There’s a particularly good display this year in the Selwyn gardens, with the Victorian-style border a great showpiece in the lower College garden. This is accessible to everyone in the College and to visitors. Our photographs show some of the highlights, with guidance on the plants from our head gardener Paul Gallant – who, with his team, is responsible for one of the most attractive gardens in Cambridge.

The first picture shows the Victorian border looking back towards the College and F Staircase – with 2 banana trees (Musa basjoo) that survived the winter, and the Incense Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) behind on the left.

Next, a fine seasonal display of dahlias – mostly of the Collarette variety, with begonias in front and miscanthus sinensis at the back.

Our homepage picture, also below, shows the serpentine path in the border looking South. It’s edged with Ophiopogon, with Windmill Palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) on the left and a green canopy of banana on the right. This border is planted with unusual annuals and tender perennials.

Then we can see the path again, this time looking North. Japanese sweetcorn (Zea mays japonica) and 80 Canna lilies give this border height and structure. It is interspersed with abutilons, castor oil plants, rudbeckia and salvia.

Our final photo is a view of the Victorian-style border from Old Court – showing the Trachycarpus, self-set sunflowers, dahlias and bananas at either end.

To visit the gardens, please see our College Plan: http://www.sel.cam.ac.uk/selwyn-college/college-plan/, or ask for directions at the Porters’ Lodge.

Photographs by Howard Beaumont, summer 2014.

If you’re holding a conditional offer of a place at Selwyn College and have met all the conditions in your offer and have the grades required, congratulations! A letter is in the post to you.

If you haven’t quite met the offer, please be patient for a little while: we will be in touch with you as soon as we can. If you’ve missed an A* offer, please ensure that you (or your school) provide us with details of your UMS results as quickly as possible to our email address or fax number (as in the letter sent in April).

If you’re not holding an offer from us, we regret that all of our places for 2014 have now been filled. Please do not contact the College.

Selwyn College, like all the Colleges of Cambridge University, does not participate in the consideration of adjustment applications or clearing. If your examination results are much better than expected and you wish to try for a place at Cambridge, the only option is to apply in the next admissions cycle for entry in October 2015.

There is more information from the University at http://www.study.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/apply/whatnext.html.

There’s been a major step towards a new boathouse for Selwyn. Cambridge City Council granted planning permission on Wednesday August 6^th for the building illustrated in our computer-generated image (courtesy of rh partnership). The boathouse will be shared, as is currently the case, with Churchill, King’s and the Leys School; and design work will now be finalised, with construction beginning as soon as is practically possible. It’s hoped to complete construction in under a year, but some disruption to the 2015 rowing season may be unavoidable. However, future generations of Selwyn rowers will benefit from the new facilities.

Below is a photograph of Selwyn’s Freshmen of 1913: the young men who arrived at the College 101 years ago. They would have been just as excited about starting their University life as generations of students before and since, and with the same ambitions and hopes for the future. In that autumn nobody could have imagined the scale of the horror that lay ahead.

 

Of the 32 undergraduates who started at Selwyn in 1913, eight were to die in the Great War which started on the 4th of August 1914. There were 29 new students in Michaelmas Term 1914, and five of those would lose their lives in the conflict. Every year at the College’s Remembrance Day service, the shockingly long list of all Selwyn’s fallen in the First World War is read out.

 

On Monday August 4th at 10pm, a single candle was lit in front of the war memorial. It illuminated the names of those remembered there – and was a sign of our commitment that, even as the centuries pass, they will never be forgotten.

Selwyn features prominently in two new videos made about admission interviews for Cambridge University. Two Selwyn Fellows – Mike Sewell and Amer Rana – are quoted in The Times about the launch of the videos, which are an attempt to demystify the admissions system and particularly the role of the interview.

Dr Sewell tells the newspaper: “We are not looking for the perfect performance but a thoughtful academic response to technical subject-related questions. If stumbles occur, this isn’t failure, it is an indication of a student who is willing and capable to learn and to persevere when it isn’t easy… The films will, we hope, take the mystery out of this aspect of our admissions process and reassure students about what interviews involve.”

You can read the full Times article (subscription required) at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article4158447.ece

There is also a report in the Cambridge News: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Cambridge-University-to-release-videos-of-their-renowned-fearsome-interview-process-for-the-first-time-20140727134855.htm and an item on the University website: http://www.cam.ac.uk/news/new-films-offer-a-glimpse-inside-the-interview-room

The videos include other Selwyn faces: Senior Tutor James Keeler and Porter Rosie Hellon. They can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S4rTLibYQw&feature=youtu.be and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUwN6GI-0EQ&feature=youtu.be

Our picture shows Year 10 students from Saffron Walden County High School lined up on the steps of Selwyn’s Hall on the way into lunch. They were here this month to find out about the ambitious choices they can make for their university careers.

Visits like this happen year-round, but June and July are particularly busy times for those involved in admissions. The Open Days at the beginning of July are always a high point. This year we welcomed over a thousand visitors to Selwyn as participants in the College Open Days or as ‘drop-in’ visitors who came by as part of their trip to the University’s concurrent event. Thirsty, sometimes footsore but still enthusiastic visitors were provided with refreshing drinks as well as being given tours of the College by current students and having the chance to speak to the Admissions Tutors, Admissions Secretary and Schools Liaison Officer.

