I knew that Trinity had a reputation for being good at maths when I applied; what I didn’t understand was the distinct Cambridge mythology of the trinmo. Indeed, trinmos – maths students at Trinity College, for the uninitiated – seem to possess a sort of divine status at this University, evoking hushed awe among STEM students.

Unfortunately, as a lowly historian, I don’t understand what they actually do, or what sets them apart on a mathematical level. When I was working at interviews week, I had the opportunity to ask prospective trinmos what it was that drew them to Trinity. It wasn’t the prestige, or even the maths itself, that kept coming up. It was what one applicant described as the “mathematical community” at Trinity. I got the sense that if you love maths, Trinity is the place to be, and, perhaps, the place to belong.

“Maths and life are a bit like church and state”

For a start, there are simply a lot more maths students at Trinity than anywhere else. Currently, there are 43 in first year alone. For third-year student Anthony, this means that “you can have a whole friendship group of trinmos and it’s only like an eighth of the cohort”. Sida, also in third year, echoes this. In his experience: “Trinity maths does feel like a community” because “everyone’s incredibly hard-working and a dreamer”. However, Sam, a second year, suggests “such an enormous cohort” means it’s “hard to escape” conversations about maths, which “infects the culture of Trinity”. He believes: “Maths and life are a bit like church and state and shouldn’t be conflated,” which can be hard in an environment where a lot of the cohort “get home from lectures and go to lunch and talk about maths”.

Trinity’s formidable reputation for maths relates to its association with Maths Olympiads. PhD student Kada highlights: “Maths applicants to Trinity are usually decorated with Olympiad medals”. Lingde, in his third year, says that he and his friends were “drawn to apply here” because “a lot of us came from Olympiad backgrounds”. Another student told me she felt a sense of “peer pressure in a nice way” from friends she had made through Olympiads to apply to Trinity. As an international student, Huyen found these preexisting friendships invaluable because she had “zero friends and relatives in the UK” when arriving at Trinity. First year Aanya also told me that Trinity felt like a “second home” when she applied. However, there’s also a certain degree of pressure attached to this association, particularly for students who haven’t participated in Olympiads. In Kada’s words, despite having “made it” to Trinity, “one still compares oneself to others”.

Despite this intensity, a lot of students were eager to point out that trinmos don’t actually do maths all day, every day. Sida mentions a “big culture of climbing, badminton, and poker,” though he concedes that “the maths can get quite demanding at times”. Other students described themselves and their peers taking part in activities such as sport and music at a high level alongside their studies. One student said she sees it as a “universal university experience of not knowing how to balance things” which improves over time. Another confesses: “We like to do a bit of drinking,” including while answering UK Maths Challenge questions for fun. However, Lingde’s answer to the question of how he balances life and maths was blunter: “I don’t.”

“Maths applicants to Trinity are usually decorated with Olympiad medals”

Whatever the reality, Anthony believes that trinmos are probably viewed as “quite tryhardy” and “a bit cliquey” by maths students at other colleges. Lingde concedes that the reputation is “probably negative, but negative in a friendly way (I hope!)”. Sam went further, stating: “I wouldn’t describe the reputation as sexy” because it triggers assumptions that “you will only talk about maths,” which are “mildly correct”. Lizzie, a third year, believes the reputation comes from maths applicants to Cambridge being told “don’t apply to Trinity” because of its association with Olympiads. Yet the reality is “not everyone has the opportunity to do these Olympiads, but if you can do the maths, you can still get in.”

Trinity may appear even more intense for female maths students, who are very much in the minority. Aanya tells me that while “the guys respect me and know I’ve earned my place,” she feels some pressure as a woman in such a male-dominated subject to “fit into a certain mould”. She feels some expectation to “set an example” for younger girls, through which she believes she has “made a positive impact”. Huyen stressed that the “gender imbalance doesn’t correlate to Trinity being biased,” while Lizzie has “been in the minority my whole life,” having attended a maths school, so feels it “hasn’t made much of a difference”.

With all this considered, I was left wondering what maths actually means to these students. Anthony described pure maths to me as “maths for the love of the game”. Huyen enjoys maths because it’s “not emotionally taxing”, and instead “makes me feel peaceful”. For third year Thomas, maths is a “very pure form of problem solving” which produces “beautiful” results. Meanwhile Lingde emphasises that “maths at university is creative” in a way which people might not realise based on their experiences at school.

“Gender imbalance doesn’t correlate to Trinity being biased”

The concept of “maths for the love of the game” echoes the fact that most of the students I interviewed were motivated to study maths at Trinity by passion, rather than employability or prestige. One student told me: “To do so much of the same thing, I think you do have to love it.” For Lingde, it was the natural choice because “I love maths” and “I’m good at maths”. There’s definitely a sense that most of these students are deeply passionate. For instance Kada “attended third year lectures in my first year to satisfy my curiosity”. But it isn’t always that clean cut. Although Lizzie described maths as “definitely a passion,” she feels it was borne out of the fact that “I like to do very hard things in general”. Sam’s decision to study maths was more pragmatic; he feels “engineering would have been as interesting, but doesn’t have the prestige”. He found writing his personal statement frustrating because “I had to pretend I’d had a romantic love for it since I was six,” though he concedes he’s “probably an anomaly”. So, while a deep love for maths does seem pretty standard among the trinmos, stereotypes of one type of student, who lives and breathes maths and only maths, aren’t accurate.

In a way, the trinmos are emblematic of Cambridge: being good at something, and devoting at least three years of your life to studying it in a highly intense environment. As we all know, this has its downsides. The pressure and competition that come with, to put it bluntly, being one of the best, and being surrounded by others who are also among the best, shouldn’t be downplayed. But it’s also uniquely heartening to encounter a group of people who are so driven and passionate. Despite the trinmos’ mythic reputation, there’s something distinctly human about the “mathematical community” at Trinity, which even the humanities students among us may find more relatable than you’d think.