University Website: http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk

Director of Studies: Professor Sarah Radcliffe

Number of students admitted each year: 3-4

Introduction

Undergraduate Studies in Geography is one of the largest single-honours Departments of Geography in Britain: about 100 undergraduates are admitted to read Geography every year.

Geography at Cambridge involves undergraduates in a wide range of lectures, practical classes, skills training and field courses, organised around a three-year course (called the Geographical Tripos) which is divided into three parts, with an examination at the end of each year.

The course is taught through a mixture of University and College teaching. Lectures are run centrally by the Geography department and small group teaching (supervisions) are organised by the College Director of Studies. Your weekly work will usually revolve around producing an essay for each of your supervisions, along with lectures for the options you are taking.

First Year

In your first year you study for two examination papers, which correspond to physical and human geography. The main themes introduced at this stage run through the rest of the Tripos. There is no choice at this stage: we think it important for everyone to begin with the same basic grounding. This allows us to introduce you to new areas of the subject that you won't have met before and which you might want to study in more detail in your second or third year.

The course includes components on historical, economic, urban, political, social, physical and environmental Geography, and studies of earth and atmosphere, oceans and glaciers, along with a skills and methods course.

Second Year

In the second year, students currently begin to specialise (if they want to), but we expect them to maintain an interest in the discipline as a whole.  The students take a core compulsory paper, as well as three optional papers. The core paper ‘Living with Global Change’ covers topics including geophysical hazards, climate change, demographic change, nature-culture relations. Students then choose three papers from a range of papers, enabling some specialisation in human or physical geography, or the maintenance of a broad geographical training. Human geography courses include Development; Economic Geography; and Citizenship, Cities and Civil Society. Physical geography courses include Biogeography; Glacial Processes, and The Costal System. Alongside these lecture courses, students continue with skills training and practicals.

Fieldwork

All students are currently expected to participate in a week long field class in the second year. Recent venues have included: Crete, Mallorca, Malta, the Algarve, Morocco and S E Spain. A piece of submitted work produced on the field class forms part of the assessment in the second year.

Third Year

In the third year you can choose whatever combination of papers you like, so that you can either specialise further or maintain a balance across the subject as a whole. You have to select four papers from those offered in a particular year, and you also have to research and write a dissertation of no less than 8,000 words and no more than 10,000 words: here too the choice of subject is up to you.

In the third year, twelve papers are offered in each year. The actual papers offered vary each year, but the following provide some examples of papers recently offered:

• Geographies of the British Economy
• The New Europe
• Changing Cultures of Risk
• Geographies of Postcolonialism
• Volcanology
• Quaternary Environments
• Biosedimentary Coastal Systems
• Food, Famine and Power
• Environment, Society and Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

College Facilities

Christ's is distinctive amongst the Cambridge Colleges. It offers strong tutorial support to its students as they pursue their academic work, and is able to offer accommodation for three years to all of its undergraduates. The College also provides a modern library, a theatre, sporting facilities, playing fields, social activities and clubs and societies open to all.

How to Apply

In addition to nominating Cambridge as one of your selected universities on the UCAS application form, it is also desirable to choose a College of preference (the alternative is to submit an Open Application and allow a College preference to be chosen for you by computer). This can appear to add to the complexity of applying to Cambridge, but in reality the option of stating your particular College preference increases the control which you have over your own application. Many criteria can be used for choosing a College of preference, including such factors as location, architecture and accommodation, and academic, musical or sporting reputation. If you are able to visit Cambridge (preferably on a College Open Day) you may get a better idea of the location, atmosphere and facilities of various Colleges.

Christ's College does not have fixed quotas of places for different subjects and the exact numbers admitted in any one year will depend upon the strengths of the fields of applicants in various subjects. However, Christ's aim is to admit around a three or four students each year in Geography. Applicants are usually interviewed in late November or December and you will be asked to send two pieces of work prepared during the normal course of your studies ahead of interviews. There will be two interviews, normally one of your interviews will be jointly with our Director of Studies and another College Fellow in Human Geography; the other interview will be with a subject specialist in Physical Geography. You will be asked to arrive a little while before one interview when you will be given a short passage to read. Discussion in the following interview will focus on this passage.

Entry requirements are likely to be A*AA or AAA at A-level, or comparable grades in other qualifications. A final point worth making is that we only make offers to candidates that we believe they have a realistic chance of achieving. Our aim is to admit the best students regardless of their background. 

Further Information

If you are able to come to a College Open Day, we will be glad to tell you more about the College and the Geography course in person. If you are not able to come to an Open Day, we will be happy to answer any queries you may have that are not covered by the normal literature. Please address any such enquiries to the Admissions Tutor, Christ's College, Cambridge, CB2 3BU, or by e-mail to admissions@christs.cam.ac.uk.