FAQ for Graduate Applicants

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Welcome, we’re delighted that you are thinking about graduate studies in New Testament at Oxford. This page offers informal advice about admissions and funding.

 

For the official application guide, please consult the University’s Graduate Studies Prospectus. See also the Faculty of Theology & Religion’s Graduate Studies Guide and the University’s information for international students.

 

These are the only official sources. General questions about our degrees and arrangements for graduate study in Theology and Religion should be directed to graduate.enquiries@theology.ox.ac.uk.  To apply, use the central applications portal here. Please bear in mind the early January deadline for applications each year.
 
You are also welcome to make contact with a potential supervisor like Professors Bockmuehl, Downs or Strawbridge to discuss a draft research proposal.

 

 
For up-to-date information about Oxford New Testament events (as well as employment opportunities), please follow our X (or Bluesky) feed @NT4Ox. Each November we offer potential applicants the opportunity to discuss their research interests individually with a couple of Oxford supervisors, before the early January application deadline. 
 
Why not sign up at nt4ox.link/oxpaint25?

What follows below is informal guidance we have found helpful when advising New Testament applicants about the admissions process, and about what sort of student is likely to thrive in the Oxford system.  

 

Key supporting evidence for admission includes the application form along with transcripts, degree certificates, and a carefully worked out and documented research proposal (or, for the Master’s Degree, a more straightforward statement of purpose). You will also need academic references, written by recognized scholars, which must focus on a specifically grounded account of your talent and research potential (rather than, say, comments about your character or personal life).

 

Once you have begun thinking about your application and research interest, do feel free to correspond with Prof. Bockmuehl or another potential Oxford supervisor.
Each November we also schedule pre-application conversations for potential applicants to meet with a couple of Oxford New Testament supervisors. Registration details are normally posted during September on this page and on our X (or Bluesky) feed @NT4Ox.

 

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Our preparatory 2-year full-time MPhil (or 1-year MSt) is the preferred route of entry for most students. This course offers opportunities to acquire in-depth philological and language skills as well as a more focused research question to sustain a large thesis project. Oxford’s resources for linguistic and other requisite training are extensive. Our two-year MPhil degrees include the MPhil in New Testament and the MPhil in Judaism and Christianity in the Graeco-Roman World.
 
Admission via the MSt or MPhil is designed to facilitate and accelerate entry into doctoral research, not to extend the overall route to the Doctorate. Oxford Master’s theses may be re-used and developed upon successful application for the 3-year DPhil. This means that, although there is no automatic progression, under current regulations it remains possible and indeed encouraged to complete a Master’s plus DPhil in a total of 4 years (either MSt+DPhil in 1+3 years or the recommended MPhil+DPhil in 2+2 years). By comparison, candidates admitted straight into the DPhil typically also take at least 4 years to complete, and possibly longer. Among the advantages of the “1+3” or “2+2” model are the chance to complement requisite linguistic and exegetical skills as well as to acclimatize and build up momentum in articulating a viable DPhil topic. And of course this route to the DPhil comes with an Oxford Master’s degree along the way, after which candidates can either decide to apply to progress to the DPhil or else to enrol in doctoral studies elsewhere.

 

After admission to the DPhil, a one-year probationary period is followed by a rigorous oral assessment of the candidate’s subject-specific and linguistic preparation as well as the research project’s viability, resulting in registration (“Transfer of Status”) for the DPhil. A further “Confirmation of Status” assessment normally takes place 6-12 months before submission and serves as a kind of “dry run” or “road test” of the argument as a whole in advance of the formal examination of the dissertation.

 

For taught Master’s degrees (MSt and MPhil only), recent changes in UK immigration law have meant that for the moment no dependants’ visas are issued for overseas students. We are firmly committed to working with affected candidates to identify alternative arrangements. Our Master’s degrees are only available as full-time courses, but Oxford residence requirements are limited to term time, i.e. 3×8 weeks a year (with minimum residence being 6 weeks per term): see here for further detail. Visas for dependants are not restricted during the DPhil.

The articulation of a viable research proposal is among the most important criteria for admission, especially for the DPhil. For general guidance about what this should contain, see the Faculty of Theology and Religion’s instructions here.

 

More specifically, beyond merely identifying general areas of interest or heuristic questions you wish to ask, it would be good to draft a carefully crafted research statement of perhaps initially 500 words, which you might want to discuss with a potential supervisor before you apply.

