h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It has been a bit hot and airless for the last few days. I don't really mind, and don't feel the heat too badly (indoors at least - I have to be a bit careful outdoors as I burn easily). I think living in Central America for a year with average temps of 35 and high humidity was good training for this sort of weather. I keep telling my colleagues that it's not helpful psychologically to go around all the time saying "it's so hot", "I'm so hot" etc.

Today was the first of three Open Days - it was our College informal Open Afternoon. Nearly all the prospective applicants who had registered turned up (as did a few who hadn't registered), the undergraduate helpers appeared on time and did their stuff magnificently as always (College tours, Q&A about applying/studying here).

Tomorrow and Friday it's the general University Open Days (http://www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/opendays/cambridge/) - they are fully booked, which means approx 12,000 prospective applicants and parents milling round for the next two days. We will have to sit in our Porters' Lodge from 11 to 5 on each day, handing out prospectuses and other leaflets and answering questions. Oh joy!

Btw, the new College website went live last week, as a result of lots of hard work by all concerned. http://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/

Do you have to wear bowler hats?

Douglas

Fortunately not. Nor do we have to wear gowns.

Today I have been mostly wearing a light floaty dress. And sandals.

A lot of the prospective applicants were wearing considerably less (or apparently so).

we've got ours tomorrow. 12,000 booked in here....

my assistant and I were somewhat upset when we realised that tomorrow would not be the day for buying the icecream we'd been promising ourselves all week as a treat.

Good luck! It was a bit cooler today, thank goodness, and there was one short shower. We'd been hoping for more rain actually - both to clear the air, and because a lot of the main talks were happening in a lecture hall across the road from my college. So if they came out of a talk, saw it was pouring with rain, we hoped they'd think "Hmm, where's the nearest college?"

Had to disappoint quite a few young men who showed up wanting to look round - but it's better they find out now that it's a women's college rather than when they've applied!

We got reasonable numbers in through the door to have prospectuses and other information thrust into their hot sticky hands. It's always an uphill struggle to persuade some 17 year-old girls that they might like being at a women's college, but - as always - our undergraduate helpers did a brilliant job.

I should say so, though the shades of Charley's Aunt/La Cage Aux Folles/Tootsie conjur'd up are drole - imagine the poor 18 year old Evelyn Wossname forced to spend three years in a frock because he didn't read the notes and only got the one offer...


Douglas

We've only had one application from a male student in the time I've been there (nearly 6 years now, my goodness!). Unfortunately it was also very last-minute - reached us the day before the deadline - so there wasn't enough time to contact him and ask him to choose another college. Instead we had to treat it as an 'open' application, and it was allocated to a college which had fewer than the average number of applications in the subject he was aiming for.

When I phoned the school to tell them this, the secretary was most indignant: "I'm sure I addressed the envelope correctly!" I had to explain, as politely as possible, that the applicant himself had written the name of the college on the form, thus proving that he hadn't done his research very thoroughly ...