Cambridge Degrees

[Hawkins0001]

For anyone that has knowledge or has studied at Cambridge, How accurate is this perspective:

"#Camfession36372

As a second-year mathmo who has consistently done well throughout the past two years (predicted firsts in every single course, never late for lectures or example sheet submissions, revised courses thoroughly and did more years of past papers than the guideline recommends…), I feel that every paper I sit this term is telling me that for this course, hard work simply doesn’t pay off. Yes you need to work 50+ hrs weekly to even have a chance of scraping 2.1 (many people above median ranking last year got less than 65% on transcript, for example, which is unfair compared to some other courses) yet the exam questions won’t even ask any bookwork without a twist incorporating some ingenious trick that you need to pull out of thin air (I am not talking about STEP-style tricks, I am talking about multi-step, algebraically messy and strategically olympiad-style tricks that aren’t even given hints about). I came here to try to become the best mathematician I can be, but this course proves to be nothing but an ego-deflating, despair-inducing feast of condensed miseries glorified in the name of intellectual training. They will never acknowledge the fact the most of us in the cohort are simply unsuitable for the course and exams they have designed, and because we are no senior wranglers or potential field medallists, the sacrifice of our mental health is perfectly justified in the grand scheme of pursuing so called academic rigour. I loved and loved and loved maths. Now I just want to run away from it and learn how to feel (if only occasionally) happy again."

This sounds quite course- specific as I didn’t work anything like these hours for a different degree . I got a 2:1 more easily than this from enjoying my subject whilst doing a lot of other things too.

It would probably be more helpful to ask a fairly recent maths student , too

Sounds pretty accurate in terms of recent experience on the part of a Cantab maths graduate I know - the majority appear to get drawn into competitive overworking and undersleeping which staff appear to so little or nothing to address. Not maths related, but in a science, a Prof. I know at Cambridge told me that their students are super intelligent - way better grades than her at A levels - but mostly hyper anxious and with limited life skills. 8 WK terms exacerbate the issue as they pack same amount into less time. If I recall correctly students are also told that it is forbidden to get paid work (obviously uni has no power to forbid but demonstrates the intensity.)

Fair points, much appreciated

Not Cambridge, but I find that post very sad.
You have people like this Fields medallist Jung Huh who was not the 'quickest'
Mathematics is at the highest level is art
Creativity needs space to thrive. No good comes of being squashed and pressured like this

Maths is a Hard degree, especially at Cambridge. That's a pretty negative spin.

I did Natural Sciences. I'd got top marks (100% or close to) in every single one of my 5 A levels (all the sciences, double maths). I got there, and no matter how much work I did, I couldn't get myself to a point where I was going to do well at the physics exams. I worked 80 hours a week, did or attempted properly all the questions we were set, attended every lecture, every supervision (bar one, where I was crying too hard to see never mind perform), did every past paper for the last 20 years and still got a third (in that part of first year). The rest of my marks were such I got a high 2:2 in first year.

Maths in first year (nat sci maths not mathmo maths) was taught by people who loved researching maths, not who loved teaching it. The teaching was often (to me) opaque, and I was someone who taught myself pretty much the whole of KS3 and 4 maths from the textbook.

I switched rapidly away from mathematically based subjects (having arrived planning to be a physicist), and had stressful but manageable 2nd and 3rd years.

Don't get me wrong, I still worked 55? hours a week, at least, in those years, and it was still mad busy and really really hard, and the stress made me ill, but I did also have a great time while all the above applied.

I learnt loads, I rowed, got involved with loads of college stuff, had great friends. The amount a crammed into my brain astonishes me. I have something to look back on that was so hard it still to this day reassures me that no matter what I will prevail (and I've done some pretty hard stuff since then).

I still genuinely don't know, looking back and knowing what I know now, if I would go back and do it again.

I was at Cambridge (not maths but a STEM subject) 30 years ago, and it wasn't like that at all. But the undergraduate I know there at the moment (friend's son, studying law) does describe it pretty much like this. It's sad.

Much appreciated for your perspective

Much appreciated for your perspective

Maths at cambridge was tough. I should have done computer science instead. I got completely lost in my second year and only survived the 3rd year by choosing courses that didn't build so much on previous years.
I suspect things have only got tougher in the last 40 years too.

This is pretty much what my brother said. He said they would all work their guts out, for the vast majority of them to be able to access around 20% of the questions.

He was a bit more prosaic about it though, in that he said there were students they who were so phenomenally gifted that scale was necessary.

Much appreciated for your perspective

*uggh. Sorry for my many mistakes.

So at a guess they need to differentiate the best of the best so to speak.

The overall information is the main thing.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Would the gimmicks, sort the best of the best from the average so to speak ?

@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.

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).

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.

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.

"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.

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.