Christ's tops Cambridge league

Christ's College heads this year's Tompkins league for final results at Cambridge with St John's, which was 20th last year, leaping into second place.

Clare College also did well, rising from 12th to fifth out of the 24 colleges. Churchill, however, was down to 22nd, after being in 15th place last year.

Emmanuel and Corpus Christi also fell back, from third and fourth respectively last year to 12th and 13th this.

New Hall, one of the remaining colleges for women, comes bottom.

King's, top for five successive years until last year, comes third.

The colleges' positions in the rankings, compiled for The Independent by Peter Tompkins, a London actuary, are calculated by giving each college five points for a first, three for an upper second, two for a lower second and one for a third.

The results are given in the table on the left as a percentage of the points that a college would have scored if everyone had had a first.

Mr Tompkins also compiles two other Cambridge college exam leagues. If all three are taken into account, the top three colleges are Christ's, Queens' and Trinity.

One of the other lists covers first and second year exams as well as finals. The right-hand column in the table shows the resulting positions.

The third ranking, which is not shown, covers the percentage of firsts. Christ's did best with 26.9 per cent, followed by Trinity on 26.2 per cent.

1996 Tompkins table

(1995 College "Finals" All Alternative

place) only exams position

% %

1 (1) Christ's 68.7 65.0 1

2 (20) St John's 66.8 62.5 4

3 (6) King's 66.2 60.2 11

4 (5) Queens' 66.0 63.3 2

5 (17) Clare 66.0 61.7 5

6 (7) Trinity 65.4 63.0 3

7 (21) Trinity Hall 65.3 61.3 6

8 (2) St Catherine's 64.9 57.5 21

9 (14) Fitzwilliam 64.9 61.0 7

10 (12) Peterhouse 63.8 59.4 14

11 (10) Sidney Sussex 63.8 59.6 13

12 (3) Emmanuel 63.7 60.3 10

13 (4) Corpus Christi 63.3 55.6 23

14 (18) Magdalene 63.2 59.3 15

15 (8) Gonville & Caius 60.8 59.7 12

16 (9) Downing 60.6 60.9 8

17 (13) Pembroke 60.6 60.8 9

18 (16) Jesus 60.3 58.5 17

19 (23) Selwyn 60.0 58.4 18

20 (11) Newnham 60.0 58.2 20

21 (24) Robinson 60.0 56.3 22

22 (15) Churchill 59.8 58.4 19

23 (19) Girton 58.9 58.8 16

24 (22) New Hall 58.1 55.5 24