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Giving feedback to Cambridge

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Reply 20

miraj3

Original post by jneill

What were your UMS per subject? Did you offer Maths & FM?

My three best UMS were:
Mathematics: 297/300
Further Mathematics: 287/300
Biology: 275/300

Reply 21

Christ's Admissions

Official Rep

Original post by SaltedPeanuts

Thank you for seeking feedback on the process - an excellent addition, just like your posts on tsr. I am the parent of a current third year Christ's student and a successful applicant this time round. There are a few observations I would like to make::

1. This year's process is a huge improvement with regards to the management of the pool. In previous years this appeared to drag on into weeks of uncertainty for the pooled candidates, often coinciding with mock exams.
2. The wording of the communications to pooled and fished candidates in the new system should be more explicit. It should be possible to say that another college WILL be making an offer. Some of the terminology used by some colleges was ambiguous. This should be standardised to avoid unnecessary confusion. Ideally the original college should also say in the first communication which other college will be making the offer or the 'fished' college should Email on the same day. If this delays the process for everyone by a day, then so be it.
3. All colleges should Email all candidates, whatever their country of origin, as a matter of course on the same day. This would remove the vagaries of the postal system and the discrepancy between colleges which use first and second class mail! For no candidate should UCAS be the first confirmation of an offer or a rejection, given the amount of additional emotional investment in the Cambridge process. If letters are retained as the means of communication then do not post them out on a Friday, as the extra day at the weekend with no postal deliveries causes unnecessary angst. A scan of the Cambridge Decision thread shows the scale of these issues.

This is my last experience of the Cambridge application process as a parent but hopefully my comments will benefit future candidates (and parents!).

Thank you for your message and suggestions, delighted we have one of your children at the Christ's and that the other one has been successful this year, that's excellent!

1) I'm glad you feel it is an improvement this year - we instigated it not least because of the evidence from TSR of the distress the old system was causing.

2) Yes, I think it is a good idea to make the language clearer about who has benn made an offer and who has been interviewed. As it was the first year I think that there was less standardisation of wording than there has been in the past and, hopefully, that there will be in the future. I'm not sure, however, whether it is possible to tell students which college they have been taken by. For the colleges that heavily pool students it is a very large number of students that we are having to contact about offers and interviews (well over 60 for offers and interviews at Christ's this year) and I don't think it is feasible given the tight turnaround to indivudalise letters in this way. I appreciate that we could delay things by a day but there is a very tight timetable at both ends of the process because if we wait longer we are crashing into term time and it becomes difficult to arrange pool interviews.

3) Yes, I think that it would be a good idea to email everyone on the same day. I'll do my best to persuade the Admissions Forum to accept this.

Reply 22

Doones

Original post by miraj3

My three best UMS were:
Mathematics: 297/300
Further Mathematics: 287/300
Biology: 275/300

They add M&FM to give a single maths figure.

Did you offer a 4th AS? If so what UMS?

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 23

Christ's Admissions

Official Rep

Original post by Deadpan

Taking up a previous post, is it true that a college will reject an Arts applicant with A* A*A A while accepting someone on the same course with A*AA because specific subject requirements have not been met ?

Or is it more an incentive thing where the college will ultimately flex when it realises that person has exceeded more than many of the other successful applicants even if some of the A*s are in different subjects?

Can you also confirm that higher offers are not given because the candidate comes from a private school.

If a student misses the offer they are set then it is up to the college to decide what to do. An Arts student with 2 A*s who misses a 3 A* offer is very likely to get picked up in the Summer Pool (I can think of two students this summer for whom that happened - not at my college but whose files I saw in the Summer Pool)

There are a number of reasons why a studennt might get a higher offer, some of which I have discussed already, and when one is considering whether to give a student a higher offer their educational background may well come into it. That being said, most students from private and strong state schools get the typical offer. We absolutely don't automatically give private school students higher offers.

Reply 24

miraj3

Original post by jneill

They add M&FM to give a single maths figure.

Did you offer a 4th AS? If so what UMS?

Posted from TSR Mobile

4th UMS would be Physics: 258/300

Total of the 4 UMS: 1117/1200 which would just give me 93%.

Reply 25

Christ's Admissions

Official Rep

Original post by miraj3

Thank you for the opportunity to give you some feedback.

Although I did not apply to Christ's College, I believe this issue may be an issue with many colleges.

