Richard Bray
1. Life at Oak Hill - excellent for families. The campus site with plenty of green space makes it a pleasant atmosphere. A pity that creche places are quite limited, so that mums can’t join as many lectures as they might like to. There’s a really good spouses’ fellowship.
2. Teaching staff - it’s a blessing to be taught by godly Biblical Christians, although I think people might be surprised at how diverse the faculty’s views are. A lot of the faculty are quite young. The course is very lecture-heavy which doesn’t suit everyone.
3. Ordinand formation - I think one of the strengths of Oak Hill is the church placements. Some of my best times at college have been on a prison placement and a parish mission. Although it can be hard work and not ideal for families, it is brilliant to be pushed outside of my comfort zone in weekly parish experiences. The Certificate of Ministry is of real practical value.
4. Resources - the library, lecture rooms, sports facilites, dining room etc are all excellent. With growth over the last few years the chapel is no longer big enough to hold everyone at once.
5. Overall atmosphere - Oak Hill feels quite a pressured environment which can be hard work for the less academically-minded - but it is the most important material in the world to be studying, so it would be a pity for it to be a course that wasn’t stretching or taken seriously. My first degree was from Oxford, but it’s much harder to get a decent grade at Oak Hill.
Although people are sometimes put off Oak Hill because they think it’s in London, it’s really edge of London/greenbelt - only just inside the M25. You get all the benefits of London without any of the downsides.
(Started at Oak Hill September 2006)