Being part of such a small year group means that you get to know everyone quickly and there is a great sense of community. Plus, because you spend a significant amount of time in studio, you form really tight friendships with your fellow architects.

Architecture is super diverse; our course encompasses art, history and maths to name just a few which means you’ll never get bored of doing the same thing.

The structure of the course is well balanced with 60% of our grade based on studio work and 40% based on written exams in a wide range of subjects such as history, materials and structures.

Cambridge has the smallest architecture department in the UK and the facilities are sized accordingly. Having said that, we each have our own studio space to work in as well as a model shop, workshop and reprographics room which prove sufficient most of the time!

The department is basically in the centre of town which is so useful considering all lectures and studio work happen there and I often have to make the journey between college and the department three times a day. Everyone has their own desk in studio making life so much easier as we don’t have to clear up all our work at the end of the day.

Most of my time is spent working in studio, it’s very hands on ­ drawing, making and testing concepts in 3D. We have five lectures a week and a bit of reading for supervisions too. We also have ‘crits’ and ‘pin ups’ which is basically giving a presentation to the year, the tutors and invited guests on our projects who give feedback and discuss the work. Not being a confident public speaker I was nervous about these at the beginning but I present so often now that I have no problem speaking in front of a large crowd.

At the moment I’d say that I want to be an architect but the course has opened my eyes to a whole set of design based careers that would also really interest me. It’s defiantely not just a course for people who want to be architects, I have friends who would like to work in fashion, marketing and art.

Architecture is an intensive course wherever you go but, since terms at Cambridge are so short (8 weeks), architects get a huge amount of work crammed into a very short time­frame. This means that we sometimes need to stay up a little later than usual, but it’s usually worth it!

I’d love a bit more sleep, staying up late to finish a drawing or prepare for a crit is defiantely a trend among the architects.

Studio is scheduled from 10am ­ 5pm two days a week. This is the time when the studio tutors are available to help you with your work but we spend a lot more time in studio on other days too as it’s the most important aspect of the course.