While disappointed that my application to read Economics at Downing College was unsuccessful, I wondered why my application was not entered into the Winter Pool - the University of Cambridge state that any applicant who is not offered a place by their original preferred college but have attained 93% or over in their best three AS Level subjects (for UK applicants) must be put into the Winter Pool.

My three best AS Levels averaged 95.4% which is why I was surprised to see no mention of the Winter Pool on my decision letter.

Could you please explain why Downing College (and maybe others) fail to automatically enter applicants into the Pool even though there is an agreed notion of auto-pooling?

Many thanks!

As your answer to jneil shows, Maths and &FM are counted as one subject in calcuating averages so your best three is not 95.4%. Your best three would include your 4th AS subject. If your average is still over 93% then Downing have made a mistake and should have pooled you. If this is the case you need to contact them as soon as possible as there has been an error in your application. If, on the other hand, your average is below 93% then there has been no mistake.

Colleges only fail to put applicants in the pool with grades/averages above the compulsory pooling threshold because of an error. We try really hard to avoid this but it does happen very infrequently because of the pressure of timing in preparing candidates' applications for the pool.

Reply 26

Christ's Admissions

Official Rep

Original post by miraj3

4th UMS would be Physics: 258/300

Total of the 4 UMS: 1117/1200 which would just give me 93%.

The average is not calculated on the total UMS available. It is done by adding the averages for each of the three subjects and dividing by three.

Reply 27

Christ's Admissions

Official Rep

Original post by TVIO

I appreciate if you can't answer this, but worth asking I guess. I'm an offer holder for Computer Science with Maths. This needs 2 STEP grades. How likely realistically is it I'd be accepted for CompSci with NatSci or something similar if I were to miss my STEP grades. Is it common or is it basically 1% chance? Churchill said on their website they would consider students but I didn't see any summer pool acceptances on their admissions stats.

Congratulations on your offer. It is far from unknown for those who narrowly miss STEP to be given a Comp Sci with Nat Sci offer. It wouldn't appear as a summer pool acceptance because they are still being admitted for Comp Sci just with a different combination for the first year.

Reply 28

L'Evil Fish

Original post by miraj3

4th UMS would be Physics: 258/300

Total of the 4 UMS: 1117/1200 which would just give me 93%.

Gives you sub 93% unfortunately

Reply 29

TVIO

Original post by Christ's Admissions

Ahh that makes sense! Thanks very much for the quick and useful answer. Hope to be at your university next year :biggrin:

Reply 30

Doones

Original post by miraj3

4th UMS would be Physics: 258/300

Total of the 4 UMS: 1117/1200 which would just give me 93%.

That's (unfortunately) not how they work it

Maths is combined. So 297+287 : 584 /600 = 97.333 UMS
287 /300 = 95.666 UMS
258 /300 = 86.000 UMS

Av = 278.999 /3 = 92.999

hmmmm. I think rounding down at 3 significant decimals has hurt you..

Reply 31

L'Evil Fish

Original post by jneill

It's actually around 91.67%

97.333 for maths combined
275 in bio, not 287

Reply 32

miraj3

Thanks for clearing it up, gone through the numbers and would be below 93% then.

Thanks to all who helped!

Reply 33

Doones

Original post by L'Evil Fish

It's actually around 91.67%

97.333 for maths combined
275 in bio, not 287

Ah - good spot!

Reply 34

L'Evil Fish

I have to say Christ's were fantastic throughout the process.

Acknowledged my application.
Sent interview dates and times and details, and rectified them when needed.
(Although I heard after everyone else :cry2:

made me feel unspecial, I kid...)
Given information after interview if we wanted it, about what would happen next.
And received the decision on the Saturday!

So perhaps I didn't experience any problems just because Christ's itself did very well.

One thing is that everyone seems to be stats driven and crazy, even I found myself wanting to know everyone's UMS :lol:

but I some people with Stellar marks were rejected so interview must have played an important role.

Although that isn't something that can really be rectified I don't think...

I realised I didn't add anything helpful lol

Reply 35

abigai11

Original post by Christ's Admissions

I very much agree on this. It clearly needs to be co-ordinated and advertised better. The problem is that some of those who are unsuccessful after re-interview are also considered for Open offers which may mean that it is impossible for us to have the meeting before the official posting date.

Hi, does this mean that following re-interview for medicine if an applicant is rejected they can be placed back in the open pool? Have heard differnt infomation about this from different people. Can you clarify?