Supporting your Studies

St John’s hosts an incredible range of eminent speakers through the year. These include Fellows and Visiting Fellows talking about their research, Honorary Fellows and alumni sharing career insights, and invited academics engaging us on current themes.

Highlights include the annual Linacre Lecture in medical sciences, the Climate Crisis Lecture, which showcases the leadership from Fellows and alumni in addressing the climate and biodiversity crises, and the biennial Penrose Lecture in honour of our most recent Nobel Laureate Professor Sir Roger Penrose, which looks at the interplay of mathematics and other disciplines. Also, on each Sunday evening during Full Term, distinguished visiting preachers from a variety of faith positions speak in the College Chapel, a brilliant opportunity for academic enrichment.

There are currently more than 20 travel grants available to students of St John's, made possible by generous donor funding. These funds are available to help students extend and develop their subject knowledge by, for example, travelling to archaeological sites abroad, further international understanding, undertake adventurous travel and much more.

St John's is proud to collaborate with a number of great institutions to provide exciting cultural and academic exchanges.

Our current exchange partners include Caltech Scholars exchange, Collegio Ghislieri di Pavia University Exchange, Heidelberg University Exchange, Nagoya University Exchange Scheme and NUS Research Exchange Programme.

Our generous Summer Bursary scheme enables St John's undergraduates to pursue their academic or educational interests or career-development opportunities for a period of up to eight weeks during the Long Vacation.

Any activity which would clearly add value to your career and personal development can be considered, and students have used their Summer Bursaries to fund a wide range of activities including  research projects, summer courses at other institutions, intermediate and advanced language courses, unpaid work experience and volunteering work in the UK and overseas.

St John's offers a number of grants to undergraduates who want to pursue academic research projects or Summer School courses related to their subjects at a University (including Cambridge) or other approved academic institution during the Long Vacation.

In addition to a general fund which covers all subjects, several subject-specific funds are also available. The Peter Munn Fund is dedicated to supporting Engineering projects. The Parsons Fund provides grants towards projects with links to Greece (Modern or Ancient) or the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as funding music-related projects. The Robert Tong Bursary offers free accommodation and access to the Library at Queen Mary, University of London during a set period.

All undergraduate students, including finalists, are eligible to apply for these awards.

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For students who are also parents, St John's provides grants to meet up to 50 per cent of the cost of childcare for children under school age or for children of any age for afterschool care, as well as up to 50 per cent of the cost for children of any age attending the University of Cambridge Holiday Playscheme (UCHP) during vacations.

In cases of great need, larger grants may be possible. Student parents can also claim 50 per cent of compulsory nursery registration fees. If two parents of the same child are both studying at St John’s they can make two separate applications for 50 per cent of the childcare costs.

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If you incur costs in the course of researching your undergraduate or MPhil dissertation, our generous Learning and Research Fund can help to cover them.

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St John's encourages applications from bright students of all backgrounds. Each year we award the Pythagoras Prize, worth £10,000, to a first-year home undergraduate student coming to the College to study Mathematics who might otherwise be daunted by the cost of studying at university.

The award is allocated on the basis of both academic excellence and financial need. We also provide tailored STEP support to our offer-holders from UK state schools.

Taking a year between your school and University studies can be a rewarding move academically and culturally, and we are happy to consider applications from those who are still completing their school qualifications but plan to take a gap year or candidates on their gap year who are applying with results in hand.

We see a gap year as a great way to develop your skills in preparation for Cambridge study, whether that’s in languages, industry or experiencing life in other cultures. It helps to build your confidence and be of service to communities here and abroad. We’ll want to discuss your gap-year plans if you are invited to interview to get a sense of what you intend to do, how those experiences might connect with your future academic studies and what activities you’ll be doing to keep your skills and knowledge sharp.

St John’s provides outstanding facilities for use by all students who are interested in contributing to the College’s rich musical culture, not just those studying music.

A wide range of practice and performance spaces are available, including individual practice rooms, a modern recording studio, atmospheric recital rooms, a fully equipped theatre/auditorium, and even the historic Chapel, where our world-famous Choir performs throughout the year and a variety of individual musicians and groups showcase their talents at the annual May Concert.

Our students have access to first-class instruments, including three Steinway grand pianos, three Boston grands, a harpsichord and a recently refurbished organ. Music undergraduates can borrow an electronic keyboard for use in their College room for the duration of their studies.

