Engaging with ideas about society, morality and policy, is something I genuinely enjoy. I would relish the opportunity to study subjects that, in complementary ways, can provide answers to questions both of how we ought to live and how we, in fact, do. The way that discussions around philosophy go on to affect policy really interests me. Taking part in the Pembroke College Oxford Romanticism and Enlightenment programme allowed me to focus on normative ethics and in particularly, Utilitarianism. While recognising the benefits of Utilitarianism, I’m sceptical of it as it creates a system in which minority groups aren’t valued highly because they represent such a small proportion of people. I would warm more towards it if you could use Bentham’s Hedonistic Calculus to clearly prove that minority groups may be small but the pain they feel is often greater than a large group so helping them would still maximise utility. I enjoyed the programme as it gave me a taste of university-style learning and I won the Oxford Scholar award for my essay on the legal and practical implications of accepting hard determinist and physicalist arguments. We had to defend out essay to a PhD student which drew on my experience in competitive debating, I am the current Best Speaker of LSE and a finalist at competitions such as Durham and SOAS Schools. I also run my schools debating programme and coach in a local primary school. By demanding an understanding of both sides on any issue, Debating has taught me to be receptive to a variety of perspectives. The political structures of countries is something that also really intrigues me. In Politics we learnt a lot about the characteristics of liberal democracies and I often felt that we looked at it with an underlying and unproven assumption that this was the best way to govern. My desire to learn about the political structures countries led me to