Cambridge Applicants for 2013 Entry

The admissions tutor at Sidney Sussex college said to us not in so many words that exam AS results were the most important thing and close applicants will usually be chosen on record rather than interview performance.

The Nat Sci Doc said that if you are looking for a college that places less emphasis on grades and more on interview then go for St Johns. I doubt Johns will admit to that though.

Do you guys believe for science subjects, when looking at UMS exam scores will have greater weight than practical exams. Is it just me or are the grade boundaries so high? I think they can only go up too :/

Do you guys believe for science subjects, when looking at UMS exam scores will have greater weight than practical exams

I sure hope so.. some of the physics practicals are messed up. For our "evaluative" tasks, we did a pair of practicals. I got 4/10 and 2/10... other *supposedly* top students got scores of 2/10 and 1/10, and someone managed 0/10 in both, where another got 9/10 and 1/10. HOW??

I'm not too sure about this UMS average thing when it comes to maths. I self-studied a year early and did C1 and C2 in year 11. I did C3, S1, D1 this Jan, and am doing FP1, M1, C4 in June (mostly self-studying C3 and C4 too).

C1 - 95
C2 - 78 (actually facepalmed when I got the result..i got an 80% raw mark :|)
C3 - 92
C4 - June
S1 - 83 (was too busy sighing with relief that I didn't get a B than worrying about it being a low A. I panicked in the exam and almost broke down)
D1 - 90
M1 - June
FP1- June

As you can see I will have a full maths A-level and 2/3 of a F. maths AS or 5/6 of a Maths A-level and a full F. Maths AS. How are they going to count averages for this, and will they even bother if I already have a grade for the A-level?

I also do Econ, Physics and German, so will those be the only three which could count, being the only normal AS subjects?? I'm worried as there's no way I'm getting 93% in Physics or German. I was hoping that of the three 93% averages required, no. 1 could be waived aside in place of an A* in maths, no. 2 could be an average from 2/3 of my f. maths AS, and no. 3 could be economics?

Help me out here people

I have been told by quite a few people that practical marks count for almost nothing as far as they're concerned (although UCL seem to care)

Good, mine are okay now (after a couple of attempts) but 93% would be hard to maintain in practicals. How would UCL know, they don't have access to module scores?

Damn that sounds awful, luckily we are on the Advancing Physics spec so we only had to do an essay and a powerpoint sounds like we got off lightly!

They will probably take C1, C2 and your highest applied (D1) when calculating an average but having done units early can only enhance your application.

Apparently someone who went to UCL on an open day wasn't allowed to go into the labs cause he got a U in his physics practical and they thought he was a liability ...no idea if true

Well Homerton is the furthest, so if that's not too far out, the rest are fine! It's honestly not that bad a walk, and the only issue I see with it would be on a rainy day..

All colleges are going to care about exam results, but you would be right to think some places don't mind you not getting 95%+ etc. Note: this year, automatic pooling occured if you had 93% average UMS over your 3 most relevant subjects.

You would be correct in saying that it is Nuvole Bianche, and it is just pure calm. I listen to it whenever I get too stressed (which, luckily, isn't that often), but I also listen to it most days anyway ^_^

P.S. those results at GCSE are fine, enough with the face!

WHAT? That's outrageous! I prepped for the practical so much too.. the mark scheme is ridiculous.



100(95 + 78 + 90)/300 = 88%.. surely the whole idea is to see if you'll get an A* at A2, and so if I've got an A* are they still likely to complain about the AS average? Do you think they'll count further maths? And could I use my A2 applied module to go towards an FP1 AS average? Don't bother answering :P I'll ask a tutor or something it's confusing me so much

WHAT? That's outrageous! I prepped for the practical so much too.. the mark scheme is ridiculous.



100(95 + 78 + 90)/300 = 88%.. surely the whole idea is to see if you'll get an A* at A2, and so if I've got an A* are they still likely to complain about the AS average? Do you think they'll count further maths? And could I use my A2 applied module to go towards an FP1 AS average? Don't bother answering :P I'll ask a tutor or something it's confusing me so much

Linguistic diversity is important!
By the end you will be completely fluent
The thread has been really dead lately

Haha, yeah, it'd be nice to pick up a new language. Or at least carry on with French. What I like about Durham is that I'd be able to take 2 modules of Spanish in my first year, and I could either carry on with Spanish in the other years or I could change each year or something.
I wish. But I think I'd need to live there first.
Yeah, it's been dead pretty much since results day. Well, not necessarily dead but that's when most of the oldies left.

They count maths and further maths as one subject apparently. So add all your scores and divide by how many modules ==> maths average.

what about girton? i thought that was weeeeell out

The user is applying for maths though. If the application is to study maths then I think they will probably mostly care about maths modules and not much else (maybe physics UMS).

I think you could probably get an interview and an offer for maths with bad GCSEs and bad (other) AS levels, as long as you could show you're good at maths. On the maths application advice things they drone on and on about how AS UMS isn't a good predictor, but STEP is, etc. etc. They've done some research into it to show the correlation.

Both Homerton and girton are about 3km from the city centre. But on different sides (Girton is to the north-west, Homerton to the south-east)

However, it's never quite that straightforward. Girton is notoriously far away, but it is close to the computer, physics and astronomy sites (Closer than most Colleges!)

Ahh that's a shame! Do you do English language? I think a lot of that is linguistic related so if you don't you could look up resources on the internet and see what kind of topics there are or something.
Ooh cool, what what he doing it on?
I'm really fascinated by child language acquisition and bilingualism, as well as things like sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics I find it so amazing how we can look at these squiggles on a page or hear a certain order of sounds and infer meaning from it! And how depending on where you live, you might get meaning and you might not because you understand language differently. So good.

The user is applying for maths though. If the application is to study maths then I think they will probably mostly care about maths modules and not much else (maybe physics UMS).

I think you could probably get an interview and an offer for maths with bad GCSEs and bad (other) AS levels, as long as you could show you're good at maths. On the maths application advice things they drone on and on about how AS UMS isn't a good predictor, but STEP is, etc. etc. They've done some research into it to show the correlation.