Ok, so I applied to Oxford this year for Russian and Arabic at St. John's, and got rejected. My GCSEs are really strong compared to other modern languages applicants (10 A*), teaching myself Spanish and doing it a year early. My predicted grades are good, four A* in Russian, Spanish, Maths and Further Maths. My teachers put me down as a dead cert, though I obviously was pretty sceptical as I'd heard about people who had had surprise rejections in the past. I thought the interviews went really well ( I had eight, two at John's, two at Wadham, one at Somerville, one at LMH and one at Magdalen) but the admissions office doesn't open for feedback until the 12th so I don't know if they actually did. At any rate, I thought I'd enjoy a gap year, so though I applied to Exeter and St. Andrew's I haven't heard back from them yet and so I don't have a lot of choice. I was wondering if anyone had any experience of similar courses at Cambridge and could tell me if they thought there were any significant differences. I come from an independent school so I don't know if that worked against me. Anyways, cheers in advance for your help, sorry it's a lot less cheery than all the other TSR posts, this thing's got me pretty down.