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”.
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