By Daisy S, Year 12

On the 26th March, 12 Year 12 girls went to Cambridge on an exciting day trip to explore the Cambridge colleges, and to gain an understanding of the university system. Despite train cancellations and the infamous house shout running over in the morning, we managed to successfully make it to Cambridge with plenty of time to explore the beautiful city.

We began our day by exploring Cambridge and walking along the river by the Backs colleges. These colleges back on to the river, hence their name, and they have beautiful gardens and grounds. Mr Guthrie gave us an informative talk behind King’s College, about supervisions and the college system at Cambridge which helped us to gain a better understanding about the differences in an Oxbridge education compared to other universities. We then made our way to Jesus College where we were toured around by Dr MacGregor. Dr MacGregor studied natural sciences at Cambridge and spoke to us about what life was really like at Cambridge and how he balanced all of his extra-curriculars besides his studies. As well as this, he spoke to us about competitive university admissions and how to make our applications stand out.

After a quick lunch break, we had a tour of Trinity College including the Wren Library. This was an amazing opportunity, and it was great to see some of the rare books in the Wren Library including Wittgenstein’s notebooks and the first edition of Charles Darwin, On the origin of Species. We then made our way to St Catharine’s College where we had a talk from Dr Wickham who is the Dean of St Catharine’s College and Director of Studies in Music. This talk was extremely useful, especially for those on the trip with a particular interest in music and it was also great to see around a different college that was much smaller than Jesus or Trinity College. Before heading back to the station for our train home, we had a quick Tour of Pembroke College by a first-year undergraduate student. This was a great opportunity to ask any questions that we had about life whilst studying at Cambridge.

Overall, we all had a great time on this trip and found it extremely useful. Exploring the different colleges made us realise that all the colleges have their own personality and hearing from past students and admissions tutors was extremely helpful in terms of our future university applications. A big thank you to Mr Guthrie for organising such a great and enjoyable trip!

Photo by Connor Wang on Unsplash