My Life Story 1- University

After school, I went straight to UCL to study maths. It was a great four years; most (though not all) of the courses were really interesting*, UCL turned out to be a great university (very friendly and lots going on), and I still can't think of a better place to be than London. It was more by chance than design that it worked out well though- I spent ages in the sixth form dithering over whether to go for maths or obscure languages (I was quite tempted by Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic, or Oriental languages- for some reason I never considered more standard choices such as French, even though I was doing French A-level at that point). In the end I decided maths was the best choice as it would be easier to keep up the languages I'd learned at school in my spare time than to study maths**, and I might even manage to learn new ones if I wanted to badly enough. I dropped French A-level (without regret as I had a personality clash with one of the teachers***) in order to take up AS Mechanics, and never looked back.****

So then came the really hard part, choosing the university. I asked my dad and my teachers where was good for maths, and got a list of ten or fifteen places. Not all of these would fit on the form we got given which let you order up a certain number of university prospectuses, and I'm afraid the ones that didn't make it were a random selection after I'd put down the places I was definitely interested in. I got back all the prospectuses and read them and looked at the photos and still didn't feel much further on. At this point my definite thoughts on the subject could be summarised as 1) I could see a distinction (in reputation and in concept) between Oxbridge and the rest- though I was a bit ambivalent about Oxbridge and wasn't sure whether I wanted to apply- and 2) I knew that I didn't want to go to Oxford as what with going to school there and meeting my friends there most weekends for a night out I rather felt I'd had enough of the town for several years and quite possibly for a lifetime. After much deliberation I did decide to apply to Cambridge- after all I didn't have to make it my firm choice even if I got an offer, and I also put down Warwick because of its reputation and because they had Ian Stewart and I'd read some of his popular science books. The other four places (Imperial, UCL, York, Bristol) were chosen without too much rationale, though the lure of London probably did influence my putting down the first two.

I'm not quite sure why at this point I hadn't gone on any open days, except a Women in Maths day at UCL which wasn't an open day as such but also involved getting to see the college in passing (and was another reason I put UCL on the Ucas form), though it was probably something to do with not being a dynamic and motivated individual who always thinks one step ahead (despite the best efforts of the Head of Sixth Form to form all of us in that mold). On the other hand, there's a limit to how many open days you can go to without the school starting to make objections, since they have them on weekdays in term time, so I suppose even if I had gone to some it wouldn't have been enough to make it the basis for selection or not of all the places I was considering. But in the course of the application process I did at least get to visit the ones on my Ucas form- some of them because I was asked to interview there, and some because even though their policy was to make an offer without interview they invited candidates to come and have a look round anyway. The visits would have been quite a bit more fun if none of them had involved interviews and if their purpose was not to help in a decision that felt like it had the power to make or break the rest of my life- four years seeming then like quite a long time- but in spite of all that I did enjoy them, and they definitely helped me to make the next big decision. For example, even though Imperial was the only one of the six to pay for the prospective students' lunches, it went right to the bottom of my list because it seemed really unfriendly, whilst UCL, being the friendliest by far, got quite a few brownie points. Though I hasten to add I wasn't just going on friendliness...

In the end, with offers from all of them, I did choose Cambridge for my firm offer. This was probably mostly because of the reputation and the feeling that a degree from there would be better regarded; a small contributing factor may have been that my interviewer at UCL, after asking about the other places I'd applied and my intentions toward them, spent at least half of the interview trying to persuade me that it would be best for me to choose Cambridge (several years later I found out that he'd left UCL for Cambridge shortly afterwards- so probably wasn't feeling too much loyalty to UCL at that point). Certainly the place itself didn't appeal much- it was even smaller than Oxford and very grey. In fact a part of me was rather worried that I wouldn't be happy there, but it was a fairly subconscious part so didn't stop me choosing it. The insurance offer was harder- though tempted by London, Warwick was my second favourite- being a campus university, it conformed to the picture in my mind of What A University Should Be Like, and of course it had the prestigious maths department with Ian Stewart. But it didn't make a good insurance offer because it only differed from Cambridge in wanting lower STEP paper grades (and one less of them). I did try arguing to myself that the STEP papers were what I was having trouble with (for the first few months of attempting practice papers they seemed absolutely impossible) and that that was where if anywhere I would slip up. But even I could see it wasn't sensible and I went for UCL- partly because it was my third choice and partly because they had given me an offer of two Es and thus nobody could say it didn't make a very good insurance offer indeed. (They had a policy at that time, since stopped, of giving two E offers to applicants who were likely to put Oxbridge down as a firm choice, in the hope that UCL would become the applicant's insurance and would then get those students who were basically talented but fluffed up their A-levels)

And it was just as well that I did. In spite of my predictions about the STEP papers, I actually got the required grades for those, and it was my A-levels that were the problem. Specifically, and rather embarrassingly, the one in question was the Maths A-level. I actually got the grades Cambridge asked for, AAB and an A in AS Mechanics, but because they specified that one of the As had to be in Maths, I didn't make the offer. Most of the other offers also specified an A in maths, so it was fortunate that I had gone with UCL for my insurance. Of course, even though AAB and an A at AS are still very good grades, I was upset because being rejected by Cambridge felt like failing. But the silver lining was that at least I was off to London which was a lot more appealing than Cambridge as a place to live. And the first few weeks were so hectic and I was so busy adjusting that I didn't really think about it much until quite a way into the term- by which point I could say to myself that if I had gone to Cambridge I wouldn't have met any of my new friends, which would have been a shame. By Christmas I was enjoying UCL so much that I was even able to see missing the grade as possibly a wholly good thing. Now, I'm sure of it. UCL also has a very good reputation, but more importantly, I don't think there's a university or a town/city that I would have been as happy in. I can see now that I wouldn't have enjoyed Cambridge (the place mostly but probably also the academic side), and I don't think I'd have liked Warwick much either. So that's how I ended up with four great years!


*Graph Theory and Combinatorics, Computational Methods [Fortran programming], Linear Programming, and Algebraic Number Theory were the best; some mistakes I made in choosing were Mathematics in Biology, Logic and Algebra 4; other (compulsory) courses that I wasn't so keen on were Methods and Fluid Dynamics.

**And indeed I have continued with my French; my speaking, writing and listening are still about GCSE level as I haven't had much chance to practice, but I've worked my way up gradually from very easy books via Tintin and Le Petit Nicolas to proper French novels and am happy to report that my reading is now practically fluent. Not to boast, or anything, you know, just thought I'd mention it. As an example of how I was right about that. Oh, never mind.

***Among other odious habits she used to refer to any other student in the same year as 'your little friend'- admittedly, being French, English was not her first language but still. Beyond the pale.

****I'm not sure why all the asterisks are in the first paragraph. It would make more sense to have them in the last paragraph where there wouldn't be so much scrolling- but I didn't have anything extra to say there :)