College Life

As the University of Oxford is a collegiate university, all students studying for a degree and all permanent academic staff are associated with one of the University's 38 colleges. Colleges are independent, self-governing units, providing you with the benefits of a small, tightly knit, interdisciplinary community within the larger, internationally renowned University. For postgraduate students, colleges provide some accommodation, meals, sports and social facilities, and pastoral care, while the department provides your teaching and supervision.

As the colleges are independent, each has its own selection criteria. The University course pages for the MSc in Software Engineering and the MSc in Software and Systems Security hold up-to-date lists of which colleges accept students for these degrees, on the 'college preference' tab on each page. It is worthwhile to note that a great majority of the professional master's programme students join Kellogg College, which was initially established specifically to support the needs of part-time students and is the college which has by far the most students studying professional courses. The other colleges listed have only a very limited number of places available each year. The University admissions pages explain more about how the college system supports graduate study.