Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics

Message from a Student

Hey! I'm Jamie and I study Philosophy and Linguistics as part of PPL (Psychology, Philosophy & Linguistics) at Jesus. I really enjoyed my first year studying PPL and am excited to start my Finals course now.
We have two or three important sets of exams during our time at Oxford - our Prelims are our first set of exams, and unlike most courses, PPL has these at the end of 2nd term. Then we have Finals, which are the only exams that count towards our final degree - for Psychology students, this is split into Part I and Part II in years 2 and 3.
In the year, there are about 30 students for PPL and ~a further 60 for EP throughout the university, with about 1 PPL and 2-3 EP students at Jesus. We share lectures, syllabus and sometimes even tutorials with people studying our subjects in other mixed schools, for example EP, PPE or Modern Languages & Linguistics (MLL). Along with all the EP/PPL students, you'll all take 3 of the following 5 modules:
-Introduction to Psychology
-Introduction to Philosophy
-Introduction to Linguistics
-Neurophysiology
-Statistics
All students (even Philosophy & Linguistics!) take Stats; only EP students take Neurophysiology (so we don't need to worry about that!) After the first set of exams in 2nd term, you'll have the opportunity to take up all three parts of the course ("the tripartite route") at the discretion of your tutors. Normally, in the first two terms you'll have 6-7 lectures a week and maybe 3-4 tutorials a week. In general, this means we have 10-15 contact hours and 25-30 hours of independent study each week. I'm so glad I am at Jesus because the tutors are really lovely and gently lowered me into Oxford's work over the first few weeks.