History

The History degree (or ‘tripos’) is a three-year degree. Please visit the University website for full details of the History course content and structure, including the course film. You will also find information on the Faculty of History page for prospective applicants. If you have further questions about course content, please contact schoolsliaisonoffice@hist.cam.ac.uk.

Your lectures and exams are organised by the University’s Faculty of History. Here at College, we teach in ‘supervisions’ (tutorial sessions 1-to-1 or in pairs) to give you personally-tailored tuition and support – a major advantage of a Cambridge education.

Our current History fellows have a broad range of interests:

> Professor Susan Bayly Extra-European and World History, Colonialism and Empire, India and Southeast Asia 
> Dr Harriet Lyon, (Director of Studies, Part I) early modern Britain 
> Dr Helen Pfeifer Ottoman History 
> Professor David Reynolds (Director of Studies, Part II) 20th Century British and American history. 
> Professor Jim Secord Social history of Science since 1750 
> Dr Arianne Urus Environmental History

Here in College our library boasts an excellent history collection, and you can apply to Christ’s generous educational and travel funds for support with independent study, such as research trips for dissertations. Our Levy-Plumb Humanities Fund offers grants for a range of resources including book and creative arts.

Read about the experiences of Christ's History students Laura, Alice, Ossie, Max, Isobel, James and Sathya - these profiles have a lot of detail in them about what it's really like to live in College and study History, as well as how students approached the application process.

You may also find the profiles by students doing History joint degrees helpful. See the accounts by Sam, Eebbaa, Nik and Victoria.

If you’d like to hear from other Christ's students, please watch the Christ's student Q&A film, and visit our Student Profiles page.

We expect you to study History at A-level, IB Higher Level, Scottish Advanced Higher or equivalent as one of your post-16 subjects. Apart from that, there is no ‘ideal’ combination of subjects. Our successful applicants have taken subjects ranging from maths and sciences to arts and social sciences. These all teach skills useful to the undergraduate historian.

We encourage students to attend one of our regular Subject Matters webinars for help with choosing Post-16 subjects for competitive university applications. This webinar is pitched for students aged 14-16 though it is also possible to attend when you have started sixth form. 

We’re looking for students who like reading, writing and thinking about the past in all its forms. You should be able to study independently, enjoy working with peers and relish discussion and debate.

After we receive your application, we ask you to upload TWO essays that you feel accurately reflect your abilities and interests. These should be no more than 2500 words, written during the normal course of your studies and already marked by a teacher. We recommend you keep a copy for your own reference as we may discuss it at interview.

We publish full guidelines on written work in the Current Applicants section on 20 September each year.

If we invite you for interviews, these usually take place in early December. At Christ's we continue do all of our interviews online, as we have done for the last three years. You can have your interviews either at home (most applicants do this) or at school (if easier). Those selected for interviews are normally interviewed for 35-50 minutes in total. At Christ’s, we usually split the time into two interviews with academics in History. In one interview, we normally talk about your written work for part of the interview. In the other, we normally give you a text (or texts) to read shortly before your interview, and then discuss the material during the interview. Any details of the interviews each year are provided nearer the time in our current applicants section.

Further, more general information about interviews (including two useful films) is available in the Cambridge interviews section, and it's worth also having a look at supervisions (short film here), as the best way to understand interviews is to realise that they are similar to what you do every week as a Cambridge student. More specifically, we recommend this film in which current Cambridge History students discuss their interview experiences. Remember that your interviews may cover different things to the students speaking.

There is no written assessment for History at Christ's College. 

At Christ's we don’t have fixed quotas for places, so the number of students we admit in any year depends on the strengths of the applicants. In History we aim to admit 8 to 10 students each year.

We define the terms of each offer individually, though our typical conditional offer is: 

> A*AA at A-level including History 
> 42 points overall in the International Baccalaureate with 7,7,6 in Higher Level subjects including History 
> A1,A2,A2 in three Scottish Advanced Highers including History.

We may tie the A* to a relevant subject (depending on what combination of subjects you are taking) or ask you to complete some additional self-study if you have not taken a close equivalent of A-level History.

You need to be academically ambitious: the majority of Christ's students arrive with higher grades than are required.

If you’re taking another qualification, we expect you to be working at or close to the top of the mark range i.e. 

> Baccalauréat français international (BFI): 17 (mention très bien) out of 20 overall, with a minimum of 17 in relevant subjects 
> European Baccalaureate: at least 85% overall, with 9/10 in relevant subjects including History

You can look up other qualifications in the offer levels for other exam systems and international entry requirements, and if you are applying from outside the UK please read the Christ's international students section for further information and check the country pages.

If you will have finished school when you apply, please also read about post-qualification applications, taking a gap year, and, if relevant, applying from a university.

For more detail of what the course involves, read Undergraduate History admissions on the University website. Take a look at the Faculty of History information for prospective students too.

And if you have any other questions, please send them to us at admissions@christs.cam.ac.uk. We look forward to hearing from you.