Tompkins Table
The Tompkins Table is an annual, unofficial ranking of the 29 undergraduate colleges of the University of Cambridge, ordered by the academic performance of their students in final-year examinations, excluding postgraduate-only institutions such as Darwin College and Clare Hall.[1][2] Established in 1981 by Peter Tompkins, a mathematics student at Trinity College, the table originated as a student-led initiative to benchmark college achievements and was initially published in The Independent newspaper before being taken over by the Cambridge student newspaper Varsity in 2016.[1][2] Unlike official university metrics, it focuses solely on undergraduate degree classifications and has become a notable, though controversial, point of reference for prospective students and college comparisons.[1] The ranking is calculated using a points-based system applied to degree outcomes: five points for a first-class honours degree, three points for an upper second-class (2:1), two points for a lower second-class (2:2), and one point for a third-class degree, with zero for ordinary or failed degrees; scores are then weighted against subject-specific averages to normalize for variations in grading rigor across disciplines and expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible points.[1][2] This methodology aims to provide a fair inter-college comparison, though it does not account for non-honours degrees or broader factors like student intake size or socioeconomic diversity.[1] In recent years, the table has highlighted shifts in performance, with Trinity College reclaiming the top position in 2024 and 2025 after Christ's College held it from 2018 to 2023; the 2025 edition placed Trinity first, followed closely by Christ's, Selwyn, Churchill, and Queens', while Corpus Christi and Pembroke experienced notable drops to 15th and 16th, respectively.[2] Trinity's consistent success is often attributed to its substantial endowment exceeding £2 billion as of 2023, which supports enhanced academic resources.[2] The Tompkins Table has faced criticism for potentially fostering inter-college rivalries and undue pressure on students, with the Cambridge Students' Union condemning it in 2018 for promoting a "poor academic culture" that overlooks holistic education and equity.[2] Despite these concerns, it remains influential in shaping perceptions of college prestige and aiding applicants in decision-making.[1]Background
Origins and History
The Tompkins Table was established in 1981 by Peter Tompkins, a third-year undergraduate mathematics student at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. As a mathematics graduate from the college, Tompkins created the ranking as an informal compilation based on undergraduate Tripos exam results, aiming to highlight variations in academic performance across Cambridge's colleges. He personally calculated and released the first edition that year, using publicly available class lists to produce a simple ordered list of the 29 undergraduate colleges.[3][4][1] Tompkins continued to compile the table annually for over three decades, maintaining it as a volunteer effort outside official university channels. The ranking evolved from its basic origins into a more refined tool, with refinements in the 1990s introducing weighted scoring to account for degree class distributions and provide greater precision in comparisons. This development solidified its role as an unofficial but influential benchmark within the Cambridge community. However, the table's publication was disrupted in later years: no editions appeared in 2020 or 2021 due to COVID-19-related changes in examination formats and result reporting, and data availability issues prevented release in 2023. The table resumed publication in 2022 and continued in 2024 and 2025.[5][6][5][7][2] A pivotal moment came in 2016, when Tompkins declared the edition might be the "last ever" amid criticism from the Cambridge University Students' Union (CUSU), which argued the table exacerbated competitive pressures and inter-college rivalries. Despite this announcement and ongoing student union opposition, the tradition endured, with Varsity—the university's independent student newspaper—assuming responsibility for its production and publication starting that year. Tompkins' persistence, rooted in his background as a Trinity alumnus and later career as a consulting actuary, reflected a commitment to transparently documenting college-level academic disparities through empirical analysis of exam outcomes.[8][3]Purpose and Publication
The Tompkins Table ranks the undergraduate colleges of the University of Cambridge according to their students' aggregate performance in final-year Tripos examinations, offering a comparative measure of academic achievement that assists prospective students in making informed choices about college applications. Despite the collegiate university's structure, where lectures and much of the teaching are centralized at the university level, the table underscores variations in supervision and pastoral support that may influence outcomes, thereby filling a perceived gap in official guidance for applicants.[2] The table holds no official status and receives no endorsement from the University of Cambridge, having been independently compiled since its inception in 1981 by Peter Tompkins, a former mathematics student at Trinity College. It draws exclusively on publicly available data from class lists published in the Cambridge University Reporter, which detail examination results without identifying individual students by name. Graduate-only institutions such as Darwin College and Clare Hall are excluded from the rankings, as they admit no undergraduates and thus generate no relevant Tripos data.[7][3] The table is typically published annually in the summer, coinciding with the release of examination results, although exceptions occurred in 2020, 2021, and 2023; it has been handled by the student newspaper Varsity since 2016, while prior to that, Tompkins self-published the table, and it appeared in The Independent for several years. This process ensures wide accessibility through online and print formats, targeting primarily prospective undergraduates but also serving colleges for internal benchmarking of academic standards and performance monitoring.[2][1][9]Methodology
