Cambridge Degrees

Where it matters - academia - the difference is already known.

Elsewhere, it doesn't. So not needed

A university degree is supposedly a measure of academic intelligence - which is irrelevant in the vast majority of jobs. As PP have mentioned many very 'academically intelligent' people have no common sense and/or life skills which are actually more relevant to success.

That's why companies have gone university blind, and have standardised tests/assesments.

Btw I do agree there should be a minimum -, as Master's degrees are money spinners from international students universities turn a blind eye.

But as an employer for roles needing intellectual capability Oxbridge doesn't impress me off the bat. My profession is chock full of clever people, what it lacks is clever people who can work with others to get things done....

I didn't do well in my 3rd year because I didn't figure out the rules. Once I'd worked them out, I did much better with less work (but still a lot!) in my fourth. I think it's actually the most useful thing I learnt from my whole degree! You can work your arse off at everything, but if you don't know what a client or a sport or even a garden plant want and need, you'll never get where you want to be. I can buy and plant and love any plant I want, but if it doesn't like my soil it won't flourish.

Feels very unfair that someone who got a respectable 2.2 on a course as intense as this would miss out many grad jobs

I've taught at the other university in Cambridge. It always struck me that papers we had to 'pass' would have been thrown straight in the garbage at the real Cambridge. A 2.1 from one, most certainly would not equal a 2.1 from the other. Seemed v v unfair to me.

In my opinion, there needs to be streamlining of university exams and coursework. So a 1st from university A means the same as a 1st from university B.

It isn't fair on students that getting a 2.1 at one uni is so easy that they don't need to even turn up. Whereas from another uni it requires over 50 hours work a week.

I was so disillusioned by my time at the uni I worked for, passing papers that wouldn't have made a C at GCSE level, that my whole view of university education has completely changed. We had "masters" students who couldn't string a sentence together and still 'passed', they wouldn't even have scraped a few percent at the uni down the road.

Not really answering your post. But, university's in my opinion, need MUCH more standardisation in grading and assessment.

I did Natsci at Cambridge around 20 years ago. It was tough. Gruelling. First time in my life I couldn’t get high makes despite putting lots and lots of work in. It got easier in third year when I specialised in one subject and I came out with a high 2.1. I think it really did teach me resilience, gave me a great work ethic and I find myself constantly looking for challenges that really push me in my career now. It also made the accountancy and then law exams I did afterwards seem super easy and I flew through them!
OP’s post would likely have rung true with a number of my friends at uni but on the whole we stuck with it and came out the other side. It did break some people I knew though who either failed or dropped out which is very sad.

DS does 40-50 hours per week in term time (more in first year NatSci when they were doing four different subjects); in third year he also did some studying pretty much every day during the Christmas and Easter vacations (I think he took a couple of days off).
I don't know how this compares to Maths.

I did maths at Cambridge 25 years ago. I completely identify with the last few lines of OP, by the time I left I had lost my passion for the subject which definitely peaked 16-18 (I loved Olympiad maths, had limited success off a year or so really putting my mind to that side of things, and thought that was how maths at Cambridge would feel like. There was maybe one course with a bit of overlap)

I have no idea how much the tripos has changed since I was there but I found the second year courses did not suit me at all, and the end of year exams were relatively disastrous for me, I was not in a great place after that. I think that was the year we had to do computer programming coursework which I did alright on and pulled my mark up to something respectable but I was still gutted.

I found third year a bit more accessible and was able to get back to where I was in first year, which meant my Director of Studies allowed me to do part III and that was more of the same, cherry picking the courses I could do and trying to second guess what topics were likely to be in the exams.

Cambridge was always famously welcoming to changing course, I knew people who switched to theology and geography having started the maths tripos, as well as (maybe more commonly?) physics.

I think my account would surprise those who know me as on paper it looks like I did extremely well at Cambridge, but I was actually struggling quite badly at times.

Maths at Cambridge is exceptionally hard, and as others have said, really geared at the top third of maths students (and as someone with the highest A level grades in maths/further maths, I wouldn't have got in to start with). I know maths grads who firsts on 5 hours work/week, because their brains are really that good.

Incidentally, whoever said you should expect to do 70 hours work a week is overstating it - I did around 40, and got a 2:1 in another STEM subject.

The most useful preparation I had for going to Cambridge was not being top at school - three of us went together, all in STEM subjects. The other two got firsts....

This student has very skewed expectations. They seem to think that working 7 hours a day for 8 weeks, turning up to lectures on time and doing their homework means they deserve a first! Cambridge and Oxford don’t hand out firsts for just turning up.

It is not for everyone, but the 8 weeks terms are very intense - students need to work at least 70 hours a week: Lectures 9-1 and labs 2-5 for 5 days, plus another 3 hours in the evenings, then 9-1 and 2-8 on weekends.

Sounds like this student is not putting the time in, and has a chip on their shoulder that they should be being rewarded for their “hard work” not actual mathematical ability. They would have been a better fit at a different university, where this would indeed get them a first.

