How to choose a Cambridge college - factors to consider

Choosing a college is often one of the most confusing and difficult parts of the Cambridge application process. There are a very large number of different colleges at Cambridge, each of them with their own reputations, characteristics, specialities and facilities. There can be big differences between colleges which can make the decision process of choosing a college even more difficult for applicants.


In this post I am going to give a couple of my top tips to consider when choosing a Cambridge college. These are not the only things you should consider when choosing a college at Cambridge but they are a good start.

Big vs small

One of the broad differences between Cambridge colleges is the size of the college. Here I am referring to size in terms of student numbers. The number of students in each year at a college can vary greatly, from under 100 to over 150. Small colleges such as Corpus Christi will have a very different feel to larger colleges such as Trinity. At smaller colleges, you will know a large number, if not all of the other students by name. This creates a different college atmosphere to at larger colleges where you will know a smaller proportion of the students there. I do not think that the size of the college makes that much difference but I would broadly favour larger colleges over smaller ones.

College location

Another key factor to consider when choosing a college is the location of the college. This is important and varies greatly. There are quite a few central colleges which are right in the heart of Cambridge such as King's, Caius and Trinity. These will likely be very near to your lectures which is very convenient. They are also near to all the local Cambridge town shops and amenities which is useful. In contrast, some colleges such as Homerton and Girton are far out from the city centre. These are not as convenient although some people might not mind being far out of the city. If you go to one of these you'll probably end up doing a lot of cycling to get to lectures or if not then you'll end up getting the bus. This is not as convenient and creates a different sort of environment where you have to commute in for lectures then leave to go back to college in comparison to central colleges where you can go in and out of the city in a few minutes very easily. I would say it is definitely preferable to be at a central college to a far out one. However since central colleges are on the whole more popular with applicants, they might be more difficult to get into which you'll need to take into consideration when choosing a college.

How to prepare for a Cambridge interview (Part 3)

If you haven't already, read the Part 1 and Part 2 posts on how to prepare for a Cambridge interview first.

In this post, I'm going to talk about how you can give yourself the edge in preparing for a Cambridge interview. Every year thousands of people do successfully make it through the Cambridge interview although even more are unsuccessful. All these people know what the interview is like, what went well, what didn't, how to could have prepared better and what they wish they'd known prior to the interview.

One of the best things you can do is try to find people you know who've been through a Cambridge interview, either successfully or unsuccessfully and speak to them about how they found it, what it was like and what questions they were asked. They'll be able to give you a first hand explanation of the whole process.

In an ideal situation, you should try to find someone who applied for your subject and in an ideal world, who applied to the same college as you are. This is because they'll be able to give you a real insight into how the specifics of the admissions process at that college for that subject works. It is normally the case that the same people carry out the interviews for a subject at a college every year. It'll usually be the Director of Studies at that college and maybe some other fellows or supervisors at that college who carry out the interview. The Director of Studies is the person who'll be in charge of you academically if you manage to get in.

So if you can find out what it was like for someone else who's been through the interview then you'll know better what to expect. The other thing is that the interviewers will often use a very similar interview format every year so if you can find out what this is, this will help a lot. Some interviewers even reuse the same interview questions so if you do know someone who's had an interview at your chosen college for your subject, try to find out EVERYTHING they were asked at interview. This will help you to know the sorts of things that might be asked and help guide your interview preparation. The exact same questions might not come up, or they might, but either way you'll know the kinds of questions likely to be asked.

For people at good schools with a tradition of sending people to Cambridge, getting in touch with Cambridge students to ask questions will not be a problem. But for people at worse schools, this can be difficult. There is not easy solution to this. You can try to find out if anyone from your school has applied to Cambridge before (successfully or unsuccessfully). If you can't find anyone, you could try contacting college JCRs (college level student unions) and asking to be put in touch with someone who does your subject at that college. The JCRs are student run and will usually be quite helpful so it's worth giving it a try if you don't know anyone.

Overall, it is possible to get in without knowing anyone who's done it before, but it is a lot easier if you can actually speak to students and people who've been through the process successfully and find out how they did it and their advice.

How to choose a college at Cambridge (reader question)

One of the main difficulties people have when applying to Cambridge is in choosing a college. Most universities don't have the college system and it can be quite confusing and difficult to tell the differences between colleges and decide which college to apply to.


