Academic Dress of The University of Cambridge - Components of Cambridge Academic Dress

Components of Cambridge Academic Dress

When wearing full academic dress, a person wears the gown, hood and headdress of the highest degree he or she has already received from the University of Cambridge. Anyone who does not hold a Cambridge degree (such as an undergraduate, or a graduate of another university) normally wears a gown according to his or her status in Cambridge, i.e., undergraduate, BA status or MA status (see below), though without the strings which are attached to the gowns of Cambridge graduates. Graduates of other universities may wear the academic dress of those universities on 'scarlet days', unless they are university officials or participating in a degree ceremony, but this has only been permitted since 1998.

A graduand (someone about to be presented for a degree) wears the full Cambridge academic dress of the highest status degree that they already hold. Graduands who do not already hold a Cambridge degree wear the gown appropriate to their status in the University, along with hood of the degree to which they are about to be admitted. Undergraduates, who do not yet hold a degree, wear their undergraduate gown, with the hood of the degree that they are about to receive. Thus, for example, an undergraduate graduating to a BA degree wears an undergraduate gown and a BA hood. A holder of a BA from Cambridge graduating to a PhD wears both a BA hood and gown, whereas a graduate of another university graduating to a PhD wears a BA or MA status gown and PhD hood.

In the case of Medical students completing their clinical years graduands wear the gown and hood of the B.Chir degree. This is due to the fact the B.Chir degree is conferred in absentia as soon as the list of people passing the Final M.B examination is posted outside Senate House. This was to prevent the necessity for a 'double graduation' ceremony. As such it is common practice for students to hire the B.Chir academic dress, rather than purchase it, for it is superseded by the M.B academic dress post graduation. In the case of students who have completed both pre-clinical and clinical years at Cambridge, many alumni and graduates do not purchase the M.B academic dress, merely hiring it for any occasions requiring academic dress (Alumni Formal Hall etc.) as this is superseded a mere couple of years later when the automatic Oxbridge MA is granted. Medical students graduate at the end of the third year with a Cambridge BA, and for this ceremony are treated as any other students graduating with a BA.

The full list of degrees and their order of seniority is given in the Ordinances of the University: as a rule of thumb, higher doctorates outrank the PhD, which outranks masters' degrees, which outrank bachelors' degrees.