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3rd Year English Student at Cambridge - AMA

Hey all

As in the title, I'm currently a third year reading English at Cambridge. I also have an essay due Tuesday which I desperately need to procrastinate from doing. Therefore, I'd be glad to answer any questions you may have about English at uni, Cambridge applications, or just studying at Cambridge itself.

Good luck to those yet to take the ELAT (glad this wasn't a thing when I applied) and to everyone awaiting interview dates :smile:

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Reply 1

pinegrove

What are you planning to do after your degree?

Reply 2

Parliament

Original post by pinegrove

What are you planning to do after your degree?

Get a job in some form of consulting/professional services role, hopefully. I'm in the grad scheme application meat-grinder at the mo. I originally wanted to do a MA, but decided I'd had enough of academia earlier this year.

Reply 3

magicbeans1212

Original post by Parliament

Hey all

Do you have to be proper clever to get in to Cambridge, like does everyone have all A*

Reply 4

Parliament

Original post by magicbeans1212

Do you have to be proper clever to get in to Cambridge, like does everyone have all A*

Haha, not everyone has perfect grades (I don't). However, most people have several A*s at A-Level and mostly A*s at GCSE. I know one guy with 8A*s at A2!

Reply 5

magicbeans1212

Original post by Parliament

Haha, not everyone has perfect grades (I don't). However, most people have several A*s at A-Level and mostly A*s at GCSE. I know one guy with 8A*s at A2!

Wow everyone is so clever. Isn't it boring being around all clever boring people

Reply 6

Parliament

Original post by magicbeans1212

Wow everyone is so clever. Isn't it boring being around all clever boring people

Clever doesn't imply boring ;P
It's fun. You can have interesting conversations with people who'll just understand what you're on about immediately and will contribute to the conversation in cool ways. I find it much more boring when I go home and can't have such convos any more

Reply 7

magicbeans1212

Original post by Parliament

All the clever people I know are boring like they start talking about boring topics and I personally don't find them social or easy to talk to

Reply 8

ashaxo99

is it true that usually everyone thinks that their interview went terribly?

Reply 9

the bear

"Beowulf was the first piece of Vampire Literature"

discuss.

Reply 10

Doones

Original post by magicbeans1212

All the clever people I know are boring like they start talking about boring topics and I personally don't find them social or easy to talk to

Define "boring topics"...

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Reply 11

Doones

Original post by Parliament

Hey all

ELAT was last Thursday :wink:

How many books do you read a term?

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Reply 12

Parliament

Original post by Doonesbury

ELAT was last Thursday :wink:

How many books do you read a term?

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Oh, I was under the impression that some people had yet to sit it! My mistake :x

Not sure. An unhealthy number. Most of them are just secondary crit for essays. This term I'm probably reading about 10 books per essay, so 80 books for the term, plus about 30 for my dissertation.

Original post by the bear

"Beowulf was the first piece of Vampire Literature"

discuss.

I think the interesting angle for this question is to interrogate what we mean by 'Vampire Literature'. Is there a sense in which all literature (all art, even) is vampiric, cannibalising previous works? It seems to me that any book is going to draw on ('suck the blood from' in this tenuous analogy) art which has gone before, which would make any book vampiric. Once we've established that, we can disagree with the question because just as Beowulf almost certainly drew upon pre-existing literature to inform its story, so too did that literature (etc etc). Probably find some evidence for this somewhere and then wrap the essay up.

Original post by ashaxo99

is it true that usually everyone thinks that their interview went terribly?

I think it's quite common, yes. I didn't know how mine had gone, and honestly I didn't think about them much at all after I left the room. I guess people think it went terribly because they weren't able to deploy all their preparation (or the interviewer asked some unexpected things which they hadn't planned for), but that's just a natural part of the interview experience.

Original post by magicbeans1212

All the clever people I know are boring like they start talking about boring topics and I personally don't find them social or easy to talk to

All the swans I've seen are white, so all swans must be white. Right? :wink:

Reply 13

username3612318

10 books an essay? WTF

Reply 14

the bear

"Moby **** was the last original work of Vampire Literature"

discuss.

Reply 15

Parliament

Original post by the bear

"Moby **** was the last original work of Vampire Literature"

discuss.

Can a work be both vampiric and original? That's our angle for today's shitpost, but sadly answering that requires way too much critical legwork about airy terms like 'originality' and I cba to do more than say: yes, it can be both.

Now that we've successfully argued that totally bulletproof point, we need to interrogate why this question posits Moby Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk as the final work to do both of those things. Interrogating that should require no more than a few million words comparing Moby Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk to every single piece of literature produced after it, to find why no subsequent piece of writing manages to be both vampiric and original. I'll have that piece of scholarship on your desk by Monday.

Reply 16

the bear

Original post by Parliament

i'm Ishmael. call me.

Reply 17

PlsBeGentle

Original post by Parliament

Hey all

Sorry for a boring question :smile:

I'm thinking of making a post A level application, and looking on your profile it says you got 97 percent best three ums at AS and A*A*A best three at A2.

Can you remember what your a2 ums was?

Did you work equally hard at a2 or is it just flat out harder to get high ums at A2?

Thanks

Reply 18

wallflowerannie

Hi! Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions :P I have applied to Homerton to study English - I would love to go to Cambridge but I worry the stress would be too much for me. I suffer from anxiety and other mental health issues already and worry they would get worse? How do you feel the stress at Cambridge is for you?

One other question I wonder about is how you deal with the stress of A Levels if you're predicted quite high grades? I'm predicted A*AA and I've developed quite a lot from GCSE so have problems with self-doubt which doesn't help with stress!! How did you cope with stress when doing A Levels?

Thank you so much!!

Reply 19

Parliament

Original post by PlsBeGentle

Sorry for a boring question :smile:

Not a boring question! It's what the thread is for :smile:

I got full UMS in both my A* subjects at A2 (English Lit and Geography). I also took German and Government and Politics. I was quite a way off an A* in German, but Government and Politics was badly assessed; you had to get >=90 in all four modules. I got 99 or 100 in three modules but 89 in one module, so I got an A despite having higher average UMS than most people who got an A*.

I didn't really work much at all for my A2s. I worked extremely hard for my AS exams, on the basis that those results would be the key to getting into uni or not. Once I had my offer, all I had to do at A2 was meet it: a far easier task than getting an offer, especially if you've done well at AS.