Scoring System
The Tompkins Table utilizes a points-based scoring system to assess undergraduate academic performance across Cambridge colleges, drawing directly from the honors degree classifications awarded in the university's Tripos examinations—the structured assessment framework for all undergraduate subjects. This approach ensures a standardized evaluation of student outcomes in diverse fields, from natural sciences to humanities, without incorporating external factors such as course load or extracurriculars.[2] Under the current system, points are allocated as follows: 5 points for a First-class honors degree, 3 points for an Upper Second-class honors (commonly known as a 2:1), 2 points for a Lower Second-class honors (2:2), and 1 point for a Third-class honors degree; Ordinary degrees or mere passes receive 0 points. This allocation reflects the hierarchical prestige of Cambridge's degree classifications, emphasizing excellence in intellectual achievement. Historically, for classifications awarded before the 1990s, a "Second Undivided" degree—which was an undifferentiated second-class honors—was valued at 2.5 points to bridge the gap between upper and lower seconds.[2][1] The methodology employs straightforward point summation for each student, with no penalties, bonuses, or adjustments applied for variations in subject difficulty, ensuring parity across disciplines. Prior to 1997, rankings were derived exclusively from final-year Tripos results; since then, the system has shifted to a cumulative approach, incorporating performance from all years of study to better capture sustained academic progress. Individual points are aggregated at the college level and normalized to yield an average percentage, facilitating direct comparisons between institutions.[2]Data Inclusion and Calculation
The data for the Tompkins Table is sourced exclusively from the official class lists published in the Cambridge University Reporter, which annually document the degree classifications achieved by undergraduates in all Tripos examinations across the University of Cambridge.[10][11] These lists capture results only for honors undergraduate programs, systematically excluding postgraduate degrees, non-honors qualifications, and any unclassified outcomes to maintain focus on comparable academic performance metrics.[10] At the college level, student results are aggregated by summing the assigned points for each examinee within the college, then normalizing against the maximum attainable score to produce a percentage-based ranking. The core formula computes a college's score as \left( \frac{\sum \text{[student](/page/Student) points}}{5 \times \text{number of students}} \right) \times 100, where 5 represents the highest possible points per student, yielding a measure of overall performance relative to potential.[12] This approach ensures rankings reflect efficiency in achieving top classifications across the cohort. To mitigate biases arising from differing subject difficulties and varying numbers of students per discipline, the aggregation incorporates subject-specific weighting. The effective college score is derived as \sum (\text{subject average} \times \frac{\text{subject students}}{\text{total students}}), standardizing performances to a common baseline and preventing skew toward colleges with disproportionate enrollment in high-averaging fields like Medicine or Law.[13] Colleges must have at least 10 undergraduates sitting examinations in the given year to be included, promoting statistical robustness by excluding entities with insufficient sample sizes.[14] For longitudinal analysis, annual results since 1997 are often averaged in multi-year tables, providing a cumulative view that smooths yearly fluctuations while adhering to the same inclusion and calculation principles.[14] This methodology, originally devised by Peter Tompkins, emphasizes transparency and equity in compiling rankings from raw university data.[13]Rankings
Recent Rankings
The Tompkins Table rankings from 2018 to 2025 reflect evolving academic performance among Cambridge colleges, with Christ's College dominating the period before Trinity's recent resurgence. No tables were produced for 2020 and 2021 amid the COVID-19 disruptions to examinations. These rankings, derived from weighted averages of degree classifications and published by The Sunday Times, consistently show razor-thin margins at the top, often under 1 percentage point, highlighting the parity in undergraduate achievement across colleges.[2][7][5] In the 2025 edition, Trinity College secured first place for the second consecutive year, extending its advantage over second-placed Christ's College to 1.65 percentage points—up from a mere 0.02 points the previous year. Selwyn climbed to third, Churchill to fourth, and Queens' to fifth, while Corpus Christi plummeted from third to fifteenth and Pembroke from fourth to sixteenth. This shift underscores Trinity's post-2019 revival, reclaiming leadership after a seven-year run at the top ended in 2018. Homerton ranked last, with only 18% of its undergraduates earning First-Class degrees. The following table summarizes the top five colleges for 2025:| Rank | College | Score (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trinity | 74.58 |
| 2 | Christ's | 72.96 |
| 3 | Selwyn | [Score not specified in primary source] |
| 4 | Churchill | [Score not specified in primary source] |
| 5 | Queens' | [Score not specified in primary source] |
| Rank | College | Score (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trinity | 73.48 |
| 2 | Christ's | 73.46 |
| 3 | Corpus Christi | 72.2 |
| 4 | Pembroke | 71.12 |
| 5 | Selwyn | 70.16 |