The Big 'Which Cambridge College?' Thread

Well I don't know what's making you think Emma has a negative atmosphere - all I can keep saying is that it doesn't, for all the reasons I've described as for attracting a "certain type of person", I don't think I'm a certain type of person, I think I'm me. If the college doesn't think you have the academic ability and potential to complete the course, they won't take you. But otherwise, what "sort of person" you are is really quite irrelevant.

Not fitting in is a risk you'll take going to any university or college in the entire world. You never know until you try and in a university as vast as Cambridge, most people fit in somewhere.

Rent on a grade 5 or 6 room will be around the £80/week mark, which is very reasonable. Mine was a grade 3, at £73/week, and was a good size.

Arr But I heard that it's because they attract a certain type of people is why they are top - what if I am not the certain person as you once thought? And don't fit in?

I mean as in like, people are competeting against eachother rather then themsevles, so that there ends up a negative atmosphere.

Emmanuel college is as competitive or as laid back as you want it to be.

From the social perspective it is very well laiden, helped by the fact that it is quite rich and generous where the money goes, and it is one of those places that believes you can only achieve great things if you have a bit of fun on the side (a bit being an understatement).

Equally Emmanuel "plays the game" very well from the dons' perspective, and quite a few from our college are quite high up in the university food chain. Take medicine for example, we were allocated a supervisor in lent term in such a manner that we knew he was teaching us before he did! One example, an perhaps exceptional, but at least it shows that our college is very willing to try and provide the best supervisors it can find, and won't mind pulling a few strings along the way.

Couple the two together, and you are provided the opportunity to be highly flexible.

Now throw in the desire for our Senior Tutor and other members of the college to produce students who are able to successfully plan, manage and utilise their time.

Add a tiny hint of peer pressure and a dash of self improvement

And you've the character of Emmanuel College: people who do what they want to their heart's content, and yet still manage to more than keep afloat their academia on the side

Wow - very well put

I suppose it's just individual cirsumstances then. If you do not like a supervisor, may you ask for another?

Or say for instance, you wanted a supervisor that was the director and organiser of your subject - could you ask for him/her? Or does that generally have to be bound whether he/she are a fellow of your current college?

The circumstance in which we got another supervisor was that our original supervisor had to go teach the year above. Hence we were left with no supervisor, and had to get a new one. You can't really change supervisors just because you don't like them - things get rather difficult that way, and we're not Harvard (which apparently you can)

I nooo
Hows the drama society?

The drama society in Emmanuel runs a good fresher's play, but apart from that people go for the university-wide dramatics: Cambridge Arts Theatre and the ADC Footlights are just to name a few. You also get certain others like pantomines that you might be able to join. Don't trust the Emmanuel Dramatics Society to be the life and soul of your entire dramatics career however - it seems a little dead right now!

err, trinity, if i had to pick one, though it has bad points (namely size (and a crap bar)).

my personal favourites are caius, sidney, emma, jesus. but you didn't list them.

[obligatory]but all colleges are great, you'll love wherever you go, we can't make the decision for you...[/obligatory]

those are my top 4
what made those stand out for you then?

youthful naivety - i presumably made that post a massively long time ago.

hey all, can't decide on which colleges to choose! i am a postgrad applicant. i read that it's good for postgrad students to put one of the grad colleges first... of the grad colleges, i quite like hughes hall and clare hall i reckon. i like girton as well (not a grad college), but i don't know if i shouldn't put it first because i'd have a better chance of getting a spot at a grad college? i don't know. it's a terribly hard decision as all the colleges look beautiful...

Just asking

is Emma a competitive when applying for mathematics?

Also, is maths generally a competitive subject?

I am also thinking of applying to Emma for maths!! Not sure if I can really answer this either, but noone else has had a go sooo...

You can find lots of application data here:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/statistics/

And the bit on maths is in a word document on the right (top of page, where it says data by subject)

All in all, maths has a fairly average number of applicants per place compared to other subjects. Emma is slightly above average in terms of number of applicants. However, applicants per place changes year on year, especially for colleges. Also, it doesn't take into account whether those applicants are better/ worse than average e.g. maths is seen to be quite tricky, so even though there aren't too many applicants, many of them may have "unbelievable tekkers". Emma is fairly popular, but if you're good enough to get in, you should either get an offer or get pooled. You're not more likely to get in applying to any particular college, so may as well go for your favourite. Finally, if you change your subject choice just because it's hard to get in, that seems fairly silly. So, all in all, statistics are pretty useless, but they're there any way.

I think also that the reason why Emma makes quite a few offers is becuase about 44% of people don't make the offer due to STEP

Hows your application coming along, hope to see you there if we get in

Yh, but at least you're more likely to get an offer (just not meet it!). This year for maths at Emma 19/49 got an offer, and 3 got offers from other colleges, which is better than most subjects!
Application's all going okay, doing a few problems from books etc. Just depends on my AS results, and how I did in STEP 1. You?

As a prospective Cambridge applicant, this is rather important to me as I find that a good living and working space can make studying and reading or whatever, a lot more desirable. Could someone in the know suggest a shortlist of colleges that are good, particularly for 1st years?