CamDATA: course information and statistics
The structure of undergraduate courses at the University of Cambridge
Undergraduate courses at Cambridge last at least three years. All subjects studied lead to a single degree, the Bachelor of Arts. When you graduate, providing you pass the necessary examinations, you will be awarded a BA Hons. (Cantab.). In some engineering and science subjects, you can study for a fourth year and obtain a second degree in addition to your BA; these integrated masters courses lead to either a Master of Natural Sciences (MSci) or Master of Engineering (MEng).
On this page you can find information about:
The Tripos system
All Cambridge courses are assessed through examinations in broad subject areas called Triposes. Each Tripos is divided into one or more Parts and you need to complete a number of Parts in one or more Triposes to qualify for the B.A. degree. The table below illustrates the different ways in which Triposes are divided into Parts; there are some restrictions on how you can combine Parts together to make your degree. Most students choose to study all the Parts in a single Tripos but this is not always the case; some Triposes (e.g. Chemical Engineering, Linguistics) are only available from your second or third year at Cambridge.
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What you will graduate with
No official class is assigned to overall degree issued by the University of Cambridge. Instead, each Part of a Tripos is self-contained and you obtain separate results for each one: there is no averaging out for a final degree. You may have heard the phrase "a double first", which means that a first class was achieved in two sets of examinations corresponding to two different Parts of Triposes.
Also, your degree certificate will not state the subject(s) that you have studied: the degree you receive is the BA degree. You do not, for example, get a BA in History but you could take a Part I in the Historical Tripos and a Part II in the Historical Tripos and thus qualify for the BA degree. The University will provide you with a comprehensive transcript listing the papers you took and the results obtained to supplement your degree certificate.