The MOD maintains a nice web site about the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.
I joined the Navy whilst I was at university in London. Whilst I was up at university, my RN contacts were minimal. We were sent a ‘how to get by’ guide that explained various details of a Naval Officer’s life, and a monthly package of stuff with security labelling up to ‘Restricted’, which we were supposed to tear into four before discarding. Oh, and we ‘University Cadets’ were paid. It didn’t seem like a great deal, but it replaced the governments (then) grant that students were given to live on. Our tuition fees were also paid, and because of this we incurred a liability to repay them if we resigned our commissions before we’d completed a ‘Return of Service’. But enough of that. We had ‘Visiting Officers’ assigned to us – the idea, I think, was to remind us that we were in the RN, and they monitored our progress through tertiary education.
We were issued with lots of ‘stuff’ – uniform and other essentials such as a gas mask, a kit-bag and Boots DMS (these had steel toecaps, conductive soles and were compulsory wear at sea). Lots of uniform was sort of additional – for example, tropical gear, and some items were specific to one’s specialism – engineer officers were issued with white overalls, and so on. There were some very old- fashioned items, such as battle-dress (which you had to wear at Dartmouth) and some items were ‘upgrade-able’ – you could buy better quality from specialist Naval outfitters, such as Bernards of Harwich and, of course, Gieves and Hawkes. I remember visiting Gieves at No 1 Saville Row (“We can’t have our gentlemen wandering around in serge!”), where I was persuaded to purchase two uniforms (No 5 – formal best, and No 2B – Mess Undress) in Barathea, and a cap with a cloth cover.