Tompkins Table

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The Tompkins Table is an annual ranking that lists the colleges of the University of Cambridge in order of their students' performances in that year's examinations. It was created in 1981 by Peter Tompkins, an undergraduate mathematics student. Initially, it only included final year exams but since 1997 has covered all exams for which grades are allocated. The table allocates 5 points for a First Class degree, 3 points for an Upper Second (known also as a 2-1), 2 points for a Lower Second (a 2-2), 1 point for a Third and no points for someone only granted an allowance towards an Ordinary Degree. The scores in each subject are then weighted to a common average, to avoid the bias towards colleges with higher proportions of students entered for subjects which receive higher average grades. While the difference between the highest places on the table is usually very slight, colleges remain very competitive about their rankings on the Tompkins Table. The rankings are not officially endorsed by the university.

Below are the rankings for 2005:

Although certain colleges (such as Emmanuel, Christ's, Trinity and Gonville and Caius) always place highly in the Tompkins Table, positions can and do fluctuate wildly from year to year.

The university also goes to some length to point out that people in the lower-placed colleges do often get firsts and people in the higher-placed college still get thirds — this is down to the simple fact that, although there is some academic variation between colleges, this is nowhere near as pronounced as the variation one might expect between different universities (since lectures, exams, and sometimes even supervisions at Cambridge are centrally organised by the university rather than by the individual colleges).

Norrington Table

The corresponding rankings for the University of Oxford is the Norrington Table. Since Oxford adopted split second-class degrees in 1986, the Norrington Table has adopted the Tompkins Table method of scoring, but without the weighting attached to individual subject scores.

External links

[Tompkins Table 2000-2005]

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