Guide to Subjects at Clare

The information pages available here have been written by the College’s Directors of Studies. They are intended both to convey general information about the structure of the course, and to give an indication about teaching arrangements and approaches within Clare. If you would like more details, please contact the Admissions Office for help, or come to an Open Day.

Most candidates applying to Cambridge do so to a particular College, except for those who wish to make an open application. Thus, it is the Colleges that actually admit all undergraduates. In addition, the Colleges provide most students with their accommodation, meals, pastoral care and immediate social life. The College Director of Studies for each subject also arranges for each student the small-group teaching that is a distinctive feature of Cambridge academic life, and is known as the ‘Supervision system’.

However, the broad structure of academic life in each subject - course content, lectures, practicals and examinations - is arranged centrally, by the Faculties and Departments. Thus all undergraduates in the same subject take the same course whatever their College. The information sections below are intended to supplement what is said in the Cambridge Undergraduate Prospectus about each subject, and where possible to give a sense of Clare Directors of Studies’ particular interests and approaches to the teaching of their subject in Clare.

Finally, it is important to stress that while the majority of undergraduate read just one subject over their three or four year courses, a good number choose to take advantage of the flexibility of the Cambridge course structure to change to a new subject after one or two years. If you are interested in more than one subject, you should consult the more detailed Cambridge Undergraduate Prospectus, in which each subject entry has details of potential changes in and out of that subject.

The following subjects are covered: