all souls college essays

How to pass the 'world's hardest test' — the Oxford entrance exam for All Souls College

The entrance exam for All Souls College  at Oxford University has  been called  the world's hardest test . 

That's because it's nearly impossible to revise for. The questions are abstract and there are no right or wrong answers.

The prize is a 7-year fellowship at Oxford University, which typically goes to two students each year.  Only about a one-twentieth of applicants make it to the end.

We spoke to someone who both passed their own All Souls exam and now grades them. Our source gave us the inside track on what examiner's look for. When you're done,  check out all the  past exam questions here .

Students sit two general papers, and two papers from their specific discipline. It's mostly humanities and social science subjects.

Here's the examiner: "All the best candidates demonstrate a strong command of their subjects, and make compelling arguments in clear prose."

"The scripts that really stand out usually have something more that is striking: flashes of wit, sensitivity to detail, argumentative force."

"A significant challenge is to strike a balance between playing to your strengths and stretching beyond your comfort zone."

They aren't yes or no answers, so it's hard to know what constitutes failure: "It's not an exam you can fail, and there's no single way to be elected, so in that sense there are no 'mistakes'."

All subjects are meant to be as difficult as one another: "Though the classicists have the unenviable task of sitting an additional translation exam."

"Usually about 80 candidates sit the exam, and two are elected to fellowship. Occasionally just one candidate is elected."

The subjects are all humanities and social science subjects.

The tiny proportion of candidates that pass an exam are invited to present a viva: A spoken explanation of their answers.

"The viva can be a somewhat bewildering experience, because most of the fellowship (there are about 80 fellows at any one time) attends."

Famous fellows include Isaiah Berlin, while British prime minister Harold Wilson did not pass the exam.

Until 2010, candidates also took an essay, lasting three hours, in which they had to write about just one word, like "innocence" or "error" .

Fellows are elected for seven-year periods, and get a stipend of about £15,000 per year if they're conducting academic work.

That's what one of those unenviable translations looks like for students of Classics.

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Is the All Souls College entrance exam easy now?

T he exam reputed to be one of the hardest in the world has just got (slightly) easier . All Souls College, Oxford has this year dropped the famous one-word essay question that has taxed new entrants for almost a century.

In a typical year, around 50 academic high flyers – all graduates – compete for fellowships at the Oxford college, lasting seven years and offering an annual stipend of £14,783. For the two successful candidates, it is often a ticket to academic stardom. Former fellows include Sir Isaiah Berlin, Marcus du Sautoy and Keith Joseph. In previous years, by far the most daunting element was a single card with one word on it ("innocence", "miracles" or "water"), about which candidates were asked to write coherently for three hours.

The exam now consists of four papers of three hours each: two general ones and two specialist papers. Try this paper from 2008 for size. If it's all a bit much, don't worry, both John Buchan and Hilaire Belloc took the exam and failed to get in.

General paper

Candidates should answer THREE questions

1. Is it immoral to buy a £10,000 handbag?

2. "I don't care if anyone reads my books; I write for myself," said the author of a half-dozen published novels. Is there anything wrong with this statement as a theory of art?

3. Are boycotts futile?

4. "Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something" [Andrew Carnegie]. Do you agree?

5. What, if anything, is wrong with selective schools?

6. Is dislike of politicians a sensible default position?

7. Why is a leather jacket more acceptable than a fur coat?

8. Why do Jane Austen's novels continue to be so popular?

9. Can any public and political institutions be trusted to reform themselves?

10. Is it an extremely unnatural condition for a male and female to live continuously together?

11. Is student mobility in Europe merely a form of subsidised tourism?

12. Do children's games involving blindfolds reveal an essential cruelty in human nature?

13. Why does the UN tolerate so many bad regimes?

14. Is there a breakdown of family values in the west, and if so should the state attempt to redress it?

15. Should governments support scientific research when there may be no technological benefit?

16. Does the moral character of an orgy change when the participants wear Nazi uniforms?

17. Isn't global warming preferable to global cooling?

18. Should the laws of a secular state accommodate religious groups which desire to live by their own customs governing family, property, and marital relations, administered through separate religious courts?

