College Life
As next year's Cambridge MBA class gets ready to come over in a couple of months, our incoming class has had a lot of questions about college life at Cambridge. What is it all about really? Should I live at a college? What will I get out of belonging to a college? and so on.
So I thought I'd attempt to describe a little bit of what college life is about, and how that affects MBAs at Cambridge.
What does it mean to belong to a college?
The University of Cambridge is made up of 31 Colleges, and if you attend the University you must belong to a College. In fact, most of the buildings on campus at Cambridge belong to Colleges, instead of to the University. The University website has this to say about colleges:
"A College is the place where students live, eat and socialise. It is also the place where they receive small group teaching sessions, known as supervisions."
Colleges do require applications and select their own members. However, if you are accepted to the Judge Business School (Cambridge's MBA Program) you will receive a place in a college. You belong to the college for life, and in fact apparently alumni of a college are eligible to get married in their college chapel later on.
What does a college provide?
Colleges provide housing (often optional for grad students), dining halls and meals, formal meals, sports teams, social groups, activities and clubs, a library, tutors, gardens, and more.
How much time will I have for this during the MBA?
Surprisingly many MBAs fit in a lot of time for college activities. Many of our class rowed for their college team, which often required getting up at 6am before class each day to train. The college Formal Halls are often quite nice events, dinner by candlelight where the college members where their Harry-Potter-like gowns and meet and greet professors and students of all backgrounds. Many MBAs this year invited one another to each other's formal halls and guest nights. In fact some try to attend as many colleges formal halls as possible.
It's also just an opportunity to meet students who are studying different things, and get away from the ''business school" world sometimes if you ever need that. At my college I met grad students studying law, math, sciences, and engineering. You get to go to dinners and be surrounded by people doing very interesting, often very specific things with their graduate studies, which is a unique opportunity.
That being said, it was true in my experience that the nature of the MBA program means that you will spend most of your time with your MBA class, and often they become your best friends and your social network, and we even had some of our own MBA sports teams, and plenty of clubs and activities within the MBA. I have made friends for life in the MBA, and will hopefully have people to visit around the world now too!
Should I take college accomodation?
This is a difficult one to answer. However I think that most of our classmates who were single did choose to take college accomodation this year. The benefits of college accomodation are that it is usually cheaper than private accomodation, and it is often much more central, although it can vary. Classmates with families and spouses more often opted for private accomodation, though some colleges provide married housing.
The quality of accomodation varies a lot from college to college, so my advice would be to talk to people at the college you are accepted to in order to find out a bit about their options.
I was quite lucky at Sidney Sussex College (pictured). I chose college accomodation, and they assigned me to a college-owned house that is a 5 minute walk (no kidding) to the Business School. (perfect for sleeping to the last possible minute before morning classes!!) And it is quite spacious, my room is probably twice the size of my past London room, and a nice garden, good place for parties and dinners. It is true though that some classmates at my college who live right at the college itself have smaller rooms, so there is variety, but the rumor is that they try to put MBAs at Sidney in the house I am in since it's so close to the Judge. Other colleges have shared houses and some more dormitory-style rooms, so check into the situation once you get to that point!
Any questions about the colleges, post a Comment, I'd be happy to answer them.
posted by Jen @ 6:25 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home