Cambridge. Things we don't know we don't know.

[Sorenlorrenson]

My son is set on studying maths at Cambridge. We are working class and don't know anyone who went to Cambridge.
I have recently found out that Magdalene and Caius are not pronounced how they are spelt. There must be loads of stuff like this, stuff we don't know because we are poor and common.
If you know something you think we don't, please share.

(you can only apply to one college)

You can also make an open application and get allocated to a college, sorry if someone has already said that.

When I applied back in the 1990s, and I don't know if this is still the case, you could put three colleges down like when you apply for schools, and I guess if the first didn't want you they passed you to the second, then the third, then I think there was a pool, so there were quite a few people in my college who hadn't actually applied there. So if you are a super English applicant, but your college only has four places for English, you could still end up with a place elsewhere from a college that didn't have such great applicants.

Not everyone has the temperament for Maths Olympiad, so if your DS didn’t then don’t worry about it, OP. If his school isn’t great they may not have even thought about it.

DH hated that side of things. Didn’t do it. He ended up with a Distinction at Part III (world’s hardest Maths MSc) after the Olympians fell by the wayside

At Cambridge there is also the pool system. If you interview well but just miss out on an offer you can be put into a pool. If an offer holder doesn’t make the Alevel offer when results come out and someone in the pool does then they can be offered that place instead. However, which college you are t then offered is subject to availability of spaces.

You can only apply to one college.

However, if you're applying for an organ scholarship you can apply to multiple colleges and apply to both Oxford and Cambridge at the same time!

Eskimo Day was repeated a year ago. There seem to be several places you can watch it online but I don’t know how legal they are.

It was written by the late Jack Rosenthal, husband of Maureen Lipman. It follows three sets of parents of different backgrounds as their children go for their Cambridge interviews. I think it’s lovely, and moving. If I remember from when it was first shown, the title is from an idea (myth) that, in Eskimo culture, when children don’t need their parents any more they go out into the snow and don’t come back.

Yes, and I enjoyed the twist about a pushy parent at the end.

That’s not a long way off at all. If he wants to start Uni in autumn 2026 he will need to be working on his application this time next year, as most schools need it completed by the end of September so they can write the reference and submit it by the closing date in mid October.

There are lots of maths competition/ challenges / events that happen once a year or even every two year , he might want to apply for these this autumn to give his the option of doing it again the following year.

There are school related things he might want to do this year, like running a maths club or tutoring younger pupils. And University Open days this autumn - there are 5 slots on the UCAS form and he wants to fill them all with places he would be happy to accept.

He really needs to plan ahead and not try to cram in everything in the last 6 months of school when he’s also studying for his A Levels.

There is a reason Magdalene is pronounced ‘Maudlin’ - we were told this by the guide on a punt tour.

I can’t remember the actual order of details, sorry - but it was something about the fact that Henry VIII built Trinity College and somebody with the name ‘Audlin’ wanted to build another (larger?) college also in Cambridge. Either Audlin tried to murder Henry VIII or the other way around. Possibly both tried to murder each other? St John’s college also had something to do with it - whoever was building that was a third rival. Anyway, in the end, Henry had to give in to Audlin’s founding of a college, but only on the grounds that he was not allowed to name it after himself. So cunningly, Audlin called it Magdalene to avoid getting the chop from Henry. But he ‘low key’ told everyone to pronounce it ‘Maudlin’ to rhyme with ‘Audlin.’ And this quirk has stuck for hundreds of years since.

Please do not bring yourself down. The reason that you don’t know these two minor bits of pronunciation has nothing to do with being “working class”. It’s simply that you have not encountered them before. I am also from a working class background, (I’m not ashamed of it but I don’t wear it on my sleeve), and there are many of these things I do not know but I try to keep my ears open and learn them as I go through life.

"I admit you also to the same degree"

The whole ceremony is documented at https://www.cambridgestudents.cam.ac.uk/your-course/graduation-and-what-next/degree-ceremonies/ceremony

One thing to remember is it is a bit of a lottery. There will be more well qualified candidates than spaces. But your DS should view he has as good a chance as any. It is only one slot on the UCAS form anyway.

I’ve got loads…
Right so ‘gowns’… do you mean the academic gowns or ballgowns and suits? Or both? Do women have to wear dresses under an academic gown? Can women wear suits? Do you have to buy these gowns?
Academic gowns. Oxford has formal academic dress called sub fusc (dark suit/skirt, white shirt/blouse, mortar board etc) that you wear for exams, matriculation, graduation. Cambridge has a similar dress code for graduation and (at some colleges) matriculation. Other than that, you wear the gown over whatever the dress code is for the occasion eg black tie, formal day dress. There are only a few occasions when you would wear gowns though eg formal hall. They cost about £30-40 but you can usually buy them secondhand. Oxbridge has very generous bursaries and hardship funds so don’t think you need to be wealthy to afford the extras.

