April O’Neill

Earlier this week I found a little card in my pigeonhole inviting me to the ‘Commemoration of the Benefactors’ dinner. A whole evening indulging in gourmet food and dessert wine? Don’t mind if I do. I mean, why not toast in thanks to the donors splashing the cash on my result; I deserve it right?

Well yes, you could argue. I worked hard. After being dragged through the trenches last year, it’s nice to have a pat on the back. But as I write this, with the swirly calligraphy on my invite welcoming me into the first-class club, I can’t help feeling that it all smacks a bit of elitism. I didn’t get this invite last year. When I opened CamSIS back in the summer of first year I saw my 2.1 and was pleased with it. Having convinced myself I had failed and would have to squat in college for the rest of time, I did far better than I thought.

Now it’s probably worth prefacing my side of this debate with the not-so-insignificant fact that I go to Christ’s. I know, I can feel you all wincing in sympathy – it’s hardly a college known for its lax attitude towards work. When my matriculation dinner started off with the Senior Tutor lauding Christ’s academic excellence and Tompkins Table domination (curse you Trinity), I sat there awkwardly nursing my wine and feeling more than a little out of my depth. I was happy I made it to Cambridge but now you’re telling me I have a reputation to uphold? Can we at least get to dessert first?

“I don’t think students shouldn’t be rewarded for getting a first. It’s how we are rewarding them that concerns me”

Christ’s, and Cambridge, love firsts. A university renowned for academic excellence, it’s hardly surprising that this is what it wants from us and what we want from it – or why else would we be here when we could, let’s be real, having a more relaxing and fun time elsewhere. But all these bells and whistles don’t sit right with me: you got 70%? Here’s £1,000, a huge room, a seven course banquet, a car, a yacht, my first born child. Oh, you got 68%? Congratulations! Here’s nothing.

When you have supervisors wincing in unwanted sympathy over a perfectly respectable grade, it’s jarring to then be rewarded for just a few extra marks. By throwing out these rewards – a fancy dinner, a (rather cultish) chapel service, getting to say grace at formal – it entrenches the idea that a student’s worth is based on the grade they obtain. This is not only potentially damaging to students’ wellbeing, but it is problematic given the countless attainment gaps we see at Cambridge, be that gender or socioeconomic background.

Throw in the insanely disparate financial prizes colleges offer and the rewards game isn’t even a fair one. In 2023-2024, Trinity spent £215,706 on scholars’ awards – 38 times more than the £5,550 Lucy Cavendish spent. Sure this is an issue of wealthy inequality amongst Cambridge colleges, but it also means that a student who tops tripos at Lucy gets mere pennies compared to someone who scraped by at Trinity. How can you call that fair? Add the fun little Christ’s tradition of the ‘scholars’ ballot’ into the mix, whereby getting a first gives you priority room allocation and access to certain rooms (i.e. ‘I live in X staircase’ = newsflash! I got a first), you’re left with a sprinkle of elitist segregation within the college community. Merry Christmas.

I don’t think students shouldn’t be rewarded for getting a first. It’s how we are rewarding them that concerns me. To me, the parading of students in front of their whole college community, the private events, the special rooms are not incentives, they are pageantries of exclusion. The money is nice, harmless even, but not until it’s fair from college to college. I believe we should celebrate all students for their academic achievements, but this isn’t me coddling you and promising that we are all special. None of us are. That’s the point. Our achievements are framed against a backdrop of markedly different social and financial contexts so this us (the special scholars) vs them (those need to work harder) dynamic is neither a fair nor healthy culture to uphold at our already intense university. And look, you can always advertise your tripos topping performance on LinkedIn. I won’t take that away from you.

Daisy Stewart Henderson

When I got dressed in my gown and academic dress for the Admission of Scholars Ceremony earlier this term, I saw myself a year prior in the mirror. Petulant, disgruntled, grumbling about unfairness, emphasising to anyone who would (or was compelled) to listen that I had actually been close to getting a first.

I was right; there is a fundamental unfairness to the distribution of top marks at Cambridge, and the pomp and circumstance surrounding high achievers only amplifies this. But I was also, undeniably, a sore loser.

It’s a flawed meritocracy. But isn’t that what we all signed up for? You can rattle off the statistics; that just under 35% of men received firsts in 2024-25 compared to just 25% of women, for example. It frustrates me immensely. But the issue with condemning Cambridge’s celebration of those who receive firsts on these grounds of unfairness is that we all indict ourselves in the process. Indeed, are the University’s admissions statistics much better? I’m sure that, to some degree, luck contributes to every first the university awards. But isn’t it the same luck that got us here in the first place?

“It’s a flawed meritocracy. But isn’t that what we all signed up for?”

The incentive of the rewards scholars receive did motivate me to work harder in my second year. To be frank, I didn’t deserve to go to the ceremony in my first year. It wouldn’t have been good for me. I needed to ‘fail’, to be knocked down from number one in the small pond that was my school, to very objectively not number one in my year group’s ranking. It isn’t fun. At the time, it felt almost cruel. But, now living in the purgatory that is applying, thanklessly, for everything and anything to do next year, I fear that this sense of failure, at risk of sounding like your unsympathetic elderly relative, is just life. And at Cambridge in particular, there are benefits in learning how not to be the best.

What I didn’t anticipate was that the ceremony would actually be quite poignant. At school, I was a perpetual try-hard. Don’t get me wrong, it’s no heartbreaking plight. But it was objectively the case that working hard was rewarded with mockery, and being damningly uncool among my peers for six long years. And though it’s phrased a little more carefully, I would suggest that we’re not immune from this kind of ribbing at Cambridge. Pair it with a society in which the idea of pursuing academia feels like a frivolous daydream, and careerist shrewdness rather than intellectual passion is the path to wealth and status, and the way Cambridge rewards scholars appears almost radical. There isn’t much else like it. It may be a hangover from a lost time, but it has a certain resonance in our modern world.

So yes, I saw myself a year ago as I got ready. But I also saw a far younger girl (a total try-hard, by the way), who couldn’t have fathomed attending a candlelit ceremony in Trinity College Chapel, or signing my name into the College’s scholars’ book for eternity, or, to be blunt, being paid real money for being clever. It isn’t even that I was modest. I simply couldn’t have imagined anything like it. I’ve gotten lucky, and the spectacle of it all, which had grated so much the year before, reminded me to count my blessings. The pageantry of it all, experienced from both sides, actually kept me grounded.