19. What should the west learn from China?

20. Does celebrity entail a loss of dignity?

21. Is the desire for posthumous fame irrational?

22. What, if anything, should be done about the "obesity epidemic"?

23. Why has Africa done so badly economically?

24. Can the world afford not to grow genetically modified crops?

25. Can architects and urban planners design out crime and social breakdown?

26. Do very large salaries for sports professionals alter the character of the games played?

27. It has been said that architecture is frozen music. Does this make any sense?

28. "Old poems such as Beowulf, The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost are now unreadable by modern English speakers (without special training), so the cultural and social value of the 'great' poetry of the past lies in the material it provides for modern adaptations, such as the recent film version of Beowulf and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy." [The Economist]. Do you agree?

29. Why hug a hoodie?

30. Is string theory science?

31. Can a painting change the world?

32. Can (and should) Europe maintain its relatively high standard of living as compared with emerging economies?

33. Can you love someone if you don't respect them?

34. Is the treaty of Lisbon a further step towards the federation of Europe – or is it a step back from it?

Philosophy (Sept 2009)

1. Are vague concepts incoherent?

2. Should we distinguish between persons, human beings, and their bodies?

3. Can computers think?

4. Does any ancient philosopher have something to teach moral philosophers today?

5. Does beauty lie in the eye of the beholder?

English (Sept 2009)

1. How European was Chaucer?

2. Discuss relationships between allegory and realism in any period.

3. "At that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!" [Jane Austen] Discuss.

4. Write an obituary of Harold Pinter.

5. Discuss ONE of the following in relation to the literature of any period: apocalypse, Biblicism, commemoration, dialect, enclosure, fortune, geriatrics, homoeroticism, imprisonment, justice, kingdoms, letters, manners, notions, options, pain, questions, republicanism, stupidity, testaments, unimaginability, verisimilitude, wealth, X-Men, youth, zillionaires.

History (Sept 2009)

1. Is Greek sexuality worth studying?

2. To what end did William the Conqueror assert continuity between his rule and that of Edward the Confessor?

3. "Medieval kings were like modern drinks dispensers; when they didn't do their job, you kicked them till they did." Discuss.

4. "Like all revolutions, the French Revolution was deeply reactionary." Do you agree?

5. Did Peel or Disraeli do more to found the Conservative party?

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• Mar 23, 2021

The World's Hardest Exam: All Souls, Oxford

Updated: Aug 9, 2021

All Souls College at the University of Oxford University is widely accepted to have the hardest exam in the world its entry test. How many questions can you answer ?

All Souls College, Oxford

All Souls, one of the colleges at the University of Oxford, is unlike any other. It is open only to those with an undergraduate degree, and prospective students are subjected to a special extra set of exams. Successful candidates are made fellows, and provided with huge benefits, including tuition and accommodation paid for in whole, and an annual stipend.

Sound ideal? Bear in mind, they admit only two candidates a year...

It's important to note this is a special case, and a VOLUNTARY set of exams - normal admission at any level is nothing like this process. Don't let this extreme example put you off from applying to Oxford - attending Oxford is an attainable goal for everyone, and you don't need to be able to answer any of these questions to go. That having been said, they're good fun to have a think-through to get the old brain-cogs going, and that's the aim of this article, rather than to scare anyone off.

This article isn't going to attempt to answer the questions for you. For one, I doubt I would be able to provide satisfactory answers. But secondly, the point of these questions is they are a personal response - a reflection of you as a person, the way your brain works and the way you reason. A lot of the questions here are not inherently difficult to answer badly - anyone could have a stab at them. What they are is difficult to answer extremely well, precisely because they require you to personally and convincingly engage with the material.

All Souls Exam - The Subject Papers

Entry to All Souls requires completing 12 hours worth of grueling exams. Firstly, candidates need to sit two 3-hour subject-specific papers, available in 7 options: Classics, Economics, English, History, Law, Philosophy, or Politics.

Does trust have a history?

Rehabilitate ‘Romanization’

Is the current economics curriculum fit for purpose?

Ted Hughes or Sylvia Plath?

What gives Beckett hope?

Does law claim authority?

Should we try to define art?

Have we seen the end of the ‘end of ideology’ ideology?

All Souls Exam - The General Papers

Candidates then sit a further set of two 3-hour exams called the General Paper, designed to test the rational argument skills of candidates in areas they are less familiar with. Past examples include:

‘To photograph is to confer importance’ (SUSAN SONTAG). Discuss.

Which concept is more fundamental, shape or colour?

Are there any unanswerable questions?

