Hi! I am Adam, a law student at Queens’ College, Cambridge. I’ll try to give an honest account of what life is like at Queens’ College, and provide a rundown of the college’s best bits, along with a few potential cons. The first thing to note is the unique apostrophe placement in our name: it’s Queens’, with the apostrophe coming after the ‘S’, rather than Queen’s. That’s because the college is named after two former Queens who founded and helped to fund Queens’.
When I was in sixth form, I experienced some of the outreach work that Queens’ does. This was a large reason why I applied and something to consider. Queens’ spends millions of pounds a year on access and widening participation projects, and much of the student body loves to get involved. As a result, we are quite a diverse college, with many students coming from state schools. On the diversity front, the college also has a number of events each year catered to specific groups, such as female, BAME, and LGBTQ+ students. As with all colleges, such groups also have representation on the student body (what we call the ‘JCR’), and this year has seen such events continue and expand in a digital format.
This and more has led Queens’ to become a college with a reputation for being friendly, and all of our students will attest to that. Our reputation may also be due, at least in part, to us having one of the largest student populations of the Cambridge colleges. There are usually around 150 students in each year, meaning that there is always a friendly face to be found.
The accommodation in Queens’ is also great, with all undergraduates being entitled to college accommodation for three years of their degree (for most people this is their entire degree). In first year, most freshers are in the same building, enabling everyone to really get to know each other. After that, you are given a choice between several buildings, some of which date back hundreds of years. Queens’ is a central college and so is close to pretty much all libraries, faculties, and the shops. In second year, some students will be in accommodation offsite, but this is only a 10-minute walk from the main college site and has great facilities as well (including a BBQ area!)
We also have a small rooftop garden and our own ‘grove’, which is basically a small forest-like area looking over the river Cam. We are one of the few colleges to be located on both sides of the river, with our famous Mathematical Bridge joining together the two sides of Queens’. Even though we do not have the enormous estates of some other colleges, our courtyards, the bridge and loads of other things all come together to create a very nice aesthetic.
That all said, the accommodation is somewhat pricey when compared to some other colleges. You wouldn’t pay more than you might expect to at most universities, but a lot of colleges in Cambridge do subsidise rent more than we do. This is partly because Queens’ is not one of the richer colleges… we are somewhere around the bottom third in terms of endowment. That said, I have found accommodation costs to be more than affordable. Like all colleges, students here from low-income backgrounds are eligible for the Cambridge bursary to contribute to costs, and Queens’ also has generous funding provisions for students who find themselves in need. An application can easily be made for any costs related to education that you are struggling to cover. In the past, students have been given big things like rent subsidies and laptops, as well as smaller things like blue light blocking glasses. The food in college is also cheap if you don’t want to self-cater, with a hot meal at lunch/dinner costing ~£3.
One final thing to note is the welfare support available at Queens’. We were one of the first colleges to have a fulltime team dedicated to welfare provision. We have an onsite nurse, an onsite mental health specialist, as well as several other staff whose work revolves around welfare provision. All students are assigned a tutor who they can approach with any welfare of personal concerns, as well as there being a wealth of support offered by student initiatives and the JCR. Queens’ is honestly one of, if not the, college that takes welfare and mental health seriously, with students encouraged to both work and play hard.
Overall, Queens’s is an incredible college, and I am yet to meet a single person who disagrees. Should you choose to apply here, you will love it just as much as we all do!
Visit the Queen’s College website for more details!