Following a serious administrative blunder, Senate House has accidentally released its aggregated examiners’ report for the 2017 academic year, despite many exams still to be sat. Violet can exclusively reveal the leak below in full:

Aggregated Examiners’ Report 2017

3,523 candidates were entered for tripos this year. As usual, there was a spectrum of abilities: ranging from disappointing to tear-inducing agony. The future of academia looks truly bleak.

As is often the case, undergraduate students stuck to answering questions on which they had either been lectured or had completed supervision work, leading to a disappointing spread of responses. It is always dispiriting to see candidates answer questions to which they have been taught the answers. We encourage students to move out of their comfort zones, though we did have to fail all students who attempted that this year because they obviously didn’t have a clue what they were writing about. Candidates are reminded that, as a bare minimum, they should know absolutely everything.

It was also deeply frustrating that candidates had not utilised the materials and knowledge made so freely available to them in the lecture series. I worked really, really hard on that lecture series and I can’t believe that nobody was ever showing up to it, apart from that one kid who sat so close to the front it unnerved me. As for those students who did use lecture materials in their responses – they should learn to think independently and for themselves.

“Candidates are reminded that, as a bare minimum, they should know absolutely everything.”

In papers where a choice of questions was given, it was notable that candidates only ever answered the required amount of questions. It can never be stressed enough that this is the University of Cambridge and we expect the exceptional, not the plebeian standard. All candidates in these papers have been failed for being so run-of-the-mill.

The most popular question amongst candidates this year was:

“Q24: Leslie is late for a train, she has 4 minutes to cover 3 miles in order to catch it. Why should Brexit have never have happened?” (3,521 takers)

This was closely followed by “Q13: Thirty-eight tourists are stood enjoying the afternoon sun on Orgasm Bridge. How fast do you need to be riding to mow them all down?” (2,564 takers).

All candidates from King’s College answered at least one of the following: “Q84: Why is Communism the best social system?” (355 takers), “Q85: When should the UK hold a communist revolution?” (374 takers), and “Q86: Why are the capitalist bastards stilling holding us down?” (361 takers).

The question with the least takers was most telling indeed, “Q1: ‘You are unworthy of a Cambridge qualification’. Discuss.” (0 takers).

This year, once again, candidates seemed to forget the quality which we demand in tripos responses. The generous allotment of three-hour examination times provides ample scope in which to write a minimum of 700 pages, with a level of detail matching a doctrinal dissertation.

There was also a worrying trend this year of candidates questioning the accuracy of exam questions. The university reminds students that mistakes are never made by examiners, and that because each exam is proof read by a whole committee of senior academics, there r nver any errers in the scr1pts.

Candidates are reminded that if they do have questions during exams, they should keep them bloody-well to themselves and refrain from openly admitting how asinine they are for not intuitively knowing the answer. The examiners present for the first twenty minutes of an exam are not there for your assistance, but rather so that they can claim over-time.

Once again, Cambridge’s simple and effective script marking system was put to efficient use. All marks from an individual paper were added together, multiplied by the number of candidates taking the exam, divided by the number of university ranking positions which Cambridge is ahead of Oxford by, then aggregated across all marks achieved by undergraduate tripos scripts since 1642. The number achieved is then discarded and pretty much everyone is given a 2.i anyway