University of Cambridge
degree classification explained

Two classifications, and only one of them is new

Cambridge has always classified each Part of a Tripos on its own. Each Part is self-contained: there is no averaging of marks across Parts and historically no accumulation into a single figure, which is why the phrase “double first” exists at all — it means firsts in two separate sets of examinations, and it has never been an official award.

What changed is that students who matriculated from 2020 onwards now also receive an Overall Degree Classification, which appears on the degree transcript. The first of these were awarded in 2023. Before that, no official class was assigned to the degree as a whole, and the Part II result was widely used as a proxy for it — a mismatch that the University itself noted was misunderstood by employers.

The weighting depends on your Tripos

Once each Part has been classified, the Part II examiners calculate the Overall Degree Classification using the scheme agreed for that Tripos. Most follow one of two:

• 0 : 30 : 70 — 30% of the classification comes from the second year and 70% from the third and final year.
• 0 : 0 : 100 — the classification comes entirely from the final year.

Two schemes sit outside that. Law has permission to use 0 : 50 : 50. The Management Studies Tripos is an exception in a different way: taken in the third year it is classed on 0 : 30 : 70, but taken in the fourth year it does not feed the Overall Degree Classification at all — the student is classed on their Part II Tripos scheme, and the Management Studies mark and class appear only on the transcript.

Faculty Boards can ask the General Board’s Education Committee for a different scheme, and several of the entries above are dated by matriculation year, so check your own course pages. Students who matriculated into Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion in 2021 only are covered by a no-detriment policy and may be classed by either scheme.

This is the part that makes a calculator impossible

Knowing the weighting is not enough, because Cambridge does not publish fixed class boundaries. Exam Boards are responsible for setting the final class boundaries used to determine the Overall Degree Classification, and they do it each year, for their own cohort.

The Engineering Tripos spells out the mechanism plainly: the examiners determine an order of merit from the weighted sum of Part IB (30%) and Part IIA (70%), and then determine appropriate class boundaries following the Faculty Board’s guidance on the proportion of students that should fall within each class. Your class therefore depends on how your cohort performed, not on whether you crossed 70. A calculator could compute your weighted mark; it could not tell you what that mark is worth, and the number that matters is the second one.

Transfers, allowances and the cases with their own rules

A student who transfers Tripos or subject in the final year is classed using the same scheme as the rest of their cohort, with information about prior performance made available to the examiners where a 0 : 30 : 70 scheme applies. Where someone transfers into Part IIA for their final year, the final-year weighting moves with them — the 100%, or the 70%, is applied to Part IIA.

A student allowed to progress from the second to the third year by the Examination Access and Mitigation Committee is classed on 0 : 0 : 100 regardless of Tripos. Someone awarded an Ordinary BA by that committee, or declared to have received honours, does not receive an Overall Degree Classification at all — and neither does a student who fails Part II.

What to read instead, and how to challenge a result

Your Tripos’s own course pages carry its agreed weighting scheme and its marking and classing criteria, which are normally reissued each year. Those are the documents that decide your result. If you want to challenge a classification, it is done through the University’s Examination Review Procedure rather than with the Exam Board directly.

Why this site does not offer a calculator for either

Every other UK page here takes the marks you enter, applies the algorithm printed in that university’s own regulations, and tells you the class. That needs three things to be true: a weighting that is fixed and published, boundaries that are fixed and published, and an algorithm that depends only on your marks. Oxford has none of the three. Cambridge now has the first, and does not have the other two. A calculator built anyway would produce a number that looks authoritative and is not, which is worse than no page at all — so this is a page instead.

Sources

Everything above is read from Cambridge’s own pages:

• University of Cambridge — Degree classes (Cambridge Data) — the introduction of the Overall Degree Classification for students matriculating from 2020, the 0 : 30 : 70 and 0 : 0 : 100 schemes and the full list of Triposes following each, the Law 0 : 50 : 50 permission, the Management Studies and Theology exceptions, the rule that Exam Boards set the final class boundaries, and the treatment of transfers, allowances, Ordinary degrees and failed Part II candidates.
• University of Cambridge — The structure of undergraduate courses — that each Part of a Tripos is self-contained with no averaging across Parts, that before 2023 no official class was assigned to the degree as a whole, and what “double first” actually means.
• Joint Report of the Council and the General Board on the introduction of an Overall Degree Classification, Cambridge University Reporter 6574 (January 2020) — the reasoning behind the change, including the concern that employers assumed the final-year class was the degree class, and the Management Studies arrangement.
• Cambridge University Engineering Department — marking and classing criteria — the order of merit from the weighted sum of Part IB and Part IIA, and the setting of class boundaries following Faculty Board guidance on the proportion of students in each class.

Schemes are dated by matriculation year and several Triposes have changed theirs recently. Your own course pages are always authoritative.