Cambridge University - Student Life

Housing: Most students live in college or college hostels. Students living out tend to congregate in the Chesterton Road or Mill Road areas.

Eats: College food varies from the survivable to the quite good (meal for £3+); most cater well for vegetarians. Good late night kebabs - Gardenia on Rose Crescent or the 'death van' on Market Square (or try Mill Road). Plenty of standard restaurant chains in town - pizza and curry well represented; also some good restaurants around like Chez Gerard and Cafe Parisa (£20).

Drink: College bars are popular, cheap and numerous. Good pubs include the Maypole, Bath Ale House, The Mill, Eagle (more expensive), King Street pubs. Out of town try the Wrestlers on the Newmarket Road, or the Rupert Brooke in nearby Granchester.

Nightlife: University venues numerous and increasingly sophisticated; Corn Exchange and the Junction see most tours (Lightning Seeds, League of Gentlemen etc), major bands at May Balls. Arts Cinema is excellent. Footlight comedians amongst other groups put on regular shows. Loads of theatre (about 40 student plays each term). Good, very large LesBiGay group.

Locals: Average.

Sports: Most colleges have own sports facilities - 20 boathouses in Cambridge and as many rugby pitches. University-wide teams numerous and good.

Travel: Most colleges have funds - ask your tutor. Financial help: Funds, including access funds, available on university-wide basis (over £1 million available) eg Isaac Newton Bursary fund. College assistance in certain cases, too.

Jobs: Under 5% have jobs (mainly in pubs and shops - average £4 per hour). Work around Cambridge possible in (relatively long) holidays eg fruit-packing, teaching in language schools and tutorial colleges, colleges, punting tourists in summer, college kitchens.

Cambridge speak: Buttery (college restaurant); bedders (men/women who clean up for you and make beds); sets (set of rooms, usually 1 or 2 bedrooms and sitting room); Fellows (teaching staff of a college); JCR (Junior Common Room - undergraduate or junior members of a college), SCR (ditto but Senior ie fellows); supervision (tutorial); Hall (college dining room and sometimes refers to evening meal in college, often formal); Courts (quads in college); SPS (social and political sciences course); Tompkins table (league table of colleges).

Best features: Loads of stuff going on.

And worst: Claustrophobic. More info? Get Alternative Prospectus from Cambridge University Students' Union, Tel 01223 356454, Fax 01223 323244, email info@cusu.cam.ac.uk

Past students: Milton, Charles Darwin, Dame Frances Dove, Marlowe, Coleridge, Ethel Sargat (research botanist), Rupert Brooke, Keynes, Pepys, Erasmus, William Wilberforce, Isaac Newton, Byron, Constance Herschell (chemist), John Cleese, the Spies, Mary Archer, Pitt the Younger, Margaret Drabble, A A Milne, Miriam Margolies, Joan Bakewell, Rajiv Gandhi, Lord Mountbatten, Bertrand Russell, EM Forster, Sylvia Plath, Griff Rhys Jones, Graham Greene, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Clive James, Germaine Greer, Shirley Williams, David Attenborough, Diane Abbot, Brian Redhead, Carol Vorderman, David Baddiel, Jeremy Paxman, Sandi Toksvig, Ian McKellen, Baroness Warnock, Phillipa Pearce and Tristan Jones.