Illustration/Florence Brockman

Cambridge deals in extremes of social identity, epitomised by the Etonian arguing with my working-class scouse friend during fresher’s week. But where does this leave me, someone from a rough Northern city but who went to school in the ’nice bit? Am I lost in the middle of these extremes of identity?

“The university’s aim to diversify is commendable, but their stats fail to convey what happens once students have got in.”

In a way these extremes are traceable to the university itself, in its desperate bid to slot you into their diversity stats somehow. A mere three days after this years’ A-level results rolled in, my college had a shiny new infographic, in the piercing college blue, to inform us of the 31% of entrants with at least one indicator of disadvantage or the 21.6% of home entrants who ‘have home addresses which lie in the bottom two quintiles of the index of multiple deprivation’. What a welcome, right? Their aim to diversify is commendable, but their stats fail to convey what happens once students have got in. In fact, they fail to even convey the truth of their diversity. In stretching to make their stats look good they include middle class students in their disadvantaged category - concealing the truth that many disadvantaged students are still not making it in.

In my Northern city, the home of the UK’s largest bus station and a considerable amount of deprivation, I felt very well off. Comfortably middle class. I was even mocked for my accent which carried a slight southern tightness due to my parents. A tightness I learned to switch off in school the second a girl turned to tell me I sounded ‘posh’ – God forbid! It certainly didn’t feel like any ‘bottom quintiles’ type of life.

Imagine my shock when I arrived in Cambridge, settled in, sat amongst friends, and found myself to be the poorest in the room. We didn’t exactly all lay out family bank statements, that would be terribly un-English. Instead, people exchanged stories of ‘St Paul’s boys’ or summers spent in enormous houses in Italy. These were inoffensive comments, but utterly alien to me. I didn’t know St Paul was anything other than a Saint who’d lend his name to any old church, primary school or village hall that wanted it. As for the summer house, camper vans and budget hotels were generally our villa of choice on family holidays. So, I sat quietly in these rooms. I contributed little moments of references, weaving in a holiday in the French riviera, in the hopes they’d accept that we shared a reference point and wouldn’t dig any further. The reality was I didn’t match their cultural identifiers.

“I bought into the diversity stats before arriving and listened eagerly as the Oxbridge talk at my school told us we had the same chance as anyone of getting in as anyone else.”

My particular circle is small, and college based, having been at the mercy of a first year spent in a pandemic. It is largely made up of private or grammar school students and has its usual London-centric glow. They lived a different kind of privilege. My comparatively well-off status was pretty much shattered in Cambridge by Lent. My friend’s suggestion that we all go to Dubai for next Christmas was the nail in the coffin – I wasn’t nearly as privileged as I had previously felt.

I can trace much of my shock to false expectations, sold to me by the institution itself. I bought into the diversity stats before arriving and listened eagerly as the Oxbridge talk at my school told us we had the same chance as anyone of getting in as anyone else. The problem with the stats and the messages is that they don’t convey the full story. The 73.4% of home entrants from state schools looks less impressive when you consider that the state sector makes up 93.6% of the school population. This was one issue, but I had also felt I was never quite the person the diversity stats were being preached to. I always felt too privileged to be included in that particular group, they couldn’t be talking about me – I’ve been skiing four times. If it was in fact me being preached to, then where was the campaign telling the most disadvantaged students that Cambridge was also a place for them?

This brings me to what is the ultimate Cambridge problem: the need to slot everyone into a binary. Whether this is down to a Victorian-type love of categorisation or an attempt to neutralise individuality – there seems to always be a need to fit a box. This is, for obvious reasons, deeply flawed. People are individuals; they cannot always be categorised.


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My problem emerged because I fit markers at both ends of the binary. My skiing holidays against my Northern state school. I had a University desperate to boast about their diverse student body, slotting me into their state sector section of the infographic despite my privilege. However, I was surrounded by students whose binary I didn’t quite fit owing to enjoying gravy on my chips, or occasionally saying bah-th rather than bar-th - how common of me. So, I stay stretched between the opposing ends – unsure where I fit. This uncertainty has made me a little bit jealous of both the Scouser and Etonian. At least they fit the binary - and the binary is infectious.