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Asian and Middle Eastern Studies: A Churchill Student's View

Helen Pittam
4th-year student of Chinese Studies

Everywhere in Cambridge claims to be the friendly college, and the truth is wherever you go the people will be pretty similar. But if I were to apply I again I would definitely go for Churchill, and not just because it truly is the friendly college. Modern, maybe just a bit too concrete and outside the main tourist hub, it may not seem the obvious first choice of college, but in fact this all works in Churchill's favour.

Being slightly further out (by Cambridge standards that is; it's 15 minutes from the centre and I'm a walker, cyclists can get there in no time) means you can escape the tourist waves in the summer and have immediate access to the country side. More importantly, it's has the largest grounds of any Cambridge college meaning a free gym, tennis courts and fantastic sports fields onsite. The fields in particular are a major boon and a great antidote to the sometimes claustrophobic feel of other colleges. I've used them for football, bbqs, picnics, ultimate frisbee games (Churchill's top sport! I had no idea what it was before I arrived) and even revision in the summer. Another great advantage of Churchill's size is that it can offer accommodation throughout all three years of your time at Cambridge, which fosters a strong sense of community and means that after first year you're often closer to lectures and the city centre than your friends who have had to move out.

While I'll admit its distinctive appearance is not Churchill's top selling point for everyone, its distinctive character more than compensates. As a forward looking college where gown-wearing at formal meals is not enforced and you can walk, run or even cartwheel on the grass, it offers a genuinely more relaxed atmosphere. On the other hand, the small class sizes in AMES means you're guaranteed to make friends from other colleges and can dip into the traditional Cambridge life-style whenever you like.

Churchill is without a doubt one of the best colleges for AMES. One of the problems with the Cambridge system is that support does vary from college to college, especially for a subject as diverse as AMES, so the high-levels of help and feed-back at Churchill really do make a difference. Chinese is a particular strong point. Not only does the college have an outstanding academic performance but it also offers grants to travel to China (which I've used four summers in a row!) and a strong community of fellow Chinese students: with three of us, Churchill is the largest group in our year (and many of the years bellow).