u/Alarmed_Investment_3

Hey,

I’m applying to HSPS next year and I’m trying to figure out how best to prepare for the interview.

I’m really interested in the social sciences generally, but I’m already quite sure that I’d want to focus mainly on the Politics track, especially political theory / political philosophy. From what I understand, my predicted grades as a Swiss student should roughly convert to around A**A*A* to A**A**A*, so I think there’s a decent chance I’ll be invited to interview.

The problem is that I don’t take Politics as a subject at school, so I feel a bit lost about how to prepare. My first instinct has been to read lots of introductory books on politics and political theory to build a solid foundation, but I’m not sure if that’s the best approach.

For people who applied to HSPS or did the interview: how did you prepare? Are there specific topics, thinkers, books, or types of questions I should focus on? And how much prior knowledge are they expecting, especially from someone who hasn’t formally studied politics at school?

Any advice would be really appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I’m working on an essay about whether social media can coexist with democracy, and I’m looking for two things:

1. Your own opinions on the question
2. Academic essays/articles/books, preferably by scholars, that discuss this issue

My current view is that social media is not anti-democratic in itself. In theory, it has huge democratic potential because it allows many-to-many communication, gives ordinary people a voice, and can help organise political movements.

However, I’m increasingly convinced that the problem is its capitalist structure. Misinformation, polarization, echo chambers, extremism, and outrage politics are not separate problems from the system. They seem to be partly produced by a business model that turns human attention and time into an economic resource.

If platforms make money by maximizing engagement, then they are structurally incentivized to amplify whatever keeps people clicking, reacting, arguing, and scrolling. That seems deeply damaging to the conditions needed for democratic debate.

So my current argument is that social media, under its present attention-based capitalist model, is probably incompatible with a healthy democracy. It might only become compatible if its ownership and incentive structure changed, perhaps through publicly owned, non-commercial, or democratically governed social media.

I’m especially interested in anything related to Habermas, the public sphere, platform capitalism, the attention economy, democratic theory, or public/non-commercial alternatives to private social media.

Any thoughts or reading recommendations would be really appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I’m a Swiss applicant trying to decide whether it makes more sense, intellectually, to apply for HSPS at Cambridge or PPE at Oxford.

My main academic interest is political philosophy/political thought. Long term, I could see myself going into academia in that field, or at least pursuing it seriously at postgraduate level. Because of that, PPE has always seemed like the obvious route, especially because it includes philosophy more directly.

However, there are a few reasons why Cambridge HSPS feels more realistic and possibly better suited to me. As a Swiss applicant, Cambridge seems more generous with grade conversion and the admissions process overall. Oxford’s new TARA test also feels quite daunting. English is not my first language, I’m not especially strong in maths, and the Swiss system does not really prepare us for the kind of essay writing expected in UK admissions tests. So realistically, I think my chances of getting an interview may be better at Cambridge.

The issue is that I do actually really like the look of the politics track within HSPS. From what I understand, it would allow me to focus heavily on politics and political thought, which is basically what I want. A roughly 50/50 mix between politics and political philosophy sounds very close to my ideal course.

My worry is more intellectual than practical. I’m not sure whether political philosophy can really be studied deeply without also engaging with wider areas of philosophy. For example, questions about justice, democracy, rights, abortion, punishment, equality, or state power often seem to depend on deeper questions in moral philosophy, metaphysics, consciousness, human agency, or determinism. So I worry that HSPS might let me study political thought, but not give me enough of the wider philosophical background needed to answer those questions properly.

Any thoughts would be really appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I’m a prospective HSPS applicant and I’m trying to understand whether the course would be the right fit for me.

I find the social sciences extremely important, but my strongest interest is often in the normative questions behind them: not only what societies believe or how institutions work, but what ought to be the case.

For example, I’m interested in questions like: what are the limits of democracy? When, if ever, may a democratic society exclude anti-democratic parties? How should we think about rights, identity, justice, equality, or moral disagreement in politics? How do we approach questions around sex and gender, such as what it means to be a woman? Should governments prioritise equality even if doing so makes everyone slightly worse off on average?

My worry is that HSPS might be mostly empirical/social-scientific, while the more philosophical or normative side may be less central than I would like. For current or former HSPS students: do you feel these kinds of questions are seriously addressed in the course? Are supervisors generally open to essays that take a more normative or philosophical angle, even if the paper itself is not formally philosophy?

I’d really appreciate any honest thoughts, especially from people who also considered PPE, Politics and Philosophy, or similar courses.