Twice a year, Immerse Education holds an essay competition. It’s free to enter, and the prize is a partial or full scholarship to a two-week summer programme at an Ivy League university. You can choose between Oxford, Sydney, Cambridge, and London.

All, except Sydney, only host programmes through our winter break, but Immerse also offers online programmes. For the programme I did at Oxford, I got to stay at Lady Margaret Hall, the first college to allow women. We all had dorms on campus for the full two weeks, and breakfast, lunch, and dinner were provided. We had a two-hour class in the morning, a two-hour lunch break, another class in the afternoon, and then activities and dinner. At lunchtime, we were allowed to leave campus, if we stayed in groups of at least three. We would go to museums, bookshops, cafes, and more. We were fully responsible for ourselves and had few restrictions besides the 10:00 pm curfew.

For activities, we did things like punting, murder mystery, arts and crafts, formal dinner, summer sports, tours, quizzes, and more. On weekends, we had a trip to Cambridge and a trip to London. My favourite activities were punting and the formal dinner.

Why I went

I entered the essay competition through Immerse and won a 50% scholarship. I hadn’t entered to win; I just wanted an excuse to write an essay about something I enjoyed. I chose the creative writing prompt because that's a subject I’m passionate about, and that was the subject I ended up taking for the course, but you can choose any subject to write the essay on and choose a different subject to study. I chose to go to Oxford because I wanted to see a glimpse of what it was like. Oxford and Cambridge are my dream universities, but they felt so out of reach. Going there made me realise it is actually a possibility for my future and motivated me to work hard for it.

Campus

The first thing said to us on the tour of the campus was, “this is one of our newer chapels; it’s only 200 years old.” We all thought that was insane; it’s so old. As we neared the end of the two weeks, we toured a few other colleges and famous buildings around Oxford, and every single one was over 100 years old; one building dating back to Anglo-Saxon times suddenly 200 years wasn’t a lot. Still, everything about the campus was beautiful. It was like walking around a fantasy school; it never felt real. Not only were the buildings beautiful, but the gardens were something out of a fairy tale. I would get up at 6:00 am, get ready and meet my friends for a walk through the gardens and down to the canal before breakfast at 8:00 am. We’d walk through wildflowers and weeping willow trees, then find a bench by the canal and make daisy chains while listening to Taylor Swift. It felt like a movie. My favourite part of campus by far was the chapel. Three times the size of our chapel here and more than twice as old. Every morning after breakfast, my friends and I would go to the chapel and play the piano and pipe organ until registration. Everything about that room was beautiful, it was my absolute favourite space.

Classes

Work for your classes is very programme specific and depends on what course you chose. Everyone had to submit a final project, for the creative writing course, we had to submit a 2000-word prose or 500 lines of poetry. Besides the final project, we studied famous authors such as Jane Austen, held group critiques for one another's work, and had debates and discussions about controversial topics such as AI use in writing. We weren’t given specific homework, but we were encouraged to work on our project outside of class time. For classes where we had writing sessions, we went out to the campus gardens to work. All tutors were actual professors who taught at Oxford.

What I valued most about the experience

The most valuable part of this experience for me was the people. The course, content, and activities were amazing, but it was the people that sold it for me. I've never felt so comfortable in an environment then I did at Oxford with Immerse. I made friends I hope to keep for life. We set up a monthly video call to make sure we keep in touch and keep writing.

It was just amazing because everyone there actually wanted to be there and was passionate about their subjects. With such a diverse group of people from all around the world, we had so much exposure to the rest of the world.

Because we only had two weeks, everyone was fully and authentically themselves, and that made it so much easier to get along and have a good time. No one cared what others thought of them, because we never had to see one another again, unless we wanted to.

It wasn’t just the students that made me enjoy the programme, but the Staff. I'm really going to miss our mentors; they were so brilliant. All the mentors were students at either Oxford or Cambridge, which was super helpful because we got to learn so much about what it’s like to study there from a student's perspective. We were sorted into mentor families (like our St Peter’s Learning Groups) which we met with twice a day for registration.

My mentor answered all my questions as best she could and confirmed for me that Oxford was where I wanted to study. Even though she was a history student, when I asked her questions about the English programme she answered as best she could or found a mentor that could answer better.

During arts and crafts, I didn’t finish my earrings before curfew, so she finished them for me and brought them to me at breakfast. All the mentors made us all feel so comfortable and made sure everyone was included. I also really enjoyed the independence. We had to be fully responsible for ourselves, if we overslept, no one came to wake us up, it was our responsibility to do everything. Along with that responsibility, we had freedom.

We would have parties in the common room, swim in the canal (if you were brave enough to face the geese) and walk down to Tescos on Broad Street all on our own. Our only restrictions were curfew and registration. For anyone who wants a taste of life at university or to make some international friends, I highly recommend this programme.

If you want to know more about it, I literally can’t stop talking about it, so come find me, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions about the competition and programme.

To read my winning essay, click here.