The College Music Society and the Master’s Concert series together ensure a full programme of evening concerts and lunchtime recitals including live music nights in the College bar. St John’s is also known for its jazz scene, thanks to the long-established Jazz @John’s, which hosts professional-standard student concerts, and the annual Reinstein Prize for Jazz.

St John's is one of the few Colleges with an in-house art room, located right in the heart of College. It is open 24/7, which means our Architecture and Design students are able to carry out design work outside the opening hours of the departmental studio. It is also used by History of Art students, and is open to those on other courses.

St John’s also provides Architecture and Design undergraduate students with a drawing board, installed in their College room, for the duration of their studies. The space required by necessities such as model-making is also taken into account during the annual accommodation ballot.

One of the most popular postgraduate events of the year, the Graduate Research Symposium features talks and research presentations from St John’s postgraduates in three sessions covering Physics and Engineering, Psychology and Neuroscience, and Social and Natural Sciences.

This year's contributions included research on exceptional memory (we’re all interested in that!), climate intervention, neanderthals and obesity. Always well attended and immensely interesting, the Symposium is followed by a drinks reception for presenters and the audience in the Samuel Butler Room, our postgraduate social hub.

Our Special Collections include various grammars, histories and texts published in later centuries that shed light on historical subjects. These unique resources provide fantastic source material for dissertations and research projects. Students can make an appointment to consult special collections material at any time of the year.

Deciphering old handwriting is a valuable skill when you're studying texts from the past. Our experienced Archivist offers free palaeography sessions during term time to any student interested in learning more about working with historical documents and manuscripts.

The College Archive collections are particularly rich in medieval material, and classes are held in our state-of-the-art Archive Centre inside the ancient School of Pythagoras (the oldest extant secular building in Cambridge). Students of any subject can also sign up to a general 'Introduction to the Archives' session at the start of each academic year.

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All our Linguists are eligible to apply for generous book and travel grants. The College's active Modern Languages Society organises a range of activities and helps foster contacts that can be particularly useful when you come to plan your year abroad.

St John's also has long-established student exchange arrangements with the Universities of Heidelberg and Pavia.

In addition to the learning and book grants available to all undergraduates, Law students at St John's are eligible for generous prizes related to academic performance, and also for McMahon Studentships which provide substantial funding assistance to graduates of the College who undertake the necessary courses (approved by the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Bar Standards Board) to prepare themselves for legal practice.

We are also able to offer some support to our former students who want to undertake postgraduate study in Law.

Law students who distinguish themselves academically are eligible for academic prizes and for McMahon Studentships, offering substantial funding assistance to St John's graduates taking the approved courses necessary to progress to legal practice.

St John’s has an outstanding student law library, part of it designated the John Hall Law Library, with a wide range of books to support and extend your studies.

Our Medical students benefit from a range of tailored grants. For those considering applying to St John's, the Moussa Motallebzadeh Memorial Prize is a substantial one-off award of £5,000 offered each year to a first-year Home student of limited financial means from a UK state school.

Once you get here, on top of the College's standard book grants, provision the Rolleston Fund offers undergraduates in any of their first three years of medical studies up to £160 to buy essential medical text books that will be of long-term benefit. St John's also offers fifth-year Medical students substantial grants to support electives.

If you take a course that includes an assessed performance element, the College will generally offer funding to cover the cost of your instrumental or vocal lessons.

Additional support for performance tuition is available from the Parsons Fund. St John’s also has a Learning and Research Fund that can help with travel costs relating to instrumental/vocal tuition or other course-related expenses such as books, scores and language study.

The Beard and Blues Sports Fund is available to all St John's students who are members of a University sports team.

Each student can claim up to £400 in total per academic year towards sports-related costs, including club subscription fees, sports kit, and travel and accommodation relating to team tours and selection events.

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Acclaimed violinist and Director of Performance in the Faculty of Music, Professor Margaret Faultless is Musician-in-residence at St John’s. Internationally renowned as a specialist in historical performance practice and an interpreter of 18th-century repertoire, she previously specialised in contemporary music earlier in her career.

Margaret provides unrivalled musical and academic support to our music students, helping to ensure that the musical environment at St John’s is lively, friendly, and both intellectually and artistically stimulating.

The College's Writer-in-residence programme brings award-winning professional writers into the St John's community to interact with students and encourage participation in the contemporary literature scene.

