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Downing College, CambridgeTSR Wiki > University > Choosing a University > University Guides > Cambridge > Downing College, Cambridge
Student Statistics
Source: The Reporter Special Issue: Student Numbers 07-08 Downing Application Statistics See College applications and admissions statistics Downing Application Statistics per subject See Appplication Statistics
LocationDowning has the best possible location for NatScis, Medics and Geographers, being adjacent to the Downing site, home of Medic, Geography and some NatSci lectures and practicals, as well as backing onto Lensfield Road, across which is located the Chemistry Department where yet more NatSci lectures and practicals are held. It's a 15-20 min walk (or five min bike ride) from the Sidgwick site, where all the arts lectures happen. Downing room keys open gates to allow easy access to these areas, making Downing perhaps the only college where you can leave your room at five to nine and not have to rush to your 9am lecture. This remains true through second and third years, as all accommodation is also located in the vicinity of Downing. It is also near enough to everything - Sainsbury's is 10 minutes away, Cindies is 7, the Bus station is 5 etc - but its slightly out of the way location means that you can get your breath back, not be stuck constantly in the Cambridge bubble and you can separate your life outside college with inside easily. AccommodationDowning is, on average, amongst the best Cambridge colleges with respect to accommodation. First years live mainly in:
In the first year, you get to pick which price band you'd prefer to be in, either low (£60-80 a week) or higher (£80-100 a week). All higher band rooms are en suite, so if you want an ensuite (or even if you didn't!) you're pretty much set to get one. There are only 30 lower band rooms which are usually found on the I, J and L staircases of the main court. Most of them have to share bathrooms, although not all, and many get magnificent views into the centre of the college. I'd say there's only about 20 rooms for first years with shared toilet facilities. I don't know how many people you have to share with, but I doubt it's anymore than 4/5. The kitchen facilities are mostly excellent for first years - the Kennys, Howard Court and J staircase have well equipped kitchens with ovens and freezers, and many people cook quite impressive things! The other staircases do not have as extensive kitchens, but will meet your basic needs. Second and third years live in:
Lesnfield Road and Gonville Place houses are all very near the college so that you can still use all the college facilities really easily, unlike many other colleges. In the houses, you have your own bedroom but kitchen and bathroom facilities are shared (although some Lensfield houses have enough bathrooms for one each anyway). The rooms for the second year are decided by a ballot in Lent (second) term. You can either enter the ballot with a group of friends or on your own, and the positions on the ballot are reversed for the third year so that you will get good accommodation for at least one of the two years. The quality of accommodation in the houses vary from excellent to not so great - but the experience of living in student houses with your friends will probably make this less of a bother than in your first year. In short: First year rooms are mostly en-suite with some hotel-standard rooms. Second year more variable. Third year very good. I'll have en-suite all three years, for example. Also you can live on-site for all three years. Social SpacesGardensDowning's main open area consists of the main court, enclosing several lawns (with unwalkable grass...). However, one of the best things about Downing is the Paddock, which extends from the Hall down to Lensfield Road and gives the college its unique open and unclaustrophobic feel. The Paddock is used for sports practice and for relaxing in the summer. There are also more quaint and picturesque gardens, mostly the private college gardens behind T and V staircases, as well as some lovely patches of grass in Howard Court and Kenny Court. FoodCatering facilities: We have the hall or canteen (called 'slops' - don't worry, it's name is more historical than accurate!); the Butterfield cafe (open till about 4pm, which doubles as the bar from about 7pm, and also has a vending machine) and kitchen factilities in individual staircases. Frequency: Dinner every day. Lunch Monday-Friday; on Saturdays and Sundays we have brunch instead. No breakfast served in hall apart from brunch, but there is the Butterfield cafe that sells breakfasty things if you want (good value for money) - and most people are never awake enough to attend breakfast even if we had it! Options & quality: At both dinner and lunch there are 3 main options - two meats and one vegetarian option; they often do curry/casserole type things too. With this they always have jacket potatoes, pizzas etc that are never on the menu but always seem to be there. Then you have 2 types of potatoes and 2 