In this post I'll be answering a message I recently received asking about how to choose a college:

Hi, I was just looking @ your blog and it looks really good and wondered if you could give me a bit of help about college choice - I'm stuck between 3.
My main +'s is the accomodation as I will be spending alot of time there, and lovely gardens, food - + good supervisors, apparently have fellows within the college is better (PPS), rather than being shipped off to another college you do not have any?
The three are Sidney, Downing and Jesus.
Sidney plainly because the gardens are lovely but the accom is (N) and not en suite which I really want and apparently the food is not good.
Both Jesus and Downing have en suite which is brilliant but jesus says on its website that its the best and all have received the top grades with scholarships. Downing's accom is slightly better and the food too as it rents out a lot, but only has 1 DOS and no fellows which means moving me around, as Jesus has all of them on site - college fellows.


So I'm a bit stuck :/ What would your advice be?

Thank you so much :)

Thanks for the question, this is my advice:

Choosing a college is difficult. It’s good that you’ve managed to narrow it down to 3 already.

Having more fellows in college for your subject is generally better as they’ll probably supervise you. However the main thing you need is for your college to have a director of studies in your subject. You might be supervised by your DoS and just because there are not fellows does not mean you’ll necessarily have to go to other colleges for supervisions as you might be supervised by PhD students in college.

I wouldn’t worry that much about there not being fellows since you might have to be supervised at your department off site anyway and Cambridge is really small so moving around for supervisions is not that much of a big deal. Obviously fellows in college is preferable but doesn’t matter that much.

Regarding food, both Downing and Jesus ranked highly in a student survey of food quality (Sidney weren’t included in the rankings) so they’re both a good bet for good food (click the images below to read the full student survey on food quality at different colleges).



Downing and Jesus both have nice, large grounds as well although they’re mainly grassy.

You mention Jesus might be tough to get into. Looking at how difficult colleges are to get into, I’d have a look at the application statistics for PPS if that’s what you want to apply for. I’ve had a look and over the past 4 years, the average chance of getting into the college you applied for has been:

Jesus: 12%
Downing: 22%
Sidney: 13%

The over chances of getting in are (this includes, say applying to Jesus, getting pooled and getting another offer from a different college):

Jesus: 17%
Downing: 25%
Sidney: 17%

As you can see, you have similar chances statistically of getting into Jesus or Sidney, but significantly higher at Downing. I strongly advise taking admission statistics into account when choosing a college although the “official” advice is not to. How much weighting you give to the statistics would depend on how confident you are of getting in. If you go to a good school or are very confident of getting in you don’t need to worry about statistics as much, however if not (this is the majority of people) then I'd advise thinking about them.

It seems to me that you’re torn between the 3 colleges. They all seem like they’d be a good fit for you. However, since your chances statistically are significantly higher at Downing, I’d recommend going for that one. Ultimately you want to maximise your chances of getting into Cambridge and since you seem to like all 3 colleges similar amounts, I’d go for the one that gives you the best chance of getting in which is Downing - good food, good accommodation, nice grounds and a better chance of getting in.


It's great receiving questions so if you have any, leave a comment below and I'll try to answer them.

How to prepare for a Cambridge interview (Part 2)

If you haven't read it already, read my first post on preparing for a Cambridge interview which covered the first part of the interview which usually involves questions such as "why Cambridge", "why this subject" and so on.

So once you've prepared for all the generic questions I talked about in that post, you can move on to preparing for other things you might be asked about such as your personal statement or A levels.

After the generic introductory questions, there are several different directions that the Cambridge inteview could take. One of the things you might be asked about is your UCAS personal statement so you need to be prepared to talk at length about that and expand on all the things you've mentioned in it. If you've mentioned outside interests, books you've read or parts of your subject that interest you, expect to be asked about those and be prepared to talk about them, give examples and back up your points. I was not asked about my personal statement at all and it seemed like the 2 interviewers hadn't actually read it prior to interview but other people have been asked about theirs sot you need to be prepared to be questioned on it. It should be quite easy to prepare for and if you are asked on it, it shouldn't be too hard to answer the questions if you've prepared well and thought about what you're going to say.

Apart from your personal statement, you might be asked about your A levels such as why you chose them, what you enjoyed about them and so on. They probably won't go into that much depth on your A levels but you might be asked a few things about them. You are unlikely to be asked about your GCSEs unless there's something particularly notable about them (like a really bad grade or they're amazingly good, by which I mean at least about 11 or more A*s, or straight A*s). Otherwise they probably won't ask you about them.

Apart from personal statement, A levels and general questions, the bulk of the interview will probably be based around testing your knowledge and thinking skills. If the subject you've applied for you've already studied, such as maths, then the interviewers will probably give you problems to work though related to that subject. However if you've applied for a new subject like computer science then they might give you general thinking skills problems to work through. This is really what you'll be judged on and what you need to be best prepared for.