As well as organising guest readings and other events that are open to anyone across the University, the Writer-in-residence, Vona Groarke, runs informal reading and discussion groups exclusively for St John's students and staff, and offers one-to-one meetings to any St John's students who are keen to experiment with and develop their own creative writing.

Our Dean of Chapel Revd Dr Vicky Johnson and Chaplain Revd Graham Dunn are actively engaged in wider explorations of faith, enriching the academic and social dialogue for students of all faiths and none.

They provide support to any student of any faith and welcome discussion of philosophical or theological points to widen our community's awareness of the world around us. They are running a new College-wide Common Good programme, providing students with a route to explore ethics, community leadership, the understanding of faith and contributing to civic life in the world beyond university.

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Our Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC) students are entitled to generous book grants to purchase essential works, as well as financial assistance towards attending language courses and visiting relevant sites in Britain, Ireland, Brittany and Scandinavia.

As well as providing access to more books than you could ever read, the College Library houses an extensive collection of films, music and language materials to support and supplement your studies. The DVD collection includes a wide range of western European cinema, a smaller selection of Russian and Japanese titles, and an assortment of film versions of literary works.

The CD collection consists mainly of classical music plus numerous recordings of the College Choir. There are also multimedia language-learning materials available in more than 20 languages. All items can be used in the Library's AV Room or borrowed. Headphones and external CD/DVD drives can also be borrowed from the Library.

We offer students full financial support for taking one of the University's language courses, where this is different from a language that you have selected as part of your course.

This gives AMES, MML and History & MML students the opportunity to add another language to their collection, or students in other subjects to take up a language alongside their main discipline.

Each year at St John’s, students who excel academically and contribute to the life of the College are nominated for the prestigious Larmor Awards, which are presented by the Master.

The Awards are named after the 20th-century physicist and mathematician Sir Joseph Larmor FRS, a former student at St John’s who made great innovations in the understanding of electricity and thermodynamics.

Winners of a Larmor Award receive a specially commissioned, handcrafted piece of silverware engraved with the College crest and their name, as well as a financial prize of £500.

The Acklam Award, worth £500, is offered annually to a second- or third-year undergraduate student in English at St John's who has demonstrated exceptional overall academic performance.

Open to undergraduates in their third term of residence, the Hutton Prize awards £500 to the student who obtains the highest First class or Distinction level mark for an essay in English History.

Each year St John's awards two cash prizes of £500 for academic achievement in History.

The first goes to the undergraduate student with the highest First Class mark for their long essay or dissertation in Part II of the History Tripos, and the second is awarded to the postgraduate student receiving the highest mark of Distinction Standard for a Dissertation in the MPhil degree. 

The Emanuel Miller Prize awards £500 to the writer of the best essay within the realm of the Philosophy of Science.

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The Douglas Adams Prize is named after the St John's English alumnus best known for creating the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series.

Open to all undergraduate and postgraduate students of the College, the prize of £500 is awarded annually for a piece of humorous writing, in prose or verse, on a subject of the student's choice.

The Caroline Boddy Writing Prize (£500) is awarded to the student who obtains the highest mark of First class or Distinction level for their long essay or dissertation on a topic ‘promoting the understanding of the role of women in society throughout history’.

St John's runs an annual Student Art and Photography Competition, open to all our undergraduates and postgraduates, with cash prizes being awarded to the winning entries across a range of different categories including paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and photography.

All entries are displayed in the Library Exhibition Area (which is open to the public) during the Easter Term, and the winning entries are featured in the College's annual record The Eagle.

Reading about all the ways in which St John’s supports and enriches your academic experience, you might wonder how you ever keep track of what’s on and available. The answer is the weekly College Bulletin with the latest news, research breakthroughs and international prizes, concerts and sport fixtures, and reminders about what’s coming up.

This helps you to find what you're interested in on '4th Court', the St John’s intranet. 4th Court has all the vital information for day-to-day living – the Buttery menu, maintenance requests, welfare support reminders, student finance information and much, much more.

Our annual Newell Classical Event celebrates all that is exciting, creative and forward-thinking in the world of Classics, bringing it to the attention of a wide public.

Past speakers include Emily Wilson, Emily Greenwood, Natalie Haynes and Alice Oswald.

The College Library has a bookable sound-proof booth, which students use for online meetings or supervisions, for listening to resources or for small group discussions.

For Linguistics students, the booth is useful for working on course components like practical phonetics, that require you to produce more and less usual sounds, or where you need to listen to recordings, for example concerning varieties of English, language acquisition or psycholinguistics.

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