St John's College, Cambridge applicants for 2022 entry thread

How did you settle on John's? And MML!

It's just absolutely gorgeous - I love that its central, old, big, conveniently located and is good for grants and stuff - I am a bit attached so I'm definitely really nervous about everything!

I'm a John's alumni (natsci), feel free to ask me any more specific or weird questions in here. I don't check TSR super regularly so please be patient if I don't get back.

To pre-empt the most expected question ( ) - when you hear about interviews depends on the subject, but it's not usual to hear quite "late". For example, I heard around the 21st for an interview for the 4th of December. And this was before my subject had a University-wide pre-admissions test (although I still had a 1 hour test at the interview) which could easily delay things further. You'll want to keep dates around the 30th Nov ~ 10th Dec (roughly) free.

Don't quote me on the specifics, but I also believe that anyone travelling more than 3 hours will be offered free overnight accommodation and breakfast/ dinner (unless covid means they try to go online).

If anyone is wondering what to do; allow me to be captain obvious and recommend doing some specific preparation for either your Admissions test, or for your interview. Preparing for generalised questions ("why geography", etc) is a bit of a waste of time, but you will find that focused preparation (i.e. academic, former-interview questions, oxford admissions test questions, etc) is very powerful. If you can make efficient use of your time, I'd definitely say 5-6 weeks is easily enough to make quite a big difference to your performance. Admissions is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that regard. While something like the BMAT has very little to do with being a good doctor, it does tend to select well for people who took the time to take the BMAT itself seriously, and therefore is a proxy selector for hard workers, resourceful and efficient students, etc.

Thank you so much!! I was wondering how the feel of the actual college was the time you were there? How generally were the people and the teachers?

Keep in mind that the people I knew when I was a student are for the most part, not there anymore (the only exceptions are pretty much my friends who stayed on for PhDs and chose to stay at the same college or members of staff who have more permanent positions (it is expected for academics to move around a bit and it is also probably not rare for members of college staff to move on in their careers)).

I would say that the staff in general were very polite/ friendly. That was something that really stuck out to me both as an applicant and as a student. Certainly a lot nicer/ more approachable than the staff at a few other big colleges. The "teaching" staff (faculty) are a mixed bunch. They are all nice, but some are a bit odd. This is pretty much the same everywhere though (these are generally people who turned down very high paid careers in favor of doing pure academia for their life, which is a very respectable but also quite unusual decision compared to the average person).

The students themselves were nice and friendly. There was definitely quite a large variety in my year and other years. There were easily 30+ people who were very into clubbing, but also a lot of people who were much more introverted and preferred having small netflix watch parties in their rooms, etc. John's has a good atmosphere for its various clubs and societies (very nice bonus - almost all of them are made free or costs can be covered by the college). John's is a particularly large college (its easily 500+ undergrads and there are also a lot of postgrads). So although there were a few people I got on less well with and various other people who were frenemies, it's very easy to avoid them (this isn't true for a smaller college such as Peterhouse). The other advantage I found with having such a large body is that it was inevitable I would find people I got on really well with, and am very glad for the lasting friendships I made.

So yes, I was very happy with the college atmosphere and people. It wasn't absolutely perfect but then its impossible to achieve that. There were a few things John's seemed to be trying to go the extra mile with in terms of offering pastoral care options, as well as trying to promote a lot of inter-year group mixing and events. one thing John's probably had as a major plus over other colleges was that John's has so much on-site accommodation, and can successfully ensure that the entire undergrad body is close to each other. This is important for socialising in freshers but its also nice in later years to know that you are only 1-2 minutes on average walk away from college friends. It's also nice to never be too far away from the food or library. A lot of other Cambridge colleges don't offer this, or are forced to heavily split where their student body is accommodated.


But to be completely transparent - I really don't think there is a "not nice" college. The demographic of Cambridge students is pretty uniform really. It's not like people who apply to college A are significantly different to people who apply to college B, so if there are actual variations in atmosphere (good or bad) its probably a temporary thing. Although privately I did kind of think that Trinity students were a bit stuck up and aloof (although John's - Trinity is a known fierce rivalry anyway) and I didn't think much of the way Magdalene was either. On the more positive note I would say that Emmanuel, Jesus and St. Catherine's all seemed really lovely (at least, I made some good friends from those colleges). But again, the friends / enemies I made as a student will have mostly moved on with their lives by the time any of you get in.

I doubt anyone ever really dislikes their college, and I also think the differences between colleges are generally exaggerated (the one major objective advantage John's has over the others is how generous it is with its money and funding. There are a lot of scholarships, there is a lot of grant money if you have ambitions to do something. In general the college has a very proactive ethos of trying to make sure it spends its money on its students. It was certainly nice for me personally to know that a few of the University clubs I was considering joining (a lot of them have around a £100-200 membership fee would be covered by John's, and that there was no cost at all for the gym, rowing equipment, music rooms, etc). I never took full advantage of it, but there's also travel grants of £500 or something where you need to do very minimal work for (literally visiting a few museums and writing a few pages on it is enough)).

Hi I've applied St John's for engineering and currently waiting to hear back from them. Since interviews are approaching closer has anyone heard anything about interviews? Some of my friends applying for different colleges have received emails saying that they should keep certain dates free for interviews which also another way of saying they're considered for interviews. Has anyone received something similar for St Johh's?

Hey, I haven't heard anything from them directly re interviews yet. But on the St Johns website there is a list of the provisional dates for interview, i'll post a link - so i'd look at that and then try and keep those free roughly - good luck!!!! https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/applying-year

Hi I've applied St John's for engineering and currently waiting to hear back from them. Since interviews are approaching closer has anyone heard anything about interviews? Some of my friends applying for different colleges have received emails saying that they should keep certain dates free for interviews which also another way of saying they're considered for interviews. Has anyone received something similar for St Johh's?

Historically for most subjects I would not expect to hear about interview (dates/ rejections) for almost another 2 weeks. Since the majority of interviews will probably happen on the week of the 6-10th of December. It's possible that some subjects get back earlier than this - although the fact is that right now the undergraduate term is in full swing and most academics are going to be very short on time to properly review all the applications.

I'm assuming for some subjects who have at interview assessments (eg law and the CLT which is 28/29 Nov) that it will probably be in the next week or so though as otherwise there is very little time to make arrangements for the assessments??

Possibly, but then getting 9-10 days notice is not unusual either.

A heavy dose of common sense should really be applied here. If you have good GCSEs and predicted A-Level grades and you didn't do anything outrageously stupid yet, you are probably going to get an interview and shouldn't wait until official confirmation to start preparing or setting aside dates for something like the CLT