You are in: Churchill College » Admissions » Undergraduate Admissions » Courses » History
The Courses: History: Getting On
The life of a successful Cambridge History student is a very busy one. You will be expected to attend perhaps eight lectures a week; there may well be one or two classes in which to participate, for which preparation is necessary; and each week you will invariably have to read extensively and intensively on a specific subject and write an essay. This essay (typically 2000 words in length) is not formally assessed as it might be at other universities, rather it forms the basis for discussion in the weekly supervision. Very few History courses around the country offer supervisions, mostly one-to-one, or one-to-two. It is a form of teaching which does not suit everybody. It does not, however, require a huge amount of personal confidence, or a childhood where your opinions were always taken seriously by adults! What it does require is patient and persistent application to reading and thinking. At this level, your supervisors will be far less interested in hearing about what you know, far more in ideas thrown up by your reading, however under-developed or trivial they may seem to you. Here your confidence will grow.
The Historical Tripos is divided into two parts, the first lasting two years, the second just a year. The choice of papers is enormous. Except for some minimum requirements (for example, you have to study a paper falling before 1750 and after 1750, and at least one European paper) the choice is very much up to you, although at Churchill we do discourage students from studying subjects already studied for A-level. We expect our students to be adventurous. There is no fixed curriculum at Cambridge, and instead of comprehensive coverage of History from the earliest records to the present day, emphasis is placed upon focused analysis of subjects which appeal to you. Of course, over three years your range of historical knowledge will also be expanded enormously. In the first year, you will sit a paper called General Historical Problems, where you answer just one broadly-conceived essay question in three hours. At Churchill, we do not believe that this is a paper which can be taught; it is one which you teach yourself by thinking about the many different things you read and hear. That said, we do offer discussion classes in which ideas about historians, historiography, and the ever-expanding sub-disciplines of history can be exchanged.
No Cambridge college is able to depend entirely on its Fellowship in History to supervise all its own undergraduates: the demand for variety within the Tripos will always exceed the specialisms of the teaching staff. It is usual, therefore, for students be sent to supervisors at other colleges to be supervised. I myself "read History at Robinson", but was taught not just at Robinson but at Peterhouse, Gonville and Caius, Christ's, Newnham, Corpus Christi - and Churchill. The rest of the time was mostly spent in the departmental and university libraries, and attending lectures and classes at the Faculty. The point here is that however much you may wish to read History at a particular college, most of your academic work will actually take place elsewhere. You should take this into consideration when choosing a college to which to apply. Some colleges are harder to get into than others to read History.