Caius Explore

Caius Explore 2024 is open for entries until 26 July!

In the below video our Tutor for Admissions and Outreach, Dr Chris Scott, introduces our annual outreach programme aimed at helping students develop their super-curricular interests. Scroll down for more information!

For Caius Explore, academics at Gonville & Caius have designed tasks in many different subjects that are aimed at helping you to develop your academic interests beyond your school curriculum. Not only is developing your academic interests one of the best things you can be doing to make yourself as competitive as possible as an applicant to Cambridge, but we also think it's a very good thing to do for its own sake!

That is the spirit in which all of these explorations have be set: we hope that they will be genuinely engaging, that they will encourage and help you to explore your academic interests, and most of all that they will be enjoyable.

We would love to see what you come up with! You can enter for as many subjects as you like and entries will be open until 26 July 2024. We will pick our favourite entries and invite their authors to come to Caius to meet our Directors of Studies, students, have a tour, and more.

Please note that we can only consider submissions from students currently studying at UK state schools or colleges. The explorations have been designed for students in year 12 / S5 / year 13 NI, but you are welcome to take part if you are in a younger year and we are happy to consider any such submissions. Collaborative submissions will also be considered in groups of no more than four. If you are submitting a collaborative project, please tick the "collaborative" box on the submission form and have each member of your group submit the form individually. This is so we have all the information we need about each of you. Members of the group do not need to attend the same school or college, but they do all need to attend a UK state school or college.

Submit your entry before 26 July through our form here!

If you have any questions about the scheme, please feel free to email schools@cai.cam.ac.uk.


Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic
Tackle some manuscripts and take a peek into the past.

Archaeology
What can a grave or burial tell us about people in the past?

Architecture & Design
Plan how you would convert an old building into a house for yourself.

Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
Choose a literary work and think about its cultural and subject contexts.

Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology
How should the UK be sourcing its food?

Classics
Analyse literature or visual art and think about its effect on you.

Computer Science
Present your own research about quantum computing.

Economics
Are financial crises inherent to modern economic growth?

Education
To what extent should educational policy be informed by genetics research?

Engineering
How should the UK be building its houses?

English
Try your hand at practical criticism, a reading technique developed in Cambridge.

Geography
Does it matter if we fail to limit global warming to 1.5⁰C above pre-industrial levels?

History
Write a biography of an individual or group.

History of Art
Pick an object, building, or artwork from your local area and think about why it looks the way it does.

Human, Social & Political Sciences – Politics
Analyse the concept of democratic backsliding.

Human, Social & Political Sciences – Sociology & Anthropology
Try some fieldwork by studying the social life of your family or friends.

Land Economy
Is place a constellation of processes and relationships rather than a physical entity?

Linguistics
What do conventional metaphors tell us about our society and culture?

Mathematics
How might AI impact mathematics?

Medicine
Are medical ‘tests’ always useful?

Modern & Medieval Languages
Try some translation and comment on your work.

Music
Compose a piece for a melody instrument and write a programme note.

Biological Natural Sciences
What are the logistical challenges of multicellularity and how do organisms overcome them?

Physical Natural Sciences
How can we hunt for Dark Matter?

Philosophy
Are moral values objective or subjective?

Psychological & Behavioural Sciences
Design a study to investigate inversion effects - how the brain processes things that are upside-down.

Theology, Religion & Philosophy of Religion
Can we be objective when arguing for the existence or non-existence of God or gods?


Watch the following video to hear some of 2023's entrants talk about their projects and their experience of the celebration day.