A Varsity investigation comparing room rates from undergraduate colleges has revealed significant disparities in price, range and value for money throughout the University.

Robinson tops the list with an average weekly rent of £132.50, followed by Queens’ College (£127.44) and Girton, where students pay £124.50 to live outside the city boundaries. The University-wide average lies at roughly £100, but there are several colleges where one can live for significantly less: a student at Pembroke pays only £72.21 for an average room. Rents at St. Catherine’s on the opposite side of Trumpington Street are also only £75.65 per week.

The University website advertises the range of weekly room rents as being between £70 and £120 per week, which is comparable to Oxford and other British university towns. However, these figures can be deceptive as the actual price range in Cambridge is substantially higher. The most expensive room can be found at Robinson (£158.50). For this rate, more than three of the cheapest rooms in Trinity Hall could be sub-let at £51.20 – a striking difference of more than £100. The range of room prices at Robinson is also relatively high at £54, whereas the Cambridge average lies at £44.37.

"We pay no kitchen charge, so our rent is all-inclusive", Rosalyn Old, president of the Robinson College Students’ Association, has said in defence of the high rents. "Our rooms are modern and a very high percentage are either en-suite or share a bathroom between just two rooms. Robinson has some of the best College student accommodation in Cambridge!"

Miguel Barros Brito, a second-year at Robinson, is also happy with the price he pays for his accommodation: "I think my room is worth the money. It is spacious, well equipped, and well and promptly maintained. If you look past the hideous curtains and even the occasionally creaking floor, this room is the perfect student accommodation with good value for money."

There are only two colleges, Girton and Newnham, where all students pay the same price for their accommodation, irrespective of their room grade. "I think this is a good system, because it is egalitarian", says a 4th-year-student at Girton.

There are great differences in room prices – and quality – in other colleges. Downing beats Peterhouse with the highest intra-college range of rates: The most expensive room (£140.80) costs more than twice as much as the cheapest room (£63) in the same college, which amounts to a difference of £77.80. At Peterhouse, students have a range of choices between rooms for £59 and £130 – a gap of £71.

At Queens’ College, no JCR committee member was available for a comment. Kate Bonham, JCR president at Girton College, can account for the high rent in the former women’s college: "This figure is not as high as it seems as it includes Kitchen Fixed Charge. However, the rent figure is still one of the highest amongst the colleges. Girton is under a lot of financial pressure and has two very large sites with heavily staffed canteens, something which I am not aware any other college has."

Another Girtonian admits: "It fits with the market prices in Cambridge and it has the services which makes life more interesting. If you lived out, you wouldn’t have the security of porters and the convenience of a library."

The University promises "very competitive living costs, which are much lower than many imagine" for its prospective students in Cambridge. It is also one of the few universities in the country to offer its student accommodation for the entire duration of their undergraduate studies.

Few students live out, as property prices in Cambridge are substantial higher than college prices The average weekly rent lies at around £230, and does not include electricity and heating, commodities for which most colleges do not charge extra.

A Varsity investigation from 2002 showed that room prices have increased significantly in the past nine years. In 2002, the Cambridge-wide average was £58.22, which is more than a third less than today’s figure.

Taking inflation into account, it is the increase of inter-college differences that should be more worrying: Students at Homerton, the most expensive college, paid 13.6% more than at Churchill, which then had the most affordable accommodation at an average of about £53 per week. Figures from this year show that the rent at Robinson is 18.34% higher than at Pembroke, which on average is currently the cheapest college.

These disparities are concerning, in light of the fact that students are usually told when they apply to Cambridge that they should not spend too long worrying about which college to choose. Students often hear that while every Cambridge college is ‘unique’, colleges tend to have ‘have many more similarities than differences’.

Comparing room rents, however, shows that depending on the college there are significant differences in what students can get for their money. Despite this, ‘price of accommodation’, unlike ‘college size’ and ‘admissions criteria’, is not one of the factors which the Univeristy website advises prospective students to take into account.

In addition, students who have been pooled to certain colleges may, justifiably, feel that they have been put at an unfair disadvantage. For example, both Robinson and Girton, two of the most expensive colleges, have around 30% of pool admissions each year, far above the University-wide average of 18.5%.