, WH Auden, Phillip Larkin, John Keats, Robert Frost, Alfred Lord Tennyson (Maud is the best), Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, William Blake
Norton Anthology of Poetry is a good buy– great selection across time of decent poetry used for undergraduate courses
Decent Playwrights: Harold Pinter, John Webster, Christopher Marlowe, Tom Stoppard, Joe Orton, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
Experimental Psychology
Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks
Mindwatching, H J and M E Eysenck (Prion, 1995)
How the Mind Works, S Pinker (Allen Lane, 1997)
Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology, R L Atkinson, R C Atkinson, E E Smith, D J Bean and S Nolen-Hoeksema (Harcourt Brace & Co., 1996)
Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour - R D Gross (Hodder and Stoughton, 1996)
Geography
Global Geomorphology, Michael Summerfield
Glaciers and Glaciation, Douglas Benn and David Evans
The City in History, Lewis Mumford
Spaces of Culture, ed. Mike Featherstone
History
A People's History of the US, Howard Zinn
British Political History, Malcolm Pearce and Geoffrey Stewart
Imperium, Ryszard Kapuscinski
Witnesses of War, Nicholas Stargardt
Le Feu (‘Under Fire,’ in English), Henri Barbusse
Britons: Forging a Nation, Linda Colley
Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky
More recommendations:
What is History? - E H Carr
In Defence of History - Richard Evans
History in Practice, Ludmilla Jordanova
The Nature of History, Arthur Marwick
History would also recommend George Orwell’s, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighteen Four and Homage to Catalonia.
Law
About Law, Tony Honore
Understanding Law, Adams and Brownsword
The Law Machine, Marcel Berlins, Clare Dyer
A Theory of Justice, John Rawls
Mathematics
Chaos, Making a New Science, James Gleick
100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know, John D. Barrow
Fermat's Last Theorem, Simon Singh
The Code Book, Simon Singh
The Simpsons and their mathematical secrets, Simon Singh
Alex’s Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Numbers, Alex Belllos
It Must be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science, edited by Graham Farmelo
Alice in Numberland, Baylis and Haggarty
The Problems of Mathematics, Nature's Numbers, From Here to Infinity, Game, Set and Math and the Magical Maze, Ian Stewart
What is Mathematics? Courant and Robbins
Mathematics: The Golden Age, Devlin
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, Sinclair McKay
Media
The Guardian Newspaper - Media section - available to buy every Monday.The Media Student's Book - 5th Edition - Routledge.
Image and Representation - Nick Lacey - 2nd Edition - Palgrave, Macmillan.
Narrative and Genre: Key concepts in Media Studies - Palgrave, Macmillan.
Media, Institutions and Audiences: Key concepts in Media Studies - Palgrave, Macmillan.
Medicine
C; Because cowards get cancer too, John Diamond
Emperor of all Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee
Immunobiology, C A Janeway
Human Physiology, Gillian and Christopher Richards
Evolutionary Medicine, ed. Wenda Tervathan
Midwifery / Nursing
Careers uncovered: Nursing and Midwifery, Richmond, Trotman Publishing
A Midwife’s Story, Penny Armstrong & Sheryl Fieldman
The Nursing & Midwifery Council www.nmc-uk.org
The Royal College of Nursing www.rcn.org.uk
Modern Languages
Prospective Modern Language students might be interested to read Edith’s Grossman’sWhy Translation Matters.
This is a short list of possible authors you could look at:
French: Rousseau; Voltaire; Hugo; Balzac; Stendhal; Flaubert; Baudelaire; Verlaine;
German: Goethe; Schiller; Holderlin; Keller; Hoffmann; Schlegel; Heine; George;
Music
The Journal of Music - subscription-only web-based journal
Instrumentation and Orchestration, Alfred Blatter.
Music Instinct, Philip Ball
Schenker Guide, Tom Pankhurst
Powder Her Face, Thomas Ades
Greek, Mark-Anthony Turnage
The Ring Cycle, Richard Wagner
Leonard Bernstein
The father of modern musical theatre. West Side Story, Mass, and Candide are all brilliant music-theatre works.
Harrison Birtwistle The Minotaur, The Io Passion, The Corridor, and Panic give a full overview of this dynamic modern British composer's works.
Philosophy
Utilitarianism, J.S Mill
The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Straw Dogs, John Gray
Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton
The problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
Philosophy; The Basics, Nigel Warburton
A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE)
The Prince, Machiavelli
Britain Since 1918 – David Marquand
Daughter of Persia: A Woman's Journey from Her Father's Harem through the Islamic Revolution, Sattareh Farman Farmaian and Dona Munker
Language, Truth and Logic, A J Ayer
Microeconomics, Katz and Rozen
The Economy under Mrs Thatcher, G Maynard
The State We’re In and The State to Come, W Hutton
Physics
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
A Briefer History of Time, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, Leonard Mlodinow
Fermat's Last Theorem, Simon Singh and David Rintoul
"Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman", Richard Feynman
Several different works of Richard Feynman, from Six Easy Pieces to Six Not-so-easy Pieces, right through to his Imaginative Lecture series.
Sociology / Social Sciences
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
Involvement and Detachment (Part I), Norbert Elias,
Suicide, Émile Durkheim
Mind, Self and Society, George Herbert Mead
Thinking Sociologically, Bauman, Zygmunt and Tim May
The Prince, Machiavelli
The Sociological Tradition, Robert Nisbet
Speech Science
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
Theology
The Imitation of Christ, Thomas Kempis
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamad
God is Back, How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World, Micklethwait and Wooldridge
Veterinary Medicine
The Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy, Dyce, Sack and Wensing (Second Edition, 1996)
Getting into Veterinary Science, J Handley
Careers Working with Animals, Helen Young