The famous story is Philippa Fawcett, who took the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos exams at a time when women weren't officially placed on the ranked list of succ

The famous story is Philippa Fawcett, who took the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos exams at a time when women weren't officially placed on the ranked list of successful candidates. Her official exam result was listed as "above the Senior Wrangler"- in other words, above the top male candidate. 15 years later Fawcett became one of the "steamboat ladies"- women who took advantage of a long-standing agreement (that still exists in a limited form today) between Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin that graduates of one university can receive the same degree from another one without further examination. When Dublin began to award degrees to women in 1904, they briefly opened this arrangement to women who had passed exams at Oxford or Cambridge that would have entitled them to degrees had they been men. Several hundred British Oxbridge alumnae travelled to Dublin to graduate, and the fees they paid financed the construction of a hall of residence for Dublin's female students.