St John's: The Triple Set

Price: 5, Character: 10, Location: 8

John’s is luxurious, but you don’t understand just how much until you step into its famed triple set. An old white door opens up onto a living room complete with arched windows, thick baroque curtains and baby-blue carvings. A flatscreen TV and X-box make their home in a boarded-up fireplace. This is the biggest room in John’s, and rumour goes it has the highest square-foot per capita in Oxbridge.

The room takes up two floors and consists of a living room, kitchen, three bedrooms (one of which is especially massive), and a spacious bathroom. The three lucky 3rd years who got allocated the room have a hunch it had something to do with the first in their ballot group but this is mere speculation since the ballot system at John’s is neither by ranking nor by chance. It remains mysteriously under the ‘Dean’s discretion’. The James Bond gone to the country-esque suaveness is epitomised by the mahogany bedroom on the top floor. Its view onto Trinity Master’s Garden isn’t too shabby either. Before you shrivel up in a ball of envy, here’s some consolation: this Big Beauty would cost you £1111.09 per term. HEIDI AHO

 

Corpus: The Literary One

Price: 9, Character: 10, Location: 8

Tucked away in a corner of Corpus’s Old Court, room O0, as well as making some rather fine quarters, is distinguished by the plaque outside declaring two of its most feted previous occupants, the playwrights Christopher Marlowe and John Fletcher.

A corridor with a small pantry opens up to a huge living space, complete with an impressive (if boarded up) fireplace and attractive window seat. O0 is one of the college’s prize rooms, belonging to third-year Nick Dobson, who cites its party-friendly size and ‘waking up and having a nice view’ of Cambridge’s oldest enclosed court as two major benefits. Also, while most Old Court occupants have to brave the cold for a morning shower, the bathrooms are just across the corridor from O0.

However, being twenty metres away from St Mary’s, the Sunday morning bells provide an unwelcomed morning call and the graveyard next door has given rise to a few rumours that the room may be haunted. Paranormal occupant or not, winning a prize room allows Nick to enjoy the literary heritage of O0 for the tidy, discounted sum of £910 per term. Laurie tuffrey

 

King's: The View

Price: 10, Character: 9, Location: 8

Situated at the top of a charmingly ramshackle spiral staircase several floors up from the College bar is the A14,  acknowledged by all King’s students as being the best room within. Tall ceilings dwarf any furniture in A14, and natural light streams in through the massive bay windows. And those windows are well deserved: A14, which faces the chapel, is the only room in the living quarters to overlook King’s Front Court, and is one of the only rooms in King’s with a view. One window has a thin but deep porch which is, according to one ex-resident, “perfect for chilling Prosecco”.

A huge living room leads into a smaller bedroom, and with all that space for just one person, you’re bound to get lonely – it’s no wonder that A14 has played host to legendary parties that descend into general chaos (and rugby matches – it’s that big). It’s appropriate, considering that writer and member of the famed Bloomsbury Set, Rupert Brooke, is rumoured to have been a past inhabitant. Best of all, A14 doesn’t command the highest rent in King’s, as it doesn’t have an ensuite or a sink. It’s actually in the second tier of fees. But to be honest, that view more than makes up for it. ZING TSJENG

 

 

Clare: The Boho Option

Price: 9, Character: 10, Location: 9

Stepping into A4 (left) is a bit like wandering into the world of hobbits. Dried plants hang loosely from strands of thread around the room. Moroccan rugs and Indian tapestries cover the walls, chairs and tables. A white fur rug swallows part of the floor. Light, which pours nearly all day due to east and west facing windows, reflects on several empty glass bottles scattered about. A4 is definitely one of the best decorated rooms you’ll enter: goodbye Cambridge, and hello Shire.

Friends Merlin Sheldrake and Stuart Sheppard were, in their own words, quite lucky to get A4. “It was just by chance,” explained Sheppard. A high lottery number allowed both Sheldrake and Sheppard, now third-year Clare students, to pick something a little nicer.

They chose A4. The room spread is simple: two living rooms with a kitchen and bathroom between, and bedrooms on either side. Several floors up, the space offers grand views of both Clare and King’s Colleges. Conveniently, the Clare bar is two floors down. As the Chapel’s right next door, “you can sometimes hear the organ quietly through the walls,” said Sheldrake – which is either annoying or atmospheric, depending on what you think. The kitchen, while rather small, has an impressive view of Clare’s Old Court and a large, sunlight-filled window.

The only downside of the suite is a lack of shower. Yet at £990 per term, the boys couldn’t be happier overall. “We were lucky,” said Sheldrake. “We were so lucky to get it.” DANAE MERCER

 

 

Selwyn: Dwarfish Dwelling

Price: 6, Character: 0, Location: 2

Traversable in one medium-sized step, Room 7 on 38 Grange Road is the worst Selwyn has to offer. On paper it’s 7.5 m²; in practice it’s even smaller since diagonal ceilings make it impossible for most people to stand upright anywhere but the middle of the room. Amenities aren’t too glamorous either - two toilets, one shower and a bath are shared by the house’s 9 inhabitants.

The room’s occupant, a 2nd year exchange student from MIT, told Varsity he knew little about housing options before arriving, and was unpleasantly surprised to find he’d been allocated the College’s infamous ‘A* price band’ room. Selwyn’s ballot is random, and he was unlucky enough to be exchanged with a student who’d been assigned the room last year.

But it’s not all bad. The room’s cheap (£54.59 a week), and light from its one window angles nicely onto the desk.  HEIDI AHO

 

 

King's: The Grim One

Price: 6, Character: 5, Location: 1

Tennis Court Road (TCR) is known for some of the worst rooms in King’s. Who doesn’t want to live 15 minutes away from the actual College, in a dead area of town, across from an Anglia Ruskin University hostel populated by people love playing loud music, smoking weed, and knocking on your windows to show you how much they dislike your university? The rooms are tiny (less than 10m²), in some of them there is no heating, and intricate mould has been known to appear on the ceiling corners. “Standing in the middle of my room, I could touch all four walls without moving,” says an ex-resident.

Other perks include a grimy, post-industrial courtyard full of bikes (below) with views overlooking monkey skeletons from the Leverhulme Centre. However, the distance from College combined with the large common room means that there is a strange sense of (refugee) community.  ARTHUR ASSERAF

 

 

Fitz: The Cubbyhole

Price: 5, Character: 2, Location: 3

For those who came to Cambridge with dreams of living in a medieval cloister, this ex-linen cupboard in an ugly 60s block a mile from the centre of town is a good example of dashed hopes.

The rectangular room of F25 with a scenic view over the car park will set you back £933 per term, and any visiting friends have to squash into the square of spare floor. One redeeming feature is a built in shower - but whilst all the other rooms on the corridor had theirs updated to a power shower weeks ago, this one was deemed too old and small to be changed. Rooms at Fitz are randomly allocated to freshers, and in the words of Maureen the bedder, “If they’d offered me this room, I’d have refused it”.  KATIE FORSTER