News Articles

The artist Monika Beisner visited the College on Tuesday October 27^th to show her spectacularly beautiful illustrations of Dante’s ‘Paradise’. There was also a round-table discussion between the artist and Cambridge Dante scholars Robin Kirkpatrick, Heather Webb and Katherine Powlesland. Professor Kirkpatrick read from his Penguin Classics translation of Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. The event attracted a large attendance, and our photograph shows Ms Beisner (left) with Selwyn Fellow and Italian specialist Dr Heather Webb.

The Master of Selwyn, Roger Mosey, was interviewed by John Humphrys of the Today programme at an
event in London on Tuesday October 20^th. The session covered Roger’s recent book about the BBC,
’Getting Out Alive’. It took place at Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly, and a number of Selwyn
alumni came along. The author’s proceeds from book sales are being donated to student support at
the College.

Marcos Gallego Llorente (SE 2013) has, as part of his PhD research, helped to lead a pioneering project into the genetic history of humans in Africa. This is the first time a complete assemblage of DNA has been retrieved from an ancient human in Africa and the paper, which was published in ‘Science’, has already garnered significant interest in the scientific community and more widely. Congratulations to Marcos and his colleagues on the success of their research. There’s more about it at

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/ancient-genome-from-africa-sequenced-for-the-first-time

Selwyn’s new undergraduate and graduate students have been formally admitted to the College and to the University of Cambridge. The matriculation ceremonies took place on Friday October 2^nd and Monday October 5^th, and they were followed by the traditional photograph in Old Court. After the glorious autumn weather of the weekend which greeted our students, the pictures were taken in rather gloomier weather – but the rain held off. We wish all our new students success in their studies and in their new life here at Selwyn.

You can see a range of photographs from undergraduate matriculation day at https://www.flickr.com/photos/selalum/sets/72157659507200591

The latest edition of Selwyn magazine includes the story of Jon Reynolds (pictured), who started as a student at Selwyn in 2004, and his role in one of the leading technology start-ups in Europe. Along with Joe Braidwood (also SE 2004), he developed SwiftKey – the app that helps your smartphone keyboard to become more intuitive and intelligent. SwiftKey is now available on an estimated half a billion phones worldwide, and the company has 150 employees in London, San Francisco, Seoul, Hong Kong and New Delhi. Other Selwynites from the 2004 year group have played a major role, including Joe Osborne, Chris Carr and Alex Nixon.

To read more about SwiftKey, including how it has supported Professor Stephen Hawking’s speech technology, have a look at our newsletter online at http://www.selwynalumni.com/publications.

The new edition of the “Selwyn” magazine includes the latest news from the college, and items about the activities of alumni at home and abroad. Its cover story features the work of Joanne Beale (SE 2005) who is working to improve water supplies, hygiene and sanitation in Mozambique. She is there with her husband Andrew Beale (also SE 2005) who is mentoring academics and researchers in the country.

Joanne tells us about the battle to reduce the terrible child mortality rates in Mozambique; and how she harnesses the leadership of local volunteers to get out the message about health standards and the importance of clean water. The project has been supported in recent months by donations from those attending Selwyn Chapel. Our homepage photo shows one of the simple taps that are being installed near to latrines to improve hygiene; and Joanne is pictured below advising people how to put right a pump that had not been working for 15 years.

Elsewhere in the newsletter, the subjects include the legal battle around the WikiLeaks disclosures by Edward Snowden; the quest for new generation lighting; and the Selwynites who are transforming the way we write on mobile devices. Paper copies are currently being distributed, or you can read the magazine online here along with our other publications:

http://www.selwynalumni.com/publications

Selwynites played a key role in new research about the earliest example of reproduction in a complex organism. The work was led by Emily Mitchell with Charlotte Kenchington, who are both members of the College and have studied for their doctorates in Professor Nick Butterfield’s research group.

The Cambridge research has found that some organisms known as rangeomorphs, which lived 565 million years ago, reproduced by taking a joint approach: they first sent out an ‘advance party’ to settle in a new area, followed by rapid colonisation of the new neighbourhood. The results, reported this summer in the journal ‘Nature’, could help in revealing the origins of our modern marine environment. The full details can be read here: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/earliest-evidence-of-reproduction-in-a-complex-organism.

Our homepage photo shows Emily Mitchell mapping out the fossils on Mistaken Point in Newfoundland, Canada. She is holding a GPS receiver, which logs the 3D fossil position to millimetre accuracy. Emily tells us: “In order to get this accuracy I had to set up a GPS transmitter on the headland overlooking the bedding plane. It’s a rather deceptive photograph in that it is very sunny - most of the time the fossils are barely visible due to a thick blanket of fog!”

Nick Butterfield, who is a Selwyn Fellow as well as a professor in the University’s Earth Sciences department, believes that the key to the project was Emily’s background in mathematics and quantitative ecology, while Charlotte is an experienced geologist and palaeontologist. Pictured below is Charlotte Kenchington with Jack Matthews and Alex Liu (from Oxford and Bristol Universities respectively) who were co-authors on the study.

As another Admissions process draws to a close, Admissions Tutor (Arts and Social Sciences) Dr Mike Sewell writes about what happened at Selwyn in 2014-15:

On the October 15th 2014 deadline for applications we had 425 students seeking admission to Selwyn. To these were shortly added 66 further applicants from the group who had made Open Applications to the University in general rather than to a specific College. These are then allocated to Colleges by an algorithm that takes into consideration historic patterns of applications and acceptances to a College by subject, and the particular year's spread of applicants around the Colleges.

