Studying HSPS at Cambridge
- UCAS Code: L000
- Number of students per year: 4-5
- How many are admitted to Cambridge every year: 166
- Typical offer: A*AA
- Essential subjects: None
- Useful subjects: English (Language or Literature), History, Language (ancient or modern)
One of the most popular tripos at Cambridge, HSPS (Human, Social and Political Sciences) is a three-year undergraduate degree programme (tripos) which combines Politics, Sociology, and Social Anthropology to study the forces and actors at play in our rapidly changing world.
HSPS offers a range of social science courses to choose from, with the 3 main subjects being Politics, Sociology, and Social Anthropology. Each year, you are enrolled in 4 courses (papers). In the first year, Part I, students typically take papers offered in the 3 main HSPS subjects (POL1, POL2, SOC1, and SAN1). Students can also borrow papers offered by other faculties such as Psychology and Archaeology. In the subsequent years of the tripos (Part IIA and Part IIB), you choose a specialisation in the form of a single subject track or a joint-track. For example, you may choose a Sociology only, or a Politics only, or a Social Anthropology only track, or you may choose a joint-track combining two of these three subjects (for example, Politics-Sociology, Sociology-Social Anthropology, or Social Anthropology-Politics).
The aim of the HSPS Tripos is to provide a holistic understanding of our societies (past, present, and future) from social, political, and cultural perspectives. For this, the tripos focuses both on classical texts (e.g. Hobbes, Marx, Du Bois, Weber, Evans-Pritchard, Radcliffe-Brown and others) and contemporary debates (nation-states and nationalism, gig economy, kinship and family, gender and sexuality, environmental crises and so on). The idea is to discuss the workings of contemporary societies from a social, political and anthropological perspective as well as equip students with the necessary analytical and comprehension skills to unpack the workings of societies and the world at large! The students are also introduced to a range of methodologies including qualitative (interviews, archives and ethnographic research) and quantitative methods.
There is no expectation that the student who chooses this tripos has any prior training in one or more of the main tripos subjects. What is primarily required is an enthusiasm to understand the structures and everyday lives of societies and the people that make them. A key strength of the tripos is that it addresses concepts, ideologies, and workings of the world through a global perspective. To that extent, it does not matter what the student’s cultural and national background is, for they will be introduced to societies, challenges and debates originating in diverse places and regions.
What can I do with a degree in HSPS?
When they complete the tripos, students will have acquired both intensive and extensive knowledge, which will enrich their personal and professional lives and support them in finding their way in the future. Upon completing the course, past students have chosen diverse professional fields including, though not limited to, active politics, non-governmental sector, world organisations, education, media, corporate or legal world. Above all, as this tripos ends, the students emerge as more sensitive, knowledgeable, and empathetic beings.
For more information, please visit the University Careers Service website.
Studying HSPS at St Edmund’s College
We have a thriving HSPS community at St. Edmund’s College, with over 15 students and 4 Directors of Studies (2 for politics, 1 for Sociology, and 1 for Social Anthropology). In Directors of Studies, you have your personal academic guide. Directors of Studies are experts in their fields of research, who either teach full time or are affiliated with the departments of one of the three main HSPS subjects. While your DoS will not necessarily teach you in supervisions (a Cambridge tradition of small group teaching), at St. Edmund’s 3 DoSes––Jose Tomas Labarca, Parul Bhandari, and Marta Wallace––supervise for Politics, Sociology, and Social Anthropology respectively. The main role of a DoS is to oversee your academic progress throughout the year and help resolve any academic related issues that may arise in relation to your supervisions, essay submissions, lectures, or exams. They are also there to chat about future career goals. Throughout your degree, you will be assigned at least one DoS. All Part I students have one DoS (whom you meet twice a term). For the second and third years, you are assigned a DoS that specialises in the track that you have chosen. At St. Edmund’s, we are keen to continue building our thriving HSPS community for which, apart from one-to-one DoS meetings, we host termly lunches, which allow students to meet all the DoSes and interact with other HSPS students.
We are a close-knit and international community, which is reflected in the composition of our HSPS community (DoS and students) as well as the diverse international student body at St. Edmund’s, and there is much to share and learn from each other. It is likely that you will end up continuing conversations based on your lectures in the college’s dining hall or the CR (Common Room), on the workings of the world’s largest democracy (India), impact of media and technology on everyday lives, the political economy of minerals of Africa, micro-finance programmes in Bangladesh, family and kinship structures of China, political and economic developments in the UK with students belonging to these countries or with science students with interest in these topics. What better way to learn than to discuss with your peers!
Away from these scintillating conversations in the common areas, the college also offers several spaces where you can study and work on your essays such as the Paul Luzio Library building, the Norfolk library, study desks in the Mount Pleasant Halls Common room, the comfortable couches of the CR, in Edspresso, our café that serves excellent coffee and cakes, or the benches in our lovely apple orchards!
We also have six study rooms (2 in the Luzio building, 2 in Norfolk building, and 1 in Mount Pleasant Halls), where college supervisions typically take place, and which can also be booked by students for their private study time or group projects.
Our college also has an extremely supportive Welfare and Wellbeing Department, which is happy to lend an ear and provide support should a student feel anxious or overwhelmed with the academic year.
How to apply
Applications for all courses are made through UCAS. You must apply by 15 October 2025 to be considered for entry in October 2026. Applications for 2025 entry have already closed.
We accept applications for HSPS in both the October application round and the January application round. The January application round is specifically for candidates applying for certain subjects at the three mature Colleges at Cambridge (Hughes Hall, Wolfson, and St Edmund’s). The January round is particularly suited to those applicants taking one-year courses who may not have covered enough of the course content to apply in October, but are able to make a competitive application by January. The deadline for applications is 14 January 2026 for 2026 entry.
As a mature College, we recognise that our applicants come to us from a diverse range of educational backgrounds and may have studied a long time ago. However, we would expect evidence of formal study within the last two or three years as evidence of an ability to cope with the challenging academic nature of a Cambridge course.
Requirements
Tests
Written Work
Interviews
Deferred Entry
Affiliated Students
What is a typical Term’s work
A typical term that spans 8 weeks (Thursday-Wednesday), involves attending lectures for each of the chosen 4 disciplines (taking place at different sites in the University). For each course, typically 3 supervisions are organised per term (or 2, depending on the course). Most courses require you to submit an essay for each supervision (at times one supervision is only for discussion). Supervisions are mostly held in the department or college of your supervisor (your supervisor may not be from the same college as you). For each supervision, your supervisor submits a report, which is approved by your Director of Studies, at the end of each term. This template applies to the first two terms, and the third term is the revision term, where there are fewer supervisions (one or two) that mainly focus on revising the topics of the course, with no expectation of submitting an essay, though you are free to submit a practice exam essay, after speaking to your supervisor.
People
- Dr Sara Silvestri, DoS Politics and Bye-Fellow
- Jose Tomas Labarca, DoS Politics and Bye-Fellow
- Dr Parul Bhandari, DoS Sociology (and PartI) and Bye-Fellow
- Marta Magalhaes Wallace, (external) DoS Social Anthropology and Fellow, Homerton College