Is there a STEP exam for everything or just for maths? Can you not apply to Oxbridge on just your A level results? If you did really well could you not apply to Oxbridge through clearing like other universities… ?
Just maths. There are other assessments and aptitude tests for different courses but not all of them. Oxbridge aren’t the only universities that have admissions tests for certain courses. Oxbridge never has places in clearing.

How are parents meant to magically know that there’s an early entrance exam to prep for? What year do we start mentioning to the school if we want them to put our kids in for it? No wonder it’s a socially exclusive outcome. Early processes like that might as well have been perfectly designed to exclude anyone at a less clued-up school. I know Oxbridge colleges are genuinely trying their best to widen the net, but this is a big systemic obstacle.
The school will go through everything when your DC are in year 12 and preparing for UCAS applications. Oxbridge have outreach programmes, summer schools and contextual offers for students coming from schools that don’t send many students to university/Oxbridge. There are plenty of resources about applying on the university website and official YouTube videos, as there are for all universities.

Also who decides whether a postcode is deprived or not if that is taken into account? In many areas there is huge disparity of income literally living next door to each other. Postcode seems a very blunt tool. Isn’t household income better?
It is a blunt tool. I believe the data comes from the census and the Office of Students administers the data for the universities.

Also why would a college care if your child is LGBTQ when it comes to entry? Do they also give favourable points for disability, maternity, other protected characteristics that attract prejudice and put up barriers to education? what about care leavers or young people who have come here and don’t have secure citizenship of the UK etc etc. I feel sorry for kids who lay out the personal struggles they might have and still don’t get in.

And how do you tell which are the rich colleges? If you have to apply per college, following this advice doesn’t everyone apply to the same rich ones?
Google! Just like universities, you can research each college from their website and open days, TSR etc There are many other reasons to choose a college other than wealth - subject expertise (eg a tutor who specialises in an area that interests you) ratio of places to applicants, social mix/ethos, location, facilities, architecture… The university has generous bursaries and hardship funds so I don’t think going to a rich college is the be all and end all.

Are the entrance requirements per subject to get on the course, or are they per college requirements? ie does getting in to do French at college X need different A level results than getting into college Y to do French?
Or does the French department say, this year we only want to let in AAA* or whatever?
Offers are generally standard although some colleges have specific requirements that differ eg acceptable A level subjects. It is the college that decides the offer rather than the university. The standard offer/acceptable subjects will be on the college and university subject website eg www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/courses/medicine-mb-bchir

It's just how "Magdalen(e)" was pronounced. The spelling "maudlin" (meaning 'weepy' from Mary Magdalen's tears) came a lot later.

It says here on the University of Cambridge website that
“You can choose a College when you apply for a course or make an open application.” (my bolding)

There’s a winter pool and a summer pool, explained at the links. See also August reconsideration.

Worry less about pronounciations and the local names for landmarks ("Reality Checkpoint" springing to mind here) and more about getting the application process right and getting the grades needed. Your son can learn about the various customs between A-level exams and matriculation. Plus, you mispronounce Caius once, people have a giggle and correct you, you don't repeat the error, life goes on.

As a fresher, your son is likely to be allocated a "college mother" and "college father", students in a higher year who are responsible for onboarding your son to college life.

A "set", in accommodation terms, is a suite of two rooms made up of a bedroom beyond a living room. Sets are often shared by two students but can be let to just one student. These cost more than standard rooms.

Fresher's fair is a must to find the societies and clubs that interest your son, this will create instant social groups for him.

The Junior Common Room is what the student union of each college is called. Membership of your son's college's JCR grants him access to the JCR bar of all other colleges and the Anglia Ruskin SU bar.

Students are not permitted to take cars to Cambridge without the written permission of the Motor Proctor.

DD has just finished Y1 at Cambridge and it was all really new to us too.
There has been some great insights, to add:

There are two all women's colleges, Newnham and Murray Edwards (Medwards), so these can be discounted for any DS

Oxford is known as 'the other place' (and vice versa if in Oxford, Cambridge I believe is called 'the other place')

There are the 'hill colleges', a bit of a misnomer as Cambridge is so flat but these a bit further out and generally more modern build.

A few colleges like Newnham and Selwyn are neither hill colleges nor central, a bit of a Goldilocks location about five minutes walk to the centre and no tourists peering in your window and not having off site accomodation for one of the years etc which some of the central colleges have.

If you can abbreivate it or collate the words, that will happen, Porter's Lodge (Plodge), Pigeon Hole (Pidge), Emmanuel (Emma), Director of Studies (DoS), Maths Student (MathsMo), Sidgwick Site (Sidge).

Whilst a lot is taught on site in the college there are faculty locations where labs and lecture halls will be. Sidgwick Site is where the English and a few other faculties are located for example.

You can walk on the grass at Newnham college

Ringo app for parking if not at a Park and Ride, we park outside DD's college and it is a five minute walk from there.

