Choosing an Oxford College

the specialites of the collgege fellows in your subject

Yeah but, unless I'm misinformed, your college will have a large role in your time there.

But if you don't want to go to any of them for any reason, try to pick a college, as they seem to be the ones receiving the most open applicants. For me, I really didn't want an all-girls college, so knew avoiding open application was a good idea

Something no-one's mentioned: different colleges have different application proceedures, which certainly influenced my decision.

Not sure how it works for your subject, but some colleges might do exams as well as interviews, and some might not, and some might ask for submitted examples of work/essays before interview or whatever.

Also bear in mind how many ppl doing your course each college takes on - do you want to be with a crowd of 10, or maybe with just 1 or 2 other people?

Personally, since I didn't think I had any suitable essays to submit, I made a shortlist of colleges that didn't want essays, then cut that down by choosing those with a reasonable number of places for the course, and then chose one by coming to Cambridge, wandering around, and picking one which looked nice (lots of old mellow red bricks appealed to me, heh)

In my interview, when they said 'why did you pick Clare', I said I liked the pictures

I thought they wernt supposed to ask that as people could have made an open application

Take a look at the map, and see which college is closest to the Architecture faculty

In my interview, when they said 'why did you pick Clare', I said I liked the pictures

But, also, don't demonise the female colleges, or those further out, or those that are modern, or whatever -- you could quite conceivably get a pool offer from them, and it would be daft to make them out to be tremendously awful.

They are allowed to be inquisitive, you know. There is no such thing as unlawful discrimination over the college choice.

The Admissions Forum has agreed that applicants should not be asked why they have chosen to apply to a particular College, as some will have submitted an Open application and therefore been allocated to rather than choosing a particular College. It is also difficult to see how such a question will elicit any worthwhile information about the applicant’s academic ability or potential.

yea I can understand that, but on here
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/admissions/handbook/appendices/interviewinfo.doc
which is the information the interviewers get for interviewing it says

College choice counts for LESS for Architecture, because as a subject it is VERY centralised; you'll spend a very large majority of your time in the department. You may also be the only person in your college year doing Architecture.

Yup.
But...some colleges have rooms specifically for Architecture students (because of the amount of space/light you need). You might want to look into this as a factor? It gives you less of a choice of room, though, which might be a bit pants. We don't have designated rooms at Newnham, but our Architect just asked to change because she needed more space, and they let her.

Yup.
But...some colleges have rooms specifically for Architecture students (because of the amount of space/light you need). You might want to look into this as a factor? It gives you less of a choice of room, though, which might be a bit pants. We don't have designated rooms at Newnham, but our Architect just asked to change because she needed more space, and they let her.