You need to have done lots of outside reading around the subject, be up to date on any relevant current developments and news stories related to the subject and most importantly have a very high level of knowledge in your subject. This last point is something I hadn't really realised when I applied and is the most difficult to prepare for. If you are doing the subject you apply for at A level, I'd recommend at least learning the material for the whole A level prior to your interview. The interview will be in December so you need to know the rest of the year's material before the interview which won't have been taught yet. This might seem like a lot of work but if you really want to get into Cambridge you need to do it. It might be possible to get in without it but you'll be chancing it.

In fact I'd also recommend having a look at the first year Cambridge course material in your chosen subject. If you can read through some of this, it will help a lot. Some subjects have the lecture notes available online whereas others you might need to get the course text books and read through those. Doing this will really help to get you up to speed for the interview and give you the best chance of getting in

How to prepare for a Cambridge interview - list of interview questions

The final stage of the Cambridge selection process is the interview. If everything else in your application is up to standard, you'll almost certainly be called for an interview some time in December.

The Cambridge interviews are a crucial part of the selection process. If you've made it to interview, the fate of your selection pretty much hangs on how the interview goes so you need to be very well prepared. At Cambridge, you might have anywhere between 1 and probably 3 interviews, depending on which college you chose to apply to. It's quite likely that you'll have 1 or 2 interviews, each of which will be around half an hour long. There are several things that you might be asked at interview. In this post I'll cover common interview questions but you'll also be asked things to do with A levels, GCSEs, your personal statement and so on.

There are common interview questions that are likely to come up. These include questions such as:
- Why have you chosen to apply to Cambridge?
- Why have you chosen to apply for Natural Sciences/Medicine/English etc. ?
- Why did you chose to apply to this college? (Note on this: this question should not be asked because it disadvantages people who made an open application. However that does not mean it won't be asked. I know for a fact that someone was asked it at Oxford recently and so it could come up at Cambridge as well.)
- Why have you chosen to take a gap year?
- Why have you chosen NOT to do a gap year? (Yes believe it or not they do sometimes ask this)
- What did you do during your gap year?
- Why did you choose those A levels?
- What areas of Maths etc. do you enjoy most?
- What do you do in your spare time (extra curriculars)?
- Do you do any sports/play any musical instruments?
- What experience do you have of the subject you're applying for? (eg. do you have any programming experience for computer science)
- Do you have any work experience in the subject you're applying for? (common for medicine and veterinary medicine)
- What books have you read related to your subject?
- Have you read any news articles related to your subject that interest you?
- How much reading have you done outside of your A level curricula?

These are the most common interview questions. You will very likely be asked a couple of these to kick off the interview. They do not count for much but you don't want to mess up any of the answers before the interview properly gets going. I'd recommend that you had prepared answers to at least all the questions I've given here if you want to maximise your chances of getting in.

In preparing answers, you don't have to have scripted answers for each one, but you do need to have two or three points that you'll cover for each and be able to expand on these if required. For example, if you're asked about your outside reading, you need to have a few books you've read in your subject that you can mention. You might then be asked to elaborate on them, for example by giving your opinion on them, what you found interesting, what you didn't like and so on.

What are Cambridge lectures like?

A lot of people might be wondering what life at Cambridge is actually like. If you don't know anyone at Cambridge and haven't visited for any significant amount of time (at least a couple of days) you probably don't know what it's like. In this post I'll talk a bit about Cambridge lectures. They're quite different to how you're taught for A levels or GCSEs and are the main form of teaching at Cambridge, although you'll also get small group teaching (supervisions) through your college.

For most subjects you'll have lectures during the morning. You usually have 2 or 3 hours of lectures but you might even have 4, for example from 9AM-1PM. Lectures are typically 50 minutes long, they start at 5 past the hour and end at 5 to the hour to give you 10 minutes to get between lectures if needed. Some arts subjects have lectures in the afternoons but this is not common in the sciences. You might have lectures 6 days a week, yes that means including Saturdays. First year natural science students have 9AM lectures on Saturdays and some might end up having 9AM lectures 6 days a week. In second and third year you're less likely to have Saturday lectures and will probably only have them Monday to Friday.

Lecture attendance is not compulsory and not checked at all. There is no register or anything like that. Cambridge literally don't care in the slightest if you go to lectures or not - it's totally up to you and they don't know if you go or not. The lectures are not like classes as they are not at all interactive. No one asks questions or talks to the lecturer. It is very common for the lecturer not to know the name of any of their students, even at the end of the course which is a bit of a shame. Basically you just turn up to lectures, get given some notes, make your own notes on what's said, then leave. You don't learn (or even understand) that much in lectures and you'll have to go over everything again on your own to understand it for the exams.

Overall then, Cambridge lectures are much more of a passive learning experience than the active classroom based approach used in schools. They can be interesting, but require you to go over the material again in your own time an really only provide an introduction to the subject, the rest is left for you to teach yourself.