St John’s College, Cambridge, is inviting UK students to enter its 2025 Academic Poster Competition – a super-curricular opportunity for sixth-formers who are aiming to submit competitive undergraduate applications this year.
Academic posters are a visual way to clearly communicate research, projects or literature reviews using text, images and diagrams.
To enter, students must research an academic topic or question of their choice and create an A3 research poster exploring the theme ‘Imitation’.
Posters should be visually engaging and clearly explain the research questions and findings using text, images, and diagrams. A bibliography is also required.
Each poster entry will be judged by our academics in the relevant subject areas.
Entrants will receive personal feedback in September and the students who created the top posters will win National Book Tokens.
You need to submit your entry (poster and bibliography) by 4pm on Monday 4 August 2025.
*See further below for eligibility criteria and submission guidelines.
We will be running optional drop-in sessions via Zoom in July for poster competition entrants to ask questions and seek guidance with their projects.
Sign up to one of our competition Zoom sessions
Watch our helpful video with Janet Chow, Academic Services Librarian at St John’s College: Research: Where to start?
Learn about academic research skills such as referencing, effective academic reading, and note-making in the University’s CamGuides for Undergraduates
Get ideas for exploring your academic subject outside the classroom with these ‘super-curricular suggestions’ from the University of Cambridge
Cambridge Digital Library – a database of digitised research and material from Cambridge.
Apollo – University of Cambridge Repository.
BioMed Central – journals in biomedicine, physical sciences, mathematics and engineering.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) – peer-reviewed journals in all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and humanities.
JSTOR – platform for scholarship, primary sources, and research collections.
NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science – journal covering the relevant physical, chemical and biological components of atmospheric and climate science.
Open Library of Humanities – platform supporting academic journals from across the humanities subjects.
Open Book Publishers – free e-books covering humanities and social sciences.
The competition is open to all UK-based prospective applicants: students in Year 12 (England/Wales) / S5 (Scotland) / Year 13 (Northern Ireland) or UK-based students who will be submitting their undergraduate applications by the 15 October 2025 UCAS deadline.
Each entry must be produced by an individual student and cannot be the result of group project work. Only one entry per student is permitted.
Each submission should include the following:
1. An academic research poster, containing academic references
2. A separate bibliography.
It is best to format the poster on one slide in PowerPoint. Edit the slide’s size in the Design tab, clicking on Slide Size, then Custom Slide Size. A3 is recommended, ensuring width and height measurements are 26.67cm and 35.56cm.
Your poster can be landscape or portrait orientation. Make sure any images or figures included on your poster are cited if they are taken from other sources and have brief explanatory captions.
Once you have finished your poster in PowerPoint, export/save the file as a PDF before submitting. The bibliography should also be submitted as a PDF.
Get in touch with our Access Officer if you have any questions about the competition or issues when submitting your entry.
