University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a collegiate public research university in Cambridge, England, about 50 miles north of London. It grew out of a community of scholars who left Oxford in 1209. Its structure is collegiate: 31 self-governing colleges admit students, house them and provide small-group teaching. The central university sets examinations, awards degrees and runs the departments and laboratories.

Academic work is divided into six schools: Arts and Humanities, Humanities and Social Sciences, Biological Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Physical Sciences, and Technology. Cambridge is best known for mathematics, the natural sciences, engineering, medicine and history. Graduate researchers work in the Cavendish Laboratory and on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, which holds Addenbrooke's Hospital and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Other key resources are the Judge Business School, the legal-deposit University Library and Cambridge University Press.

The university enrolls about 24,000 students, and roughly 10,000 of them are postgraduates. Students come from more than 140 countries, and international students make up a majority of the postgraduate body. More than 100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Cambridge as students or staff. Alumni include Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Alan Turing.

Doctoral students take a PhD over three to four years under a principal supervisor. Taught and research master's degrees include the MPhil, MRes, LLM, MBA and Part III, the one-year Master of Advanced Study in mathematics. Every postgraduate belongs to a college, and Darwin, Wolfson, Clare Hall, Hughes Hall and St Edmund's admit mainly graduate or mature students. The year runs in three eight-week terms: Michaelmas, Lent and Easter. Funding comes from Gates Cambridge Scholarships, the Cambridge Trust, UKRI doctoral training partnerships and college awards. The cluster of technology and life sciences firms around the city, known as Silicon Fen, provides industry links.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, University of Cambridge lists 317 graduate programs across 46 subjects: 191 master's programs and 121 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, health & medical sciences and area studies. University of Cambridge holds rank 7 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.