Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson find themselves in a university town when a tutor and lecturer of St Luke's College, Mr. Hilton Soames, brings him an interesting problem.

The first, Gilchrist, is athletic, being a hurdler and a long-jumper, and industrious (in contrast to his father who squandered his fortune in horse racing); the second, Daulat Ras, is described as quiet and methodical; the third is Miles McLaren, a gifted man but thoroughly dissolute and given to gambling.

Holmes has also identified the blobs as the special clay found in the long-jump pit, further implicating Gilchrist.

For his part, Gilchrist credits Bannister with convincing him not to profit from his misdeed, and presents Soames with a letter stating his wish not to sit the exam, but to instead accept an offer to work for the Rhodesian Police.

[2] It was included in the short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes,[2] which was published in the US in February 1905 and in the UK in March 1905.

[3] A silent short film adapted from the story was released in 1923 as part of the Stoll film series starring Eille Norwood as Sherlock Holmes and Hubert Willis as Watson, with William Lugg as Hilton Soames and A. Harding Steerman as Bannister.

[4] While the tale is not directly adapted, the novel The Thinking Engine by James Lovegrove is set around the time of these events, explaining that Holmes and Watson were in the unnamed university town mentioned here to compete against the titular Thinking Engine, which is essentially an apparent early computer capable of matching or even surpassing Holmes' deductive abilities (the novel concludes with the discovery that the "Thinking Engine" is actually a hollow construct with the still-living but crippled Professor Moriarty inside it).

A radio adaptation of "The Adventure of the Three Students", dramatised by Edith Meiser, aired on 2 November 1931 in the American radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring Richard Gordon as Sherlock Holmes and Leigh Lovell as Dr.