Student review [#28180] for Applied Economics
at University of Cambridge

I was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1988-1991, where I read Law.

I have mixed feelings about the experience.

The university is overwhelming impressive: its architecture, libraries and museums are awe-inspiring. (Though, oddly, to me the architecture was somewhat disappointing; I went to a particularly beautiful high school to which I had a strong emotional attachment.)

The quality of the teaching varied but some of it was outstandingly good. We were taught in pairs and there were times when I felt strongly that I was in the presence of greatness. (My constitutional law tutor, for example, occasionally missed our meetings because he was away drafting constitutions for emerging countries.)

The students often didn’t seem particularly brilliant themselves, though some were clearly considerably above the rest of us.

Walking across Great Court at night, wearing a suit and gown, to attend Formal Hall (a served three course dinner) was an other-worldly experience. Once you passed through the gates, it was like going back in time. I felt hugely privileged and the feeling of awe at the whole thing didn’t wear off for about a year. “I’m attending the same college as Newton and Byron!” I thought. Wow!

My peer group did develop a ludicrous sense of our own importance: we were undergraduates at Cambridge and were, therefore, absolutely at the centre of things. Presidents and prime ministers would come and speak to us. We were all, therefore, clearly destined for greatness. (As it turned out, we were not, of course!)

It was a difficult place to be psychologically. At high school we had all been top of our class. We had been the brilliant ones that the teachers all loved and who had won all the prizes. That status was lost at Cambridge: most of us turned out to be fairly normal academically and only the truly brilliant excelled. As a result every sphere of activity was hypercompetitive: we were desperate to be the best at something.

Socially it was difficult, too. I went to a private high school, but not an A list one. I didn’t know how to be friends with people who hadn’t been privately educated and the ones who had been, but at the A list schools, didn’t want to associate with people from lowly schools like mine. There was a lot of snobbery.

Having a degree from Cambridge has been invaluable in my career. When people find out, they immediately respect you and think you’re clever. It has undoubtedly helped me get jobs that I probably wouldn’t even have got an interview for otherwise. (And I’ve had some pretty good jobs, though I now work for myself.)

Yet I also regard going to Cambridge as the biggest mistake of my life. I wasn’t happy there. I read the wrong subject at the wrong university. And I did so because I was a stuck-up teenager who was desperate for the “best”. I often wonder what my life would have been like if I’d listened to my teacher at school, who begged me not to go. He was right, I’m pretty sure of that.