 

  • This should contextualize your interest in relation to the current state of scholarly debate in your proposed area of research. Here you might outline what you perceive to be the critical lacuna (or perhaps deadlock) in scholarship on the subject in question; which 8-12 authors or sources you would see as your leading conversation partners, both ancient and modern; and how your research would position itself in relation to them. For the DPhil, this should normally also include the most relevant scholarly contributors in languages other than English (this is less vital for the MPhil statement detail). Try to be specific, too, about your level of existing reading facility and requisite additional competence in the relevant ancient and modern research languages.
  • Again, the key to a successful DPhil proposal is the ability to identify a viable research question and perhaps a credible direction of your hoped-for contribution to knowledge. (At Master’s level this “contribution to knowledge” and the detail of engagement with the global breadth of existing scholarship matters less than the ability to identify and justify an intellectually promising line of inquiry.)
 
Applicants sometimes ask for guidance about a choice of topic. The first thing to note is that your research question should ideally arise from your own intellectual commitments and interests, i.e. something about which you have developed your own “fire in the belly”. It will need to stimulate you and get you out of bed not just in the first three weeks but the first three years of your research.
That said, as a team of New Testament supervisors we agree that three areas stand at the heart of our distinctive contribution here in Oxford:

 

  1. A commitment to the interrelation of historical and theological research on the New Testament. This means for us that all historical and textual study is invariably theological in one way or another (whether acknowledged or not, whether good or bad) – and vice versa for theology.
  2. Both Jewish and Graeco-Roman contexts are important for a historically accountable understanding of the New Testament. Here we are particularly keen for our students to be skilled in the Jewish settings and contexts of early Christian scriptures, beliefs and practices. This is supported and facilitated by Oxford’s unique strengths in the fields of Jewish Studies as well as Classics.
  3. The New Testament’s genesis, effects and reception in its first two centuries may offer certain privileged windows of access – both to how the first audiences heard the texts and to the range, excitingly diverse and yet bounded, of what they believed them to mean.  

 

Students often find only limited scope for exciting research questions on the New Testament texts along overcrowded paths of scholarship along conventional lines of critical history or indeed critical theory. But all three of the above areas remain in our experience rich and redolent with opportunities for fresh contributions to knowledge.

 

Please feel free to enter into correspondence about your initial draft with a possible Oxford supervisor, before finalizing a revised proposal with your application.

 

Master’s supervision is usually decided as needed once a student arrives. An overall director of studies co-ordinates your work, but other colleagues normally contribute to the teaching and supervision of essays and dissertations. Assignment of a DPhil supervisor can sometimes be explored informally early on, and it is worth contacting one of the Oxford New Testament doctoral supervisors with whom you may wish to work. In straightforward cases, an applicant’s declaration of preference may well be taken into account if the colleague concerned confirms a willingness to supervise. Confirmation of a likely supervisor is, however, possible only after you have been formally accepted by the Faculty’s Graduate Studies Committee, which is the body responsible for all matters concerning admission, supervision and examination.

 

Among applicants with English as a second language, successful applicants to the University are required to demonstrate “higher” competence in spoken and written English, based on a TOEFL score of at least 110 or IELTS score of 7.5, taken within the last two years. For details of the current requirements see here.

Strong, documented knowledge of ancient Greek and Hebrew is essential for admission, ideally including some extra-biblical competence; Aramaic, too, often proves desirable in the course of your studies here. Beyond that, our students have repeatedly found that one or more additional languages (like Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic or Arabic) may turn out to be important. If so, these can if necessary be acquired after your arrival in Oxford, depending on the proposed research project.

 

Among modern research languages, a confident reading facility in German remains vital; you should if possible have made a strong start on this at the time of application, and expect to consolidate and deepen your knowledge once you are here. Competence in French or other modern languages can be acquired and/or improved during the MSt or MPhil through Oxford’s richly resourced Language Centre. DPhil students are also encouraged to consider a stint in Germany (e.g. an intensive Goethe Institute course followed by a few weeks or months of university lectures, seminars and research) to deepen their facility in German: this almost invariably proves a major boost to their project and an invaluable asset for any future academic career. We are happy to assist on the basis of personal links with colleagues in numerous European and Israeli Universities.