‘We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection’ (ANAÏS NIN). Discuss.

If Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela had died on the same day, whose death should the BBC have reported as its top story?

All Souls Exam - The One Word Essay

Be happy that the third set of essays has now been removed. Originally, candidates were also asked to write an hour essay based on a single word given to them. In past years, the page included simply one of the following :

Following 12 hours of exams, successful candidates are invited back for a viva, where they are questioned on their written answers by a panel of up to 50 fellows. Completed all of this with flying colours? Then congratulations, you have achieved the ultimate bragging rights and aced the hardest exam in the world.

More information, including full past papers, is available on All Soul's website here: https://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/examination-fellowships-general-information

And, again as a final note, remember that this exam reflects the very best, very hardest (post-graduate) exam at Oxford; the university is open to every0ne, and nobody should be put off applying by what they see here!

Want to learn more about history? I've recently launched a new set of free, online history notes on my blog, exploring the theories and methods that historians use to study the past. The aim is to make sure everyone, anywhere, has access to the resources to learn history, for free, always. They are available here .

Interested in history, and keen to access more information and resources? Confused about Oxford, want to apply, and need more advice? Subscribe to the blog using the form below to keep up to date!

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This is remarkably similar to the exams I had to sit during my Ph.D candidacy (Archaeology, Simon Fraser University). There were two days of comprehensive exams on a number of topics for which one studies, but were assigned during the four 3-hour writing period.

The thesis, of course, varies - but mine was based on several years of conducting excavations and analyses of pre-Contact sites. The final exam was an oral defence of same - if memory serves, was at least three hours in length.

Not the same as the most difficult exam re: Oxford, but similar.

All Souls’ one word exam: gone

All Souls College has decided to scrap the famous one-word essay question from its Fellows exam.

In the past, candidates have been given three hours to write, on no more than six sides of paper, about one word. Past essays have been on subjects such as “miracles”, “water” and “innocence”.

All Souls Warden John Vickers said the decision was the result of the exam’s ineffectiveness.

“For quite a number of years, how candidates did on the essay was not playing much of a role in assessing their analytical ability, and was just not that helpful,” Vickers said. “Another strand in the decision was that we thought we’d have a better balance between the subject papers and general papers without the essay.”

Vickers went on to acknowledge: “When it’s been a tradition for so long, there’s always some regret in coming to a decision like this.”

A second year undergraduate considering applying for one of the fellowships next year said: “Writing on a single word is highly subjective and very individualistic. If your examiner doesn’t have a background in the region you choose, this immediately places you at a disadvantage.”

But a postgraduate historian who took the exam last year thought it was a worthwhile assessment.

“The one word paper was the weirdest, but not necessarily the most difficult part of the selection process. The two general papers asking questions on broad matters of ethics, philosophy and politics were especially tough… the one word exam is sufficiently vague to be turned into talking about whatever you want to do,” he said.

A second year historian from Hertford added: “I think this undermines a brilliant tradition of All Souls College. Next they will be scrapping exams altogether. This is typical. Just typical.”

Vickers argued that the loss of the exam would have no impact on the calibre of the candidates selected this year, saying, “Not carrying on with the essay should be neutral in terms of who gets elected. We felt we were getting a better insight from the other ingredients of the exam process.”

All Souls recruits exclusively from Oxford’s undergraduate finalists and graduates to confer its two seven-year fellowships, which can be held by both academics and non-academics, and come with an annual stipend of £14,783.

Previous fellows have included the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin and the judge Richard Wilberforce.

The College’s decision means that candidates this autumn will face only four exams, consisting of two specialist subject papers and two general papers.

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Exam ‘over’ at All Souls College, Oxford, your time starts now…

Emeritus Professor, Monash University

Disclosure statement

John Crossley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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The most feared exam in the world has been dropped. For over a century those hoping to study at All Souls College in Oxford opened an envelope with trepidation to discover just one word inside. They then had three hours to write about it.

Some of the world’s sharpest minds still shudder at the memory of having to write about “miracles”, “possessions”, “water”, or even “novelty”.

But future generations have been saved that fate, now academics have decided it isn’t the best way to assess candidates.

For one last time, though, The Conversation decided to test a Quondam Fellow of All Souls. Professor John Crossley, the word inside your envelope is “over”. Your time starts now.

‘Over’. An Essay.

