The Faculty of Law hosted the 2018 Cambridge Law Open Day on 4 July, welcoming hundreds of prospective Law students and their parents to the Faculty. This annual event, always a cornerstone of the Faculty's outreach work, was bigger than ever this year, with all spaces allocated well in advance. This free event included a programme of talks exploring the Law course at Cambridge and the application process, a sample academic lecture, and separate Q&A sessions for prospective students and their parents. Students were also invited to explore the Squire Law Library and to join current Cambridge Law students and members of academic staff over lunch. Attendees travelled from across England, including Cumbria, Dorset, and Yorkshire, and also Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and overseas.
Following the Faculty Open Day, the Faculty saw yet more visitors on 5 and 6 July, as the Cambridge University Open Days welcomed approximately 18,000 students to Cambridge to consider their university options.
However, these flagship events are just the tip of the iceberg. The Law Faculty is dedicated to reaching out to students from a variety of backgrounds and ensuring that everyone with an interest in law has the tools they need to make the strongest possible application. To that end, the Faculty partners with the Sutton Trust to provide a week-long intensive residential experience for students from state schools who are often the first in their family to consider attending university. This year's Sutton Trust Summer School in Law will run in August, and will include a range of sample lectures, as well as discussions on legal career paths, a Q&A session with a current solicitor, and a student-led mock trial. Students will also experience a taste of university life, staying in college accommodation, attending formal hall, and experiencing a few student societies.
The Faculty is also pleased to begin a new collaboration this year with Target Oxbridge, a programme run by Rare Recruitment with the aim of providing high-achieving black and mixed-race heritage students with the information and support they need to make competitive applications to Oxford or Cambridge. The dedicated law sessions planned this summer will introduce small groups of students to different academic approaches through legal problems and offer information on writing a strong personal statement and preparing for law-based interviews.
The Faculty is concerned to attract the best students from a diversity of backgrounds.
Whether through massive University-wide efforts or targeted small-scale events, the Faculty is dedicated to reaching prospective students from all backgrounds. Our Schools Liaison Co-ordinator, Ali Lyons, is constantly working to improve and expand our provision of events, and to locate new ways to reach students who might otherwise struggle to find the support needed to apply to competitive universities. Ali works to keep prospective students informed through a range resources, including the Faculty's website, Think Cambridge Law, the Faculty's blog for prospective students, HE+, a Cambridge-based resource for academic extension material, and the Ask a Law Student email address, which connects prospective students with current Cambridge Law students.
The Cambridge Law Faculty is attracting large numbers of high quality students, and this reflects its top ranking in independent surveys. As has been the recent trend, most of the potential students to whom offers have been made for 2018-19 are women. Among undergraduate applicants, 60% of its offers went to women, among offers for the LLM and MCL 50% went to women and, among PhD offers, 55% were to women. The Faculty is concerned to attract the best students from a diversity of backgrounds. It is pleased that among Home undergraduate applicants, 78% of offers went to maintained-sector schools, meaning Law is leading the way by achieving higher levels of wider participation than the average for the University of Cambridge.