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Even the most academically able can find moving from school to university to be a significant transition and adjustment. At ������, support is in place from Transition and Participation Advisor .

Katharine, a Teaching Associate at Caius, has experience in teaching on either side of the school to university transition: she has taught in secondary schools for more than 20 years and she has taught in University of Cambridge colleges for nine years. Teaching in both sectors concurrently helps Katharine support Caius undergraduates in making the school to university transition more smoothly. 

“I've become interested in the school to university transition, and in particular how the habits that are typically embedded at school often need to be reshaped, sometimes in quite a dramatic way, in order to thrive and get the best from a Cambridge degree,” she says. 

“Regardless of background, and the different cultures within different schools, A-Level or IB teaching is necessarily very prescriptive as marking requirements are very directive and rigid. When students start here, there’s going to be a lot more latitude and a need to think for themselves. In addition, they’re probably going to sit at a level of achievement that feels proportionally lower than at school: they’re used to being at the top of their class. It’s unlikely they’re going to have an experience that matches that feeling in their first few supervisions. Recalibrating around this different environment can be difficult.” 

The differences between school and university are not just a matter of different or harder subject content. Students have greater freedom in deciding how much time to spend on a task or assignment. 

“There has to be a degree of prioritisation about what a student is going to engage with and to what extent,” she adds. “People need to start to make decisions according to their own priorities and the types of work which offer them the greatest intellectual challenge and reward.” 

There is also the question of whether students feel able to finish all the assigned work in the way they were used to at school: at the start of their degree, many students have to get used to the feeling of handing in something incomplete or which feels full of potential mistakes. 

Katharine adds: “One of the exciting things about being here is you get a chance to be wrong – that’s a fundamental shift. It’s actually really exciting but it doesn’t always feel that way at first because at school all the focus is on getting things right. Realising that you might be wrong is exciting because you have to think much more deeply about things: that’s the value of the supervision system. You get to turn up, find the things that you don’t understand properly yet and then see how to move forwards with them. This is very different from – and much better than – a teacher just telling you the answer in advance.”

Caius students have pastoral support led by their Tutors, academic support from their Director of Studies, and the option to seek support from Academic Skills Advisors (see ) and Katharine. This means there is a range of ways for students to find the support they might need. 

Katharine says: “It's important within any support structure for there to be overlaps, because the basic process of listening and helping someone understand the situation better, that's something which anyone involved in supportive structures is going to do.” 

Why and when might students seek support? Katharine says: “It's a very personal choice. Different students will want to navigate the unfamiliarity of a new terrain in different ways. But I think the best advice I could give is that anyone who feels like they don't fit academically or who feels that they are adrift or that they are in a situation which is so unfamiliar that they just don't know where to go next… I would say the sooner that person talks about that with someone the better.”

:: Caius students seeking to speak to Katharine should visit The Venn (College intranet; password protected) for more information