Originally I was quite set on Oxford
I did a lot of Open Days there
I suppose I'm very drawn to Oxford
as a place as well and then...
what clinched it was actually just coming
to Cambridge for a similar Open Day
I think it was in July 2016
boiling hot day
30-odd degrees
blue skies
I suppose just fell
in love with Cambridge as a place
It's just a nice place to be in really
It's a very lively place
and yeah that was what
sold it to me really
and then everything else
fell into place afterwards
Course, college and
everything else basically.
So for me...
I take a little bit of a different
route to a lot of people
in that, I hadn't really
given university
let alone Oxbridge, any
real consideration really
until I finished my GCSEs
And then you're suddenly thinking
well, probably, I could
actually do this
So I suppose my first
year of AS-levels
or first year of A-levels
was mainly based around
reading around my subject
and a really interesting theme
that I was looking at was globalisation
Not just the economics
of that but also
the social aspects
the political aspects
And to suppose that's really the premise
of why I decided to do Geography
was basically getting these
big themes across the readings
from history, politics, anything
from the environment
Geography's task is essentially to put
that all together and make sense of it
So I suppose the personal
statement is really where
the application begins in earnest
and effectively that, however
many characters it is
is your chance basically
to sum up what you've learned
from all that wider reading
and super-curricular activity
as we like to call it
You just show why you're
passionate for what you want to do
It's quite an enjoyable period as well
doing your personal statement I find
In terms of summing up basically
what it is that makes you tick
And then from there
Cambridge now does quite
a lot of entrance exams
But I wouldn't really
say it was an exam
it was more of a...
basically, again
a chance to sit down
like the personal statement
and really, again sum up what
you're interested in your subject
through a critical
thinking essay
and just a couple of
wider exam questions
And then from there
you get into December
Usually, that's where most people come
up to colleges for the interviews
What the interviews are it's
not really trying to scare you
or put you down a blind alley
it's basically their chance
to see how you think
We had a map put in
front of us of the world
it was basically ranking
countries based on their risk
or exposure to risk
and looking at why different
countries have higher risks than others
So that could be natural risk
that could be financial risk
So that was incredibly
interesting actually
not just to think of
things in one aspect
but to look at basically
the broader picture
that it is very contemporary
it's very current and
that's true of what we're doing
at the moment in the course
so we're looking a lot at
austerity in the UK
and policy approaches to that
A lot of what we do is looking
at regional inequality in the UK
So that's looking at regions like
the North East and South Wales
I think the North-South divide gets
talked a lot in the media
but there's not enough
effort to really delve down
and actually understand
those processes
I'm definitely looking at a career
in the policy or the public sector
It's been an incredibly useful degree
in terms of giving you that opportunity to
look at things a little bit more broadly
and understand perhaps
the value of what we do.