392 of our 491 applicants were interviewed in Cambridge, or via Skype or by one of the groups of interviewers the Colleges send overseas. By the end of last winter's application process we had made 139 offers - of which 33 were to students who hadn't been accepted by their first-choice College and had been placed in the University-wide 'pool'. 24 students who'd made Selwyn their first choice but lost out in competitive fields were able to secure other Cambridge places by the same route. Amongst students taking A Levels, the gathered field averaged 90.5% UMS across their best three subjects. Those to whom we made offers averaged 94.5%. Those whom we had not interviewed averaged just below 84%. Those taken through the pool averaged almost exactly the same as those first-preference applicants receiving offers. It is, of course, important to note that these averages are just that, and that there is no benchmark that determines an outcome.

Daily life in the Admissions Office becomes less busy from January to July but does not completely stop. We lost 1 offer-holder who decided not to take up their Cambridge offer. Other correspondence included early warning of students experiencing disruption to their studies around exam time (usually not to the detriment of their final grades as it turned out), and also our annual request that anyone who just missed an offer should send us their detailed results as quickly as possible on the Thursday when A Level results are published.

Results Day is one of the most hectic of our year. Phone, fax and email communication is exchanged with the small number of applicants who have missed offers and with their schools. The majority of those missing offers are for Maths, a subject where, like all Colleges, we use STEP to help us differentiate amongst students all of whom achieve very highly in their mainstream examinations. One of our key messages is that extensive research shows us that STEP is a far better predictor even than numerous A* grades of how a student is likely to fare in the Mathematical Tripos.

After A Level Thursday comes the 'Summer Pool'. Here we can compare our students who have narrowly missed offers with those who have done so at other Colleges. Through this process in 2015 we gained 9 students and 3 of ours were taken by other Colleges.

Of our 116 incoming students, 69% of those from the UK hail from state schools with the remainder from independent schools. That is almost identical to the respective proportions of applications. Of those taking A Levels the average number of A* grades per head was around 2.75, confirming, if proof were needed, what a talented group the incoming first years are.

Some of the news stories about our applicants' successes also suggest the high esteem in which they are held by those who have taught them.

You can read about some of our new students on these newspaper or school websites:

http://www.windsorobserver.co.uk/news/13594338.A_level_results__Furze_Platt_Senior_School/ http://www.sandwellacademy.com/news/612/sandwell-academy-star-student-road-cambridge.aspx http://www.bucksherald.co.uk/news/more-news/twins-both-land-cambridge-place-studying-same-subject-1-6912809

We'll look forward to welcoming all of them in October.

Selwyn College has hosted a group of 35 high-achieving Year 12s from state schools in West Yorkshire, East Berkshire and Scotland who visited Cambridge to learn more about the university, and experience what life as a student will be like.

The summer school forms part of the college’s widening participation activities, designed to encourage applicants from a wide range of backgrounds to consider applying to university. Cambridge’s outreach work extends across the UK thanks to its Area Links scheme http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/colleges/area-links, which gives schools and colleges a direct contact with the university. Schools Liaison Officers and Admissions Tutors for each college engage with countless state school students and teachers throughout the year.

Selwyn’s annual summer school is for students interested in the sciences, and it’s supported by the Longley Fund. The students were welcomed by Dr James Keeler, a Selwyn admissions tutor and director of teaching within the Chemistry Department. Dr Keeler said “We were delighted to have such an energetic and enthusiastic group of students on the summer school. Everyone was really involved in the activities, and we hope that they were able to get a good sense of what living and studying at university will be like”.

This year’s summer school featured four strands: Chemistry, Biology, Physics and Engineering. Students stayed in college for three nights, and completed a demanding academic programme, as well as having time for socialising. Students on the Chemistry strand spent a morning exploring topics at university level, and then went into the laboratory to complete a practical investigation. Biology students spent the morning learning about nerves and then putting this into practice by using special apparatus to stimulate the nerves in their own arms. Those on the Physics strand did some experimental work on diffraction, followed by a tour of the Lord’s Bridge Radio Astronomy Observatory. The Engineers had a morning competing with one another in making bridges from a kit of parts, and in the afternoon had a crash course in coding and used these skills to program a simple robot. Janey Gregory, a student at Heckmondwike Grammar School said “it was interesting to work in a university lab and use equipment I had never used before”.

The residential stay drew to a close with a talk from Dr Keeler about how to make a competitive application to selective universities. There was also time for two lectures by leading researchers at the university: one by Selwyn’s Dr Amer Rana entitled “Mending broken hearts with personalised stem cells”, and one on Climate Change by Professor Rod Jones. Heather Hudson, a student at Benton Park School said, “I feel that Cambridge is more achievable for me than I thought and I have a different opinion of it than before”.

The Selwyn choir is enjoying chart success with its latest CD. "Eternal Ecstasy" has risen to number 8 in the official specialist classical chart, which can be viewed here:

http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/specialist-classical-chart/

The CD was recently chosen as Album of the Week on Classic FM. The radio station's website said:

"The music is as timeless, spacious, and rapturous as you would hope for. The performances by the choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge are sublime, and the recording captures them in all their glory, helped by the incomparable acoustics of the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral." You can purchase the CD here: http://www.regent-records.co.uk/product_details_307.htm

"Eternal Ecstasy" was launched on the Selwyn choir's July tour of the Pacific Northwest. All four of their concerts received standing ovations from packed audiences.

The Selwyn choir's concert in Victoria, British Columbia