Welcome to Sidney Sussex Middle Combination Room!

Chris Crowe’s presidential address

For those who are still deciding which college to choose...

So you've made it through the notoriously confusing graduate application form, and have printed it off the 20 required times, but now you have to decide how to fill in the "please indicate below which Cambridge Colleges you wish to consider" section. You've visited Cambridge and have seen a couple of colleges and still can't make your mind up. Let us help you decide. We are the friendly and outgoing graduate community of Sidney Sussex College, and consist of all the PhD, MPhil, PartIII, LLM, and other graduate students of the college, and we'd love you to come and join us for your time at Cambridge. We are high-quality organic graduates, grown in the best central Cambridge conditions. Sidney Sussex is the most central of all the Cambridge colleges, right opposite Sainsburys (which comes in extremely handy at 11:59pm when you run out of limes!). All the Cambridge amenities are in walking distance, including hundreds of coffee shops, boutiques, restaurants, more coffee shops, libraries, charity shops and of course cheesy nightclubs (useful for entertaining friends when they come to stay!) There is no place in Cambridge that cannot be reached within a 10-minute cycle, although there's plenty of buses if you decide not to get a bike! All the departments are also nearby, and other colleges are also open to Sidney students to visit and attend formal dinners on swaps. Sidney has lots of facilities on site, including a squash court, a gym, a spectacular wooden chapel, plenty of grand pianos, a music room, a library, common rooms, and of course Sidney Bar, the cheapest bar in Cambridge. They cannot shut it down try as they might it just keeps on going!! We have a graduate-only common room, the MCR, in Chapel Court, where we have games systems (MarioKart, anyone?), a huge flatscreen TV, a free espresso machine, free drinks, and a subscription to almost any magazine you can think of!

The term "MCR" stands for the graduate community as well as the common room, and comprises about 190 students who come from every part of the world. The MCR committee - a group of volunteers who organize the graduate life in college - offer you every kind of entertainment, from the movie night with hot chocolate in winter, President's Whisky night, to the garden croquet match during summer. You will also find numerous sports facilities: you might like to join one of the Sidney's sports clubs, or maybe enjoy an evening squash match on our courts in college after a long day in the lab or library. Whatever you are looking for - be it a vibrant international young community to rock out your one-year Masters in Cambridge, or an easy-going, relaxing environment for your PhD research - Sidney Sussex College will be able to fulfil your desires!

For those who have already signed up to Sidney...

If you have finally worked out how to compile the Cambridge application form, and I have convinced you that Sidney is the best college in town, then I invite you to keep on reading, to discover what to expect once you have arrived in Cambridge. The place to be and be seen is undoubtedly the MCR, the room where all the committee will wait for you, to introduce you to the college facilities and organize your first week in the University. The Fresher's Week is 7 days of non-stop events that we, as your committee, organize for all the new graduates, in order to make it easy to get to know each other. We will show you the Colleges of the town, we will take you punting (and save you when you fall into the river) and we will make you dance, or not, in our universally famous Freshers' Week Graduate Party. In one week we will do what the tons of prospectus pages can't do: explain to you the spirit of Cambridge life, and how to get into it! Please join the 2010/11 Facebook group where you can ask any question, and you can refer to our Freshers' Guide (updated every year by veterans of the college) or simply contact me directly. But maybe you would like to have a peek at the committee team and the photo gallery, to have a taster of what to expect...

Chris Crowe, MCR President
25 May 2010