Cricket is not a topic one naturally associates with All Souls, the Oxford college with neither undergraduates nor graduate students.

At least the word is not germane in its literal sense, though I did play cricket for the college once, only to be defeated by Merton College.

But is it cricket, in the metaphorical sense, to do away with the examination that requires an essay on one word?

And is it cricket not to use the word in the course of the essay?

I didn’t exactly climb the wall to get into All Souls, but I did not have to do the fellowship examination. Nor did most of the other fellows of the college, for there are more than half a dozen categories and the examination fellows are far outnumbered.

They do, however, ensure that there is a good distribution of ages across the membership of the college.

After now long-forgotten mediocrity, in the late nineteenth century wisdom prevailed and the college was slowly rolled into the intellectual — and political — powerhouse that it has become.

The range of intellectual disciplines has expanded from theology and law to cover the gamut of academic disciplines from algebraic topology to zoology and zoroastrianism.

Science has grown and mathematicians now seem close to exceeding their quota.

Australians and others from across the seas are, or have been, present in numbers far greater than one would have expected even fifty years ago.

The college’s move in 1966 to admit visiting fellows — yet another class of fellow for which there is no examination, though there is rigorous selection — seems to have been the right one.

Admitting graduate students would have made the college like the several new graduate colleges, perhaps not outclassing others.

As it is, the visiting fellows, who descend from the skies each term from numerous countries, enrich the whole of Oxford with their interactions.

They make contributions that do not blow out the government’s budget, indeed do not touch it, but their wisdom and counsel is beyond price.

Further, for all the gross myths, All Souls is more geared to the real world than most Oxford colleges.

Lawyers prevail, but through the years many politicians return to the college, as I do, in the role of Quondam, “sometime”, Fellows.

Awareness of political events, local and international, surpasses that found virtually anywhere else.

Examination fellows are part of this, but have perhaps a superfluity of choices.

Through the last fifty years, of those taking an academic route, an increasing number have chosen to do a doctorate; of the others many have gone on to very varied careers from the law to the arts.

The examination, including the essay, assumes a certain amount of knowledge ranging extensively, but the emphasis is rather on intelligence, understanding and communication.

And the assessment doesn’t stop in the exam room. Those who deemed worthy of a more in-depth look are invited to dinner . One applicant’s story explains the “one last romantic, mystical trial: cherry pie is served for pudding, to see what the candidates do with the stones”.

This is is not excessively apocryphal: an invitation to dine is not, as one commentator put it, “simply a courtesy extended to those who are committed enough to sit the papers”.

The point, which A. L. Rowse, himself an examination fellow, seems to have missed, is that you should be able to cope with unprecedented situations.

Sitting down to dinner as a candidate is a lottery: you never know next to whom you will sit, what their interests are and what prejudices — yours as well as theirs — you will have to conquer.

Perhaps the one thing that I value above all others from All Souls is the precise, felicitous and elegant use of English.

Certainly there can be too much pedantry, but clarity of expression so much enhances debate.

So now I am at an end, and although I haven’t used the word, nevertheless there is a synonym, paraphrase or allusion in every sentence, and neither I, nor All Souls, is finished yet.

It’s not over.

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Oxford Tradition Comes to This: ‘Death’ (Expound)

By Sarah Lyall

• May 27, 2010

OXFORD, England — The exam was simple yet devilish, consisting of a single noun (“water,” for instance, or “bias”) that applicants had three hours somehow to spin into a coherent essay. An admissions requirement for All Souls College here, it was meant to test intellectual agility, but sometimes seemed to test only the ability to sound brilliant while saying not much of anything.

“An exercise in showmanship to avoid answering the question,” is the way the historian Robin Briggs describes his essay on “innocence” in 1964, a tour de force effort that began with the opening chords of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” and then brought in, among other things, the flawed heroes of Stendhal and the horrors of the prisoner-of-war camp in the William Golding novel “Free Fall.”

No longer will other allusion-deploying Oxford youths have the chance to demonstrate the acrobatic flexibility of their intellect in quite the same way. All Souls, part of Oxford University, recently decided, with some regret, to scrap the one-word exam.

It has been offered annually since 1932 (and sporadically before that) as part of a grueling, multiday affair that, in one form or another, has been administered since 1878 and has been called the hardest exam in the world. The unveiling of the word was once an event of such excitement that even non-applicants reportedly gathered outside the college each year, waiting for news to waft out. Applicants themselves discovered the word by flipping over a single sheet of paper and seeing it printed there, all alone, like a tiny incendiary device.

