I wrote my master thesis at Cambridge. Since I have had multiple people ask me about the process, how to get affiliated with colleges, and my overall experience, I wanted to note it down here.

The first part on organizing a research stay abroad is general; second part on finding a college, and my personal experience will be specific to Cambridge and my circumstances.

#1 Doing Research Abroad

There are two ways to organize a research stay abroad.

(1) You already know researchers in your field or at your target institution. Then you can just reach out to them and ask if the university has some visiting research program and they will probably just guide you through the process. My experience with Cambridge falls into this bucket, I already had a warm intro to my professor.

(2) You know where you want to go or what research you want to do, but need to find a host. That usually means cold-emailing the professors or postdocs, expressing your interest, what you would want to work on and asking if they are available to host you. Please don’t just write a generic email to every professor you can find; tailor it to their work, and what shared interests you two have, and why you would be a good fit to do exciting research together etc. This is usually a tedious process, you will be ghosted by a lot of professors, but if you search long enough you will find someone. I had tried this route back in 2023 which didn’t work out in the end; but I know more than enough people that did succeed with exactly this approach, so this is definitely a valid option!

Some guide for getting into Stanford with a bit more detail here.

#2 Organizing Your Stay at Cambridge

I was lucky enough to already have had an introduction to my professor at Cambridge which made things a lot easier. After all the admin work of getting registered at Cambridge (I was a “visiting graduate student”), your most important task will be to become affiliated with a college (and also finding accommodation).

Why a college? Before I started I didn’t believe that being part of a college is that big of a deal; after all you are going there to do research. I didn’t even understand what the fuck a college is, and what’s the difference to the official university. It is best explained via the Harry Potter analogy. Cambridge is the learning facility, like Hogwarts, and the Colleges is your house (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin) where you will find most of your friends and will have your community. So you will quickly realize that almost all of your social life (outside the lab of course) will be in the college. Colleges can also give you a lot of benefits, ranging from just using their facilities, over providing you an easy way to find accommodation, to becoming a full member of the college - which means you can participate in all the sports offering, go to formal dinners, be invited to special events etc. This depends heavily on which college you will be part of, but I hope I could at least convince you that joining a college is crucial for your experience. So how do you get into a college as a visitor?

Getting into a college. The first route is going via your professor. If your professor is part of a college, they can often support you and help you also get into the college where he is - and he will be able to guide you through the process.

If you are not that lucky, and your professor cannot help or is not part of a college (yet), you have to put in a bit more effort, and search manually. I personally reached out to every college individually and ask if they offer membership for visiting students (or at least accommodation, which was my main motivation back then as I also didn’t understand the importance of the college); You will get mostly rejected because the colleges do not offer membership or accommodation for visitors. So to make it a bit easier for you, here is my list (from August 2025) of which college was able to in principle offer accommodation and/or membership (so reach out to those first):

• St John’s
• Churchill
• Downing
• Gonville & Caius
• Pembroke
• Lucy Cavendish
• Trinity Hall
• Fitzwilliam
• Emmanuel
• Darwin
• Downing

Note: Rules vary by college. Some use a centralized application portal, while others require supervisor sponsorship.

I personally was able to join Emmanuel College, after again cold-emailing Emmanuel Fellows and asking if any of them are willing to support my application to the college. From here on out, this experience will be specific to Emmanuel College; I also have had another friend that successfully got into Fitzwilliam.

Through Emma I was able to get accommodation right next to college (expect to pay up to £200 per week) and most of the organizational hurdles were over.

Some other organizational stuff to consider:

• Visa. If you are coming from the EU, you don’t need a visa as long as your stay is at most 6 months long - an ETA suffices (and you avoid a lot of other admin stuff like paying into national health services).
• Timing. Organize your stay around the Cambridge terms (Michaelmas, Lent and Easter); ideally arrive before or right when Michaelmas term starts, as this is the time of the year when all new students come and form friendgroups. Cambridge is also dead outside of terms as all undergrads move out during that period.

#3 Life at Emma

I arrived in early September, during which the city was quiet, which gave me time to get to know the environment and research lab. In early October, Michaelmas term kicked off with Freshers week. During Freshers week, there are many college-organized and also city-wide events that you should definitely try to attend, as this is where everyone will get to know each other and you will be making a lot of new friends. Many sports clubs from your college will have open days where you can just go and try out something new.; I ended up joining the Emmanuel Boat Club and rowed there for the next two terms. Don’t expect to get a lot of work in during your first week, and probably also not so much sleep.

Around that time you will also attend your first formal dinner - every college has these where you dress up in fancy clothes and have a multi-course dinner with the other students from college. Make sure to bring a suit or nice dress (and/or check their dress code in advance) - I almost didn’t bring mine until a friend told me I definitely should.

After these first few days, term will also start for the regular students and it will get more quiet; you will go about your regular research days again.

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Finally, some impressions :)

Emmanuel College

Emmanuel Boat Club