We have hosted numerous other visits by schools and individuals wishing to find out more about us and about Cambridge – such as a group of more than 60 sixth-formers from schools across Leeds and Wakefield – as well as going out to speak in schools across the country. A particular highlight was the second set of HE+ master-classes for the consortium of schools and colleges based in Calderdale and Kirklees, hosted at Greenhead College in Huddersfield. A dozen Fellows visited Yorkshire in March and three more, including the Master, went at the start of July. This year, over three hundred students from the six schools and colleges in the consortium are involved in the partnership, which we lead for the University. The school students take part in a mix of ‘extension classes’ to stretch them academically beyond the sixth-form curriculum as well as getting advice about University applications generally and Cambridge-specific information.

The teacher co-ordinators from HE+ came to Selwyn this year for their annual meeting (pictured below) with their partner Colleges and the University Admissions Office. You can read more about HE+ at  http://www.myheplus.com/.

Typical comments from our visitors covered how beautiful the College looks, the excellence of the facilities and the quality of the catering. One of our visitors wrote to Ellen Slack, our Schools Liaison Officer, after the trip to say "I just wanted to thank you again for such a great day and to feedback what myself and my friends thought of Cambridge. We were completely overwhelmed by how beautiful and exciting the whole university was. We loved visiting the colleges and were so grateful for everything you arranged and provided for us. It was such a privilege so visit Selwyn College and see the outstanding facilities and gardens across the city. I was motivated before, but now I am completely determined to do everything I can to be a Cambridge student!"

After a lull for the summer holidays the visits and trips will begin again, including a two-day interviews workshop visit to Scotland. If you or your school would like to arrange a visit, please contact the admissions office. And keep an eye out for more details of our next Open Day on September 20th.

The Master of Selwyn, Roger Mosey, has been meeting former students of Selwyn College and of Cambridge University now living in East Asia.

After an event with alumni and friends in Tokyo (story at http://www.sel.cam.ac.uk/news-selwyn/#July 15), he visited Hong Kong for a drinks reception and dinner. Our picture shows Roger (centre) accompanied by Development Officer Andrew Flather (second left) with guests at the reception.

The Hong Kong events were kindly hosted by Selwyn alumnus, Sir David Li (below, right). He attended Selwyn from 1961, and is now chairman of the Bank of East Asia as well as being a well-known figure in Hong Kong public life.

Speaking in Hong Kong, Roger Mosey said: “We like to say that Selwyn is a community that exists for you throughout your life. We know people see it as a source of enduring friendship and inspiration. Events like this remind us that the Selwyn community extends around the world, too. It’s wonderful to meet alumni in Japan and Hong Kong, and for me as a new Master to establish personal contact. We want to build on that, and to develop our use of new technology and social media, to ensure that former students can keep in touch with everything that’s going on at Selwyn – and, just as importantly, stay in contact with each other.”

Selwyn alumni and friends in Tokyo had dinner with the Master, Roger Mosey, this week during his visit to the Far East.

Roger has been speaking to staff at NHK, the Japanese national broadcaster, about coverage of Olympic Games – with Tokyo now chosen as the host city for 2020. But there was a chance for former students living in Japan to meet him and each other for a relaxed conversation about Selwyn past and future.

 

Our picture shows:

Back row: Shokyu Minamoto; Sven Palys; Anthony Head; Jun Kanda. Front row: Motoyasu Yamazaki; Tatsuko Yamazaki; Roger Mosey; Peter MacInnes; Amy Selwyn (broadcasting consultant).

Selwyn had a hard-fought victory over Manchester University in the first edition of the new series of University Challenge, shown on BBC Two on Monday, July 14th.

The lead changed hands a number of times during a close contest, but Selwyn moved ahead in the final stages to make it into the 2nd round of the competition. The score was 190-160.

 

The team, pictured with quizmaster Jeremy Paxman, is from left to right: Afham Raoof, a first-year scientist; Hannah Warwicker, a second-year classicist; team captain Joshua Pugh Ginn, who’s in the second year of a PhD in Classics; and Charles Cooper, a second-year scientist. Their average age, as announced on the programme, is 20.

The University of Manchester are past champions with a tremendous reputation on University Challenge: winners in 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2013. Joshua Pugh Ginn described it ahead of the game as "a tough draw"; and Selwyn had lost by a big margin to Manchester in their last appearance on the programme.

University Challenge is usually the most-watched programme of the week on BBC Two, with around 3 million viewers per episode.

 

Selwyn’s Choir has received a 4-star review in The Times newspaper for its performance of Rachmaninov’s Vespers “All Night Vigil”. The concert was given as part of the City of London Festival at the Church of St Bartholomew the Great in East London.

 

Neil Fisher’s review (extract) said the choir director Sarah MacDonald had “led a beautifully sustained performance in which intonation remained secure — no mean feat — and the blend of voices was cool, elegant and textually responsive. Selwyn doesn’t have the gravelly Russian basses Rachmaninov probably imagined singing the low B-flats (don’t students smoke fancy French cigarettes any more?) but the particularly resonant solo alto brought a velvety gravitas to the proceedings. This is another classy choral outfit to add to the more established names on the Oxbridge roster.”

 

You can read the full review here (note The Times online is a subscription service): http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/music/classical/article4143987.ece