I agree with what @Ivesaidenough and @LeonardCohensRaincoat say. My DH has a 2.1 degree from Cambridge. He is obviously intelligent but it’s not really that that sets him apart. For one thing he lacks common sense😂.The only way I can describe it is that he has an incredibly different way of thinking things through. I think it’s these sort of thought processes that Cambridge require.

Yeah, creative ideas of untested scientific research wouldn't have been getting you marks in any of the exams I sat as a natsci. There was also neither any time nor any expectation of original research except in one's third year project which was 20% of the final year mark.

Camfess is a Facebook page where students can anonymously vent their frustrations. I'm not sure I would take one submission as representative.

DS has just finished his third year studying physics. He is doing well and is enjoying the course; he wants to stay on for a fourth year. His next door neighbours are studying maths and feel the same way about their course.

The exams are designed to be very difficult. If the department is going to differentiate between candidates then there is no point setting an exam where they all get >90%. Some of DS's first year exams had a mean raw score of around 40%.

I'm not claiming that the university is perfect. DS found aspects of his recent exams frustrating: several papers had errors, and sometimes corrections were issued quite late in the exam. A handful of questions were on obscure concepts / not covered in lectures. But he found nearly every question solvable, or at least attemptable.

"not naturally cutting loose from the textbooks and thinking for themselves"

I think this is unfair, at least for humanities. The problem for many there is not managing to demonstrate the depth of their thinking at top speed, in a marathon set of three hour-long essays per exam. In natural sciences (my then boyfriend did natsci) I still think the ability to strategically work out what examiners are looking for, and how to revise selectively, is more significant than massive originality of scientific thinking.

Can’t comment on the subject but the blow to self esteem is pretty universal. As a pp has said, they are aiming to stretch the very best, but that has consequences for the many very able students who aren’t quite there. Those students have come from being the best in their school to finding themselves struggling, possibly for the first time. It’s a really tough lesson, and a painful one to watch.

30 years ago, non STEM subject. Competitive overworking and undersleeping were definitely a thing in exam term. I also empathise with the idea that there were 'tricks' to getting high marks that remained opaque to me right through my degree. Men seemed to instinctively understand these more than women - the massive gender disparity in numbers of firsts in my subject was (and remains) shocking. I ended up with a 2:1. I think in my third rd year exam term I was working 12-14 hours a day, every day. I went on to do exceedingly well in an MPhil (self-funded), a funded PhD and on into academia. I now walk my students step by step through what a first class exam essay looks like, in the hope that none of them feel that same sense of playing a game that nobody is telling you the rules of. I don't think I got a single piece of essay-writing advice my entire degree - I think many professors felt it beneath them to focus on such menial nuts and bolts.

This is a great question, OP. The gimmicks, for lack of a better word, were presumably designed to accomplish this sorting. But ultimately DH left most of the First Class students who were much better at that type of exam question far behind, first within Part III and later at a much higher level (for those who went on).

@Ivesaidenough

I agree. That is the place for the students who do love the challenge.

Something that stands out to me from observing education in the last 20 years alongside the students list of things they have done in your quote, OP is that there is an idea that you can learn everything from a book step by step ( or past paper) but at places like Cambridge there will be students who take it beyond that and think way beyond the exercises in books to another level. I don’t think you can teach this if it is not a desire in you in the first place.

The student who wrote that piece seems to me someone who has made their way diligently through hard work but is not naturally cutting loose from the textbooks and thinking for themselves. That’s where the real learning takes place.

Thing is, that's what makes Cambridge different. They aim the course at the top, rather than at the bottom level. It's deliberately designed to stretch the most able students, and it does. That means lots of people (myself included) can't manage it all. But that's ok. We've lost sight of what makes people great at their subject in the "all shall have prizes" mentality. I think they get it right. It's a niche and they fill it.

DH is a Cambridge maths alumnus with decidedly mixed feelings about the place. He was on a 2.1.for his first two years and felt he wasn’t able to find the necessary tricks to unlock exam questions. In Y3 he was able to elect more inherently difficult modules with more straightforward exams, and he got a First for the year.

Even though he had 2.1 overall, he did the notorious Part III and earned a Distinction. In other words, as the material became more intrinsically difficult the trick questions referred to in the OP, which DH also found very frustrating, were revealed as gimmicks and left by the wayside. DH feels that Part III made a mathematician of him.

At that point he was offered a funded Ph.D; however he elected to go elsewhere and this served him well. He has had an excellent career. I would love to describe his esteems, but that would be outing.

I did a completely different subject at Cambridge about 30 years ago and an utterly dreadful Director of Studies in my second and third year meant that no one at my college in my year or the year below got above a 2:2 in my subject. Things like not allowing me the number of supervisions needed for a paper, not passing on information about relevant lectures held in other facilities when the subject was somewhat interdisciplinary. I also remember the brother of a friend being really disappointed with his maths result but I think that was because he had expected to be one of the very top in the year.

What is it that you want to know? It's a bit of a funny thread to start and then just give the same response to each post?

*uggh. Sorry for my many mistakes.