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.