Who wins the cheapest college accolade? “It doesn’t matter which college you go to” is one of the standard lines wheeled out by admissions tutors across Cambridge during open day season. However, everybody knows that it’s not that straightforward, whether you choose your college based on academic excellence, sporting achievements, or proximity to town – everybody agrees that it is an important decision to make. However, one difference between the colleges that is often overlooked is the difference your chosen college will make to you financially.

This week we compiled a table of all the undergraduate colleges’ accommodation charges for their cheapest and more expensive rooms, the results of which will be. avaliable on Varsity Live later in the week, along with more detailed statistical analysis. Even on first glance, however, the figures raise some interesting points.

At Robinson for example, where the most expensive rooms in Cambridge are to be found, a top-tier college room costs a staggering £1,650 a term (for 10 weeks) and the cheapest room costs £1,130 for the same period. Meanwhile just over the river at Trinity Hall you can get a room for under £600 a term.

The disparity in prices is especially worrying given that Robinson takes a higher than average number of students from the Winter Pool, meaning that many students don’t have any choice about what they pay for their room, having been automatically assigned to the college. However, it’s not always even possible to check the price of your chosen colleges’ accommodation before applying. In many cases, the prices aren’t online and to find these figures we had to contact JCR reps and colleges themselves. For colleges who are less well off these figures respresent the actual value of the rooms themselves as some colleges who can afford to choose to subsidise their student accommodation, thus resulting in the potential for lower rents at more affluent colleges.

Choice is also an issue: some colleges, like Robinson, have some very expensive rooms but there is enough choice that students can choose cheaper rooms depending on their budgets. At Newnham, on the other hand, students are charged a flat rate of around £1,300 a term, meaning that they have no way of choosing cheaper accommodation if they are struggling financially.

The Kitchen Fixed Charge is another Cambridge peculiarity that undergraduates are often unaware of when they first arrive. Some colleges, such as Robinson and Emmanuel, either do not have one or are currently in the process of phasing it out. Meanwhile other colleges, such as Newnham and Downing, charge over £200 a term in order to subsidise the cost of food for undergraduates. Other colleges like Clare, Magdalene and Queens’ also charge extra for heating and electricity on top of their normal accommodation charges – meaning that accommodation fees often understate the true cost of living at a particular college and makes comparing prices across the University very difficult.

Across colleges, one price was consistently similar: a standard meal in the buttery, canteen or non-formal hall, with all colleges charging between £3 and £4 for a meal. However, when looking at formal prices the results varied widely. At Magdalene a formal costs slightly more than £5 and includes wine, whereas at King’s it will set you back £24 without wine, unsubsidised (students are allowed 4 subsidised formals a year at £16). It's not all bad news for undergraduates however, as many colleges also provide generous prices and money back schemes to help with the cost of University, as Emily Chan reports here.

While the quality of food varies hugely across the University, nowhere is it quite as unpopular (or as bad) as at Gonville and Caius. Most colleges, with the exception of Caius and Peterhouse, allow students to use a pay-as-you-go system for meals. However these two make attendance compulsory: students pay for a certain number of meals in hall every term, which are non-reimbursable if they are unable to attend.While Peterhouse tends to get away with this, in the eyes of most of their students, by providing food of a reasonable quality, most Caius undergraduates surveyed told Varsity that the standard of food at their college was awful – in fact, the most unpopular thing about the college. Caius, Peterhouse and Fitzwilliam all have a minimum spend enforced.

The cost of University life varies hugely depending on where students choose, or are assigned, to study, making the cost of living extremely difficult to predict. Future applicants would be well advised to factor in the varying costs at different colleges to when choosing where to apply.