All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed). Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of the college's governing body). It has no undergraduate members, but each year, recent graduate and postgraduate students at Oxford are eligible to apply for a small number of examination fellowships through a competitive examination (once described as "the hardest exam in the world") and, for those shortlisted after the examinations, an interview.
The college entrance is on the north side of High Street, whilst it has a long frontage onto Radcliffe Square.
The college was founded by Henry VI and Henry Chichele (fellow of New College and Archbishop of Canterbury), in 1438, to commemorate the victims of the Hundred Years' War. The Statutes provided for a warden and forty fellows; all to take Holy Orders: 24 to study arts and theology; and 16 to study civil or canon law.
Today the college is primarily a graduate research institution, with no undergraduate members. All Souls did formerly have undergraduates.
For over five hundred years All Souls College admitted only men; women were first allowed to join the college as fellows in 1979, the same year as many other previously all-male colleges in the university.
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