Admission is strictly on a competitive basis. Note in particular that the Faculty’s published minimum requirements indicate a necessary rather than a sufficient criterion: they merely mark the minimum cut-off, below which the Graduate Studies Committee is not permitted to consider applications. That current minimum threshold is an average of 67+ for UK applicants or an international equivalent (deemed to be a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3.8 in North American terms). Successful applications typically include a good First-Class qualifying degree (UK) or a GPA comfortably above 3.8, along with documented competence across the relevant linguistic, historical and theological subjects.

 

The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is at present not formally required or a decisive criterion for admission. That said, North American applicants almost invariably help their case by supplying strong GRE scores. While there is no formally required minimum, our successful New Testament applicants’ GRE scores have tended to be around the 95th percentile or better (mid-160s or above in the verbal reasoning and 6.0 or 5.5 in the analytical writing section).

In early February we schedule optional online conversations of around 20 minutes with all shortlisted candidates in New Testament studies. These typically cover submitted research proposals and may involve discussion of one or two prepared short biblical passages.

Annual admission numbers of New Testament graduate students fluctuate depending on such factors as projected DPhil completions, numbers and strength of applications, funding opportunities, as well as potential supervisors’ plans for research leave or major administrative responsibilities. Importantly, since we are permitted to admit students with external funding we often have greater flexibility on admission than our US competitors. Compared to other NT graduate programmes in the UK, on the other hand, our offer and matriculation rates tend to be lower (a given cohort may represent not much more than 10% of applications).

Funding a British doctorate has long been trickier than at some of the leading US research institutions that routinely cover fees and a stipend for all their doctoral students. Nevertheless, bright and resourceful students willing to engage in some sleuthing legwork and multiple applications are often able to secure substantial funding packages from a variety of private and public sources, whether in their home countries or in the UK.

 

Oxford’s routine access to public, university and college scholarship funds has significantly tightened in recent years, although we are still in a relatively good position compared to other UK Universities. The information below is suggested as providing some useful starting points in the search for funding.

 

We are also actively engaged in external fundraising efforts to support our students, and grateful for our partnership with donors who have in recent years enabled us to offer several full or partial graduate scholarships. We would enthusiastically welcome the support of other potential donors interested in supporting our work in this way; please contact Prof. Bockmuehl by email if you are aware of such opportunities.

  • For the very best candidates, the most straightforward funded Oxford doctorate in theology (full fees plus a monthly stipend) is often via the prestigious Ertegun or Clarendon Scholarship schemes, which are assessed routinely with your application. In most recent years two or three of our best graduate applicants in the Faculty have succeeded in one of these schemes. (Note that the Ertegun scheme awards mostly at Master’s Level; DPhil applications are rarely worthwhile.) For most of these awards you are considered automatically, but some require you to tick the relevant box in your application form. 
  • Among other all-inclusive packages, both the Rhodes and Commonwealth Scholarships are also distinguished, highly competitive awards.
  • The Faculty of Theology and Religion is in a position to offer a number of other, mostly smaller graduate scholarships to new and existing students; see here. 
  • There is also a substantial and growing number of College-based scholarships. Some of these are automatically considered for applicants to that college, while others require a separate application.
  • Other Oxford-based funds that have frequently awarded modest but helpful amounts of support to our existing students include the Crewdson Trust and also (for ordinands or clergy in the Church of England or other churches in communion with it) the Squire and Marriott Bursaries. 
  • Beyond these, try the Oxford Funding search engine as a useful pointer to dozens of other possibilities worth exploring. A number of these are college-based, may be separately advertised, and can often be combined with other smaller awards.
  • More generally for the UK, the “PS” website offers perhaps the most comprehensive gateway for postgraduate studentships.

UK immigration policy has been quite volatile over the last 10 years – so be sure to check the latest state of play: you should only rely on official information. UK visa conditions always need to be borne in mind.

 

Registered overseas graduate students have in recent years been permitted to take paid employment for up to 20 hours a week during term, and full-time during vacations. Spouses of overseas students on courses longer than 12 months are also permitted to take paid employment (but NB as of 2024 there is a new UK policy barring visas specifically for the dependants of taught Master’s students (not DPhil)).

 

Be sure to note the University’s own explicit Paid Employment Guidelines, which urge that the successful pursuit of a graduate course is unlikely to be compatible with more than 8 weekly hours of paid work.