Double First/Triple Starred first

One way I can see how you could do it is if you did Part I SPS, Part I History in year 2 and Part II History in year 3, but would they award you for each part, or take your best?

Tbh it's not like I'll ever get 90% anyway, so it's hardly a binding constraint. Lots (relatively speaking) of geographers seem to manage it though. Guess we've got a lot of people who are good at colouring inside the lines

My cousin got a double starred first on the English Tripos.

This is insane.

Is your cousin possibly a medievalist who now teaches at QMUL?

On topic: I think the distinction between "double starred first" (1* twice in a row) and "double-starred first" (1**) doesn't seem to be clear. What would the procedure be for displaying these classes? People might talk about them like they talk about getting a "double first", but I think this can be misleading. Since starred firsts have asterisks next to them on the results sheets ouside the senate house ("with distinction" as a footnote), I'd presume that someone getting a 'double-starred' first would have two stars ("with outstanding distinction") next to their name. I don't know, though, as I've never seen one. This achievement is somewhat different from getting a 1* in Parts I and II of a Tripos, which in one sense is a test of consistently good performance rather than ludicrously high results. I can't even guess what you'd need to get a 1** in my English, since hardly anyone ever even gets a 1* (usually one person each year, none in my year). Possibly two or three 80+ marks (possible on the dissertations) and the rest 75+. Which, TBH, doesn't even sound that 'insane' at all in theory, until you have to endure a Cambridge exam term.

I don't know exactly I'm afraid, but it's fairly widely known that he did exceptionally well and got the highest result of any student in Cambridge in his first year.

You can't get a 1** or a 1*** in one set of exams. Even if you got 100% in every single exam you sat in one year you would only get 1*. You can only claim to have a double-starred first if you've got a starred first in 2 years of exams, and thus a triple starred first would be a starred first in all 3 years.

It's not as if a special degree classification will get you much farther in academia if you don't do decent postgrad work and publish things.

as far as i know there's no such thing as a double-starred first. When people talk about double and triple 'starred firsts' they just mean that they got starred firsts in both parts of their tripos, or when pushing it, in all three years of their degree.

You see, this is what I'm not sure about. I don't know if people are claiming that these classmarks are two/three grades above a first, or just repeated 1*s. However, I'm not sure what your authority is for denying that a 1** is possible (just like I'm not sure of its existence, never having seen one outside the senate house, and suspecting that what I've heard of is just a variety of "double first").

If you pay attention to punctuation, you'll notice that a "double-starred first" suggests something different from a "double starred first": in the former, "double-starred" implies a superior modification of a first, whereas in the latter, the "starred first" is simply achieved twice

I'm inclined to believe that such marks are possible, though. I'd really like to see a photo of a the results sheet from a year someone supposedly got one, just to see what is written.