types of veg as a side. There are 2 hot desserts and a cold desserts bar (with cakes, yoghurt etc), as well as an ice cream freezer. There is also a cold foods and salad bar. In general, I'd say that the food is above average - there are times when you get some quite dodgy foods, but more often then not it's not bad for hall food, and you can get a LOT worse at other colleges. It does get a bit boring after you eat it every day for 8 weeks though (i.e. me during exam term!). The hall is in the form of a self-service cafeteria and is payed by your university card, which appears on your college bill in the next term. They've started to put up weekly menus online towards the middle of last term, if it helps: http://www.downingjcr.co.uk/college/catering/ Attendance: It is quite well attended; those who always cook for themselves are probably in the minority (although most people sometimes cook and sometimes go to slops, rather than one extreme). In first and third year when the kitchen facilities are generally excellent (multiple fridges, oven, hobs, microwave, freezer etc) so people probably cook more in those years compared to second year where kitchen facilities are more variable. In exam term nearly everyone comes to dinner - which is actually a very nice atmosphere! Formals: Formal hall is three times a week, Wed/Fri/Sun and costs 9 quid (correct in October 2009). The food in general is quite good; it's often rather formulaic (it's always meat, potatoes, veg on side) so you may get a bit bored of it after a while, but then so are formals at most colleges, and sometimes they are really good. Desserts are usually really nice. It's candlelit and you wear gowns so there is a nice atmosphere - plus they give us free Downing chocolates with the coffee You can buy wine at the college before you go in, or you can bring your own and pay corkage of £1 (I think). There is no restriction on how much wine you can bring in etc. Because we don't have them every day formals are usually quite well attended and they are a lot of fun! BarThe Butterfield Cafe doubles up as a bar during the evening. The bar is popular after about half nine, with quiz nights, pre-cindies drinks and other drink deals; it has a pool table, table football, a quiz machine and many sofas. Under the bar is the medium-sized Party Room, where most of the college ents and events are held. JCRI'm not sure whether this section is meant to refer to the JCR (Junior Common Room) committee and its activities, or the physical JCR room! If the latter, the bar (during the daytime) serves as the JCR with Butterfield cafe, and there's also access to the 'party room' in the basement of the bar building when it's not booked for activities. There's also a TV room with comfy sofas. The JCR Committee are students elected to organise things and represent all the undergrads in dealings with the college. The positions are: president, vice-president, treasurer, accademic officer, womens' welfare and equal opps, mens' welfare and equal opps, communications, services, ents, Lesbigay, Access, green, international students, sports, freshers' reps, college magazine editors, internet officer (in charge of the jcr website and bar president. Each has responsibilities in their areas and sits on the relevant college committee. Library and ComputingLibraryOpen 8:30am-2am with university card access from 8pm onwards. The library is pretty. I personally like the ceiling but think some of the floor decoration is a bit odd - not that it really bothers you when you're frantically trying to get work done! It has copies of the main books you'll need for your course (and multiple copies of key text books etc) and if there's a book that is not there, they'll happily order it for you. The Downing library also has the biggest collection of law books in any Oxbridge college library, probably due to the fact that Downing is traditionally very strong in law. There is wireless connection to the internet in the whole library, although there are designated areas for laptops so as not to disturb others working. There are individual desks with plenty of workspace, and you can leave your work there for days if you just leave a note. Like all college libraries it is packed during Easter term and some people virtually camp out there as they prepare for their exams! Computer SuiteThere's a computer room behind T staircase. It's long and narrow and has about 20 computers in it with a couple of printers. Most people use their own computer though. Room ConnectionApart from Gonville Place, which has wireless internet access, all of Downing's rooms are equipped with a high speed ethernet connection more than sufficient for most users. Downing's policy on internet usage is more relaxed than most colleges (e.g. Skype and limited p2p sharing are available), but heavy usage is frowned upon. If you're an average internet user (i.e. do not download high bandwidth videos and streaming) you should have no problems at all. Academic PerformanceDowning's ranking in the Tompkins Table (which ranks colleges by Tripos exam results): 15th (2010), 15th (2009), 12th (2008), 3rd (2007), 11th (2006), 15th (2005), 17th (2004), 12th (2003), 8th (2002), 10th (2001), 8th (2000). WelfareThere's lots of welfare. You will be very well looked after! The workload (and playload!) is immense at Cambridge and since terms are very short if things go wrong you need to check it's sorted out as soon as possible. When you arrive you're assigned a tutor, a fellow in a different subject to yours, who is in charge of your welfare. You have to go and see them for 5 mins at the begining and end of each term just to check that everything's ok. Something along the lines of 'Hello, is everything ok? Yes. Good. Sign here. Thanks. Bye'. If everything isn't ok you can arrange to see them, or any other tutor if you don't like yours, during their weekly tutor hours. You truly appreciate how well looked after you are when you fall ill - when I got the flu halfway through my very first term at Cambridge, the Director of Studies and Tutor were as helpful as they could be, and they will be able to authorise extra supervisions if you have missed any. Alternatively the college nurse and chaplain can provide basic counselling. Or you can talk to people in the JCR like the women's officer or the LesBiGay rep who are always happy to help, confidentially. And there's always the uni counselling service if you don't want to approach anyone in college. AtmosphereIt's a friendly place with a good mix of people. You'll be welcomed into the community whoever you are! Also, the Downing porters are really great, friendly and helpful people. If you're ever in doubt about anything they'll know what to do and who to contact because they know EVERYTHING - and even if you aren't, they're always up for a friendly chat. And they also have a stock of free light bulbs for when yours blows, which is important too. Every week there is also free food (!) outside the chapel with the chaplain, where you can catch up with people you haven't seen for the week. Downing EntsThere's 3-4 ents per term, each themed, usually held in the Party Room (under the Butterfield Cafe). It's no Clare Cellars or Queens' Ents, but it's all about the people you're with, I suppose, and dressing up can be fun. Ents aren't the biggest thing at Downing, though, and I think a lot of people start off at the ent, then go into the bigger clubs (Fez, Cindies, Soul Tree etc) in town. Facilities
SportsWe're awesome for rowing. (Well, we have awesome facilities; the quality of our rowers *cough*me*cough* leaves something to be desired in some cases). We have our own massive boathouse; the only similarly-sized boathouses are shared between multiple colleges, but this is all ours. Lots of ergs, and a gym, and largest fleet on the river I've heard. And Ian Watson, former Olympic rower, was Boatman. Also, the boathouse isn't too far from the college. I've made it from bed to boathouse in 13 minutes. Admittedly, that was with a bike; you'll want one if you're rowing and don't fancy a 20-ish minute walk. Oh, and rowing's awesome fun; plus Boaties have the best parties. Now that I've finished selling rowing... At college we have a couple of tennis courts/basketball courts. We had squash courts, but I think they're gone - maybe Kyle/Rich can elaborate. We also have a gym on site, but I haven't been to it... We also have sports fields to the south of Cambridge (well, somewhere. I think that's where they are...) Quite far, but some students are allowed cars for the purposes of transporting sports teams, so I know the 3rd football team captain (Ed Bolton of Beauty and the Geek, apparently) has one... again, Rich can elaborate. There's a cool mixed lacrosse team. If you haven't played before it's no problem - lots of people haven't and you'll pick it up faster than you'd think, especially if you're used to playing other team sports. So yeah, lots of sport at college level, and even lessly-participated-in sports (e.g. archery) are done by uni-wide groups, so whatever you're interested in you can probably do. Downing were declared the sportiest college in The Tab College Cup, Michealmas 2009. See The Tab article: The College Cup revealed ArtsMusic is up and coming and Downing. Recently, Open Mic nights have started in the bar along with regular music nights. As of 2010, the Downing Jazz Band has also been revived. The opening of the Howard Theatre has prompted a number of dramatic productions that have had excellent reviews. Student-eye viewThe subjects that Downing is often seen as being particularly good at include Law, Natural Sciences and Medicine, something reflected by the large intake in each of these. Downing also takes five or six Classicists each year - a lot for a small subject. There's also a bit of a linguistics speciality going on with two linguistics fellows, which is a lot for linguistics. Overall, Downing is a friendly college with a good community spirit, though sadly Robob's face tends to detract from the atmosphere. Few thoughts on Downing:
Look up Downing in the CUSU Alternative Propsectus Links
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