But that was then. “For a number of years, the one-word essay question had not proved to be a very valuable way of providing insight into the merits of the candidates,” said Sir John Vickers, the warden, or head, of the college.

In a university full of quirky individual colleges with their own singular traditions, All Souls still stands out for the intellectual riches it offers and the awe it inspires. Founded in 1438 and not open to undergraduates, it currently has 76 fellows drawn from the upper echelons of academia and public life, most admitted on the strength of their achievements and scholarly credentials.

Previous fellows include Sir Isaiah Berlin, Sir Christopher Wren, William Gladstone and T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia). Hilaire Belloc and John Buchan are said to have failed to get in. In recent years, fellows have included a Nobel Prize winner, several cabinet members, a retired senior law lord and a lord chancellor.

In addition, two young scholars are chosen each year from among Oxford students who graduated recently with the highest possible academic results. Called examination fellows, they get perks including room and board, 14,783 pounds (about $21,000) a year for a seven-year term and the chance to engage in erudite discussions over languorous meals with the other fellows.

But first they have to take the exam. It consists of 12 hours of essays over two days. Half are on the applicants’ academic specialties , the other half on general subjects , with questions like: “Do the innocent have nothing to fear?” “Isn’t global warming preferable to global cooling?” “How many people should there be?” and the surprisingly relevant, because this is Britain: “Does the moral character of an orgy change when the participants wear Nazi uniforms?”

Those are daunting enough. But it is the one-word-question essay (known simply as “Essay”) that candidates still remember decades later. Past words, chosen by the fellows, included “style,” “censorship,” “charity,” “reproduction,” “novelty,” “chaos” and “mercy.”

It was not a test for everyone.

“Many candidates, including some of the best, seemed at a loss when confronted with this exercise,” said Mr. Briggs, a longtime teacher of modern history at Oxford.

Others found it exhilarating. “Brilliant fun,” a past applicant named Matthew Edward Harris wrote in The Daily Telegraph recently, recalling his 2007 essay, on “harmony.”

He had resolved, he said, that “No matter what word I was given, I would structure my answer using Hegel’s dialectic.” And then, like a chef rummaging through the recesses of his refrigerator for unlikely soup ingredients, he added a discussion of Kant’s categorical imperative and an analysis of the creative tensions among the vocalists in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (he didn’t get in).

The writer Harry Mount, an Oxford graduate and the author of “Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life,” didn’t get in, either. His essay, in 1994, was on “miracles.”

What was in it?

“Crying Madonnas in Ireland, that sort of thing,” Mr. Mount said. “And the battle between faith and cynicism. I was a cynic and didn’t believe in miracles, and perhaps that was bad. I had just read about Karl Popper and his theory of falsification, so I threw in a bit about that.”

Justin Walters, the founder and chief executive of Investis, an online corporate communication service company, said that writing his essay, on “corruption,” was not half as bad as the oral exam several weeks later, conducted by a long row of fellows peering across a table.

“ ‘Mr. Walters, you made some very interesting distinctions in your essay. Are you prepared to defend it?’ ” he remembered one of the fellows asking. Unfortunately, he had only a vague recollection of what he had written. “You’re the teacher — you figure it out,” he recalled thinking. (He must have done something right: he got in.)

Sir John, the current college warden, has worked as the Bank of England’s chief economist and been president of the Royal Economic Society, among other jobs. He draws a self-protective veil over the memory of his own essay, in 1979, on “conversion.”

“I do shudder at the thought of what I must have written,” he said.

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Professor John Gardner

• Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Oxford, and Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College (from 2016 to 2019)
• Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Oxford (from 2000 to 2016)
• Reader in Legal Philosophy, King’s College London (from 1996 to 2000)
• Fellow and Tutor in Law, Brasenose College, Oxford (from 1991 to 1996)
• Prize Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford (from 1986 to 1991)
• The philosophy of private law, of criminal law, of public law, and of law in general, as well as nearby areas of moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophical psychology, and the philosophy of action.
• Law as a Leap of Faith: Essays on Law in General (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012)
• Offences and Defences: Selected Essays in the Philosophy of Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007)
• Publications (External Link)

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