OP your son is applying for Maths. The weed out rate from the actual mathematical tests (written and interview) is extremely high. It doesn't really matter whether your son can pronounce random college names, knows when May balls are etc if he shows strong mathematical abilities he will be admitted.

A lot of maths people are great at it but fall down on the explanation.
I have found this a bigger problem for the smarter ones actually. They get it instinctively so struggle to explain their logic to others.

If you are 'poor and common' as you say it's unlikely that your son has had any prep on this and I must admit that people from more MC backgrounds tend to be more articulate and confident.

I strongly urge you to focus your efforts/worries on this and not other irrelevant stuff. Otherwise, none of this matters he's not going to get in.

BTW a lot of other people don't know anything about the ins and outs of Speshul Oxbridge stuff either.... I know loads of people who went, but why would I care about balls or what their gowns are called.

A few bits of advice:

• Worth applying to both Cambridge and Oxford too. Sounds like your son is set on Cambridge but always good to have another really good uni as a backup. You can use one interview as prep for the other
• Extracurriculars are super important, excellence in subject is not enough. Signing up for national and international competitions in maths or another subject can hugely increase the chances of getting an interview. However, extraordinary achievements for his age help too, eg taking university level credits somewhere, internships, professional achievements such as getting articles published/ social activism. Doesn’t have to be subject related at all and there are paths available that aren’t expensive
• Specialised prep for entry procedure. It’s important to know what all that looks like and feels like. Often kids enter this kind of environment for the first time at the day of the interview and perform poorly even though they’re amazing because they are intimidated by the environment, people and procedures
• Also, look at applying to American top unis. They have a reputation for being stupidly expensive, and they are, but it’s possible to get a 100% scholarship based on need, ie tuition + living expenses. Again, a good backup to have to Oxbridge. If your son is bright he should try to have as many options open to him at this point as possible

You seem to position yourself as inferior. At the end of the day people are just people, doesn’t matter what circumstances you were born into. I’d use the A-level years to really boost your son’s confidence so that he sees him as at the same level as other high achieving kids, not below them in any way, and can strut into a room of accomplished academics and shine without overthinking it.

Some great resources

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmath/comments/omt8hi/imlookingfortextbooksdescribingmathematical/

Second link (to avoid them running together)
https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/27426/a-good-book-about-mathematical-thinking

The brendan W Sullivan book in the second link is a free PDF and very accessible. It explains the thinking process clearly.

Also there are some good books about modern maths etc I like love and maths by Edward Frankel.

Disclaimer I didn't go to Oxford, Cambridge I came to like it and study more at university but I have found these helpful.

I recruit a lot of mathematicians 😎 among others

@Sorenlorrenson

I wonder whether this would interest him, OP?

https://mei.org.uk/ritangle/

@ElleintheWoods I believe you have to choose one or the other! Can't list both

DH is a mathematician and he says for Cambridge by this stage your ds should be a self starter reading up and researching on the areas of maths he finds interesting and the maths teacher at school is more a facilitator to bounce ideas off and suggest other areas for him to look at.

You actually can't apply to both Oxford and Cambridge, you can only apply to one or the other.

They really aren't looking for extracurriculars, they are solely interested in the applicant's academic ability and potential.

A school that isn’t used to sending pupils to Oxbridge possibly won’t be providing much help at all. That’s one of the bloody problems. That’s why the questions from OP and others ate so great.

TSR mentioned above = The Student Room, a good online forum. Uni applicants can get a lot of good information from the best sources of all by joining

Not knowing how to pronounce Magdalene College’s name is nothing to do with being poor and common. It’s part of the fun of an open day that you discover some of the more eccentric histories of the different colleges and their pronunciations when you are shown around - eg that Oliver Cromwell’s head is buried at Sidney Sussex College; or that Magdalene College, Cambridge, was pronounced Maudleyn (and spelt that way initially) due to the vanity of its founder, Lord Audley, despite technically being dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. (Magdalene Cambridge was subsequently spelt like the Oxford college, Magdalen, until the mid nineteenth century, when an e was added to the Cambridge one for the benefit of the Post Office, to distinguish the two colleges by their spellings (despite retaining the same pronunciations)).

Each college has a short history of itself on its website, so you can find out about them and how to pronounce their names that way. If you’re that way inclined, a more quirky history might make a college seem more appealing and memorable to you, or you might just be focused on practicalities (facilities, average cost of accommodation and catered food, how “formal” a college is, distance from the town centre or relevant faculty, college size, average intake for your chosen subject each year etc). Unless you are a student there, or grew up there, I don’t see why anyone should expect you to know how to pronounce the name of every college, or to know anything much about them. That’s why they have open days and outreach programmes, and lots of information on the internet for you to research.

It all feels a bit overwhelming at first, but after a while, especially if you visit the City and get a feel for its geography, it starts to feel more real and less fantastical, and the strange histories and pronunciations seem less pretentious than they might have done initially, and more just a way of giving each college a unique identity to help you find a way to differentiate between them.