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Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】. Hello, 安澜.
Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.
安澜 you grew up as a top student, right？Overachiever.
I was certainly kind of… a bit of a nerd.
Don't be modest. 安澜绝对是从小是学霸那种. You know that many top students in China, they have... and I believe everywhere in the world, have this certain obsession with top universities. 学霸都有那种顶尖名校情结。
I think pretty much every student they think about the top university, they want to try to aim for that.
Especially the top students. So I thought we can talk about some top universities in the UK. Now when I think about, and I think I speak for a lot of people, when we think about famous universities, in the UK, we think Oxbridge.
中文也叫牛剑, 英文也叫Oxbridge, 把这两个学校拼在一起, 对吧?
We do think about Oxbridge, and I guess if we have to speak about them...
Yes, because 安澜 did not go to Oxbridge.
No, but my university was okay, was good. But I wasn't smart enough for Oxford, but my university is also still ranking in the top three or top five.
对安澜去的UCL (University College London) 也一般都是排名top three的, 有几年还超过了 我记得是超过了Cambridge, there were a couple of years.
I can't quite remember exactly when.
But nonetheless, let's talk about Oxbridge.
Okay.
Let's start with oxford.
It's good that we start with Oxford, because that was the first university in the UK. It's actually the second oldest university in the world.
The first being in, I don't know, Germany?
Italy.
So the first university was in Italy, and then the second oldest is Oxford.
And pretty much it's so old that they're not quite sure when teaching began there. Some people say it's around 1096 or so, but people don't really know.
1096, almost a thousand years.
Pretty much. It is close to 1000 years old. And you think about all of these students that kept going to Oxford, and you think about all the students from other countries that want to go to Oxford. Actually the first international student arrived in 1190.
That's very liberal minded at that time. So you're talking about international students being admitted into oxford so early. What about women?
Women had to wait a little bit longer, until 1920 actually.
It figures, 1920s. And that's to all the colleges.
No, actually all colleges started to admit both men and women from 2008.
2008?
Calm down, calm down. It's not banning women from attending these colleges, it's actually banning men. So the last female-only college actually only started admitting male students in 2008.
I see. 所以Oxford里面有一个是只收女生的学院. I see. And in 2008, onwards both men and women.
That's right.
You mentioned colleges. Now is it a case that Oxford is like this big umbrella, basically understanding of university, and then you have different colleges that belong to the university?
Oxford University or the University of Oxford has about 39 colleges, which are self-governing. They all have their own traditions in history. But when you think about Oxford as a city, don't think of it as like one big university, it's actually lots of colleges all spread out across the city.
So they don't really have the idea of a main campus with a gate.
No. It's all part of the main city. And that's pretty much the same for many universities in the UK. You don't actually have a main gate and fences around the campus. It's actually just part of the city.
Yeah, even some London based universities, they don't have campus, their buildings are just scattered around London.
That's right.
Same with Oxford. Actually you mentioned Oxford city. So Oxford is actually a city, a town that many people don't know that, it's not just a university.
It is a city. It's a very popular city.
It's not very big though.
Well, it's still a city.