7 Signs You Studied at Oxford

One of the many traditions maintained at Oxford is the practice of wearing carnations during ‘finals’ (end of year exams). You wear a white carnation for your first exam, a red for the last, and pink for each day in between. Never again will you be able to look a carnation in the face without getting flashbacks to that intense few weeks of cramming, cramming and more cramming.

Being part of the Oxford club is all about picking up the lingo. Strange as it all sounds at first, before you know it you’ll be meeting friends in the JCR before heading to eights, checking your pidge for information about mods, complaining about battels and debating the finer points of sub fusc. You’ve probably picked up a sprinkling of Latin along the way too.

Oxford students LOVE dressing up – and not just in gowns. From freshers’ week onwards, you’ll find your college ‘entz’ calendar consists largely of regular ‘bops’ – themed fancy dress parties. As a result, your Oxford legacy probably includes an impressive collection of charity shop treasures, headwear, oversized glasses, spray-on glitter, and a stick-on moustache for every occasion. It’ll come in handy when you finally get the call to join MI6.

In keeping with the city’s Harry Potter connections, the streets of Oxford magically transform at night. Outside of each college, a white van appears at dusk, ready to sell kebabs and cheesy chips to post-bop students with the munchies. No night out is complete without a visit to your local van, but often this isn’t the end of the story [insert drunken half-forgotten memory here]. Your feelings about food purchased from vans are likely to be ambivalent for a long time to come, combining strong elements of both nostalgia and dread.

Oxford has a good track record as a training ground for the UK’s political elite – especially the famous PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) degree. Regardless of whether you were a regular at the Oxford Union’s debates or crossed paths with members of the infamous Bullingdon Club, chances are you can think of at least one classmate whose face you wouldn’t be surprised to see in the cabinet someday soon.

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