Applying to Cambridge? Peterhouse? Any questions?

You might find this thread useful - it is closed now but our medicine interviewers talked about how they look at BMAT and UMS. The GCSE requirement to study Medicine is grade C or above in dual award science (or physics and biology if single sciences studied) and mathematics. Otherwise GCSE scores do not form a significant part of our assessment and GCSE results are only used to compare candidates with the rest of their school not nationally and certainly not to see how many A* grades they achieved.

The average SUMS for successful Medicine applicants over the last 2 year was 95.0%. Remember that about 40% of our applicants aren't taking A levels.

Average grades can be misleading as they are exactly that an average (or modal) mark. They are simply meant to provide some guide for those students thinking of applying of the level of achievement of many of our successful candidates. However, there is, of course, a distribution of marks that our successful candidates achieve, some higher, some lower. Again, there are many factors which contribute to a successful application and a holistic approach is indeed used. Peterhouse tends to use very poor BMAT results to deselect very weak candidates (for example, with C, C, and C (or lower) in the BMAT. As we receive a large number of applications from a very diverse pool of students, studying different subjects in different examination and school systems, it is impossible to introduce strict rules on cut off grades etc.

Last year was unusual in that because the BMAT results came out late and due to availability of interviewers we had to call some of our candidates for interview without knowing their BMAT results whilst for others we waited until after the BMAT results were known. This was not optimal but when we reviewed this process we found that it would not have made any difference and those candidates who were called for interview before the results all did well in the BMAT and would have been interviewed anyway. This year, we very much hope that we will know the BMAT results before we call any candidate for interview.

Typical requirements for Irish students can be found on the University website. You should enter all your qualifications when you complete your UCAS form.

Super-curricular reading is indeed important for all candidates, not merely those from a particular country or studying a particular qualification. In terms of preparation for interview, a good starting point would be to see what topics are covered in the relevant A level courses and have a look at those. Beyond this, your reading should be guided by your interests, but there is no expectation that you would have started to read undergraduate-level books.

Hi, thanks for this, I understand this but UCAS only require past public exam results, so I assume this is all I need to produce or should I also have current exam results from internal school exams on hand?

Only public exam results need to be declared. Internal school exams do not. If you have done very well on your school exams, this is something your teachers could mention as part of their reference on the UCAS form.

Is there a Clare admissions member active on this thread?

This is the thread of peterhouse admission team.

My bad. Let me rephrase that.

Does Clare have an admissions tutor active on TSR in general

Hi Im applying for Engineering with 776 in HL (physics, chinese, maths). I do have a 6 on maths tho i have EC on health issues. (I'm not sure if the EC is releveant however..) and I have a predicted total of 41/45. I took standalone FM modules for Alevel, which I self-studied: M1, M2 and FP1 and I took on individual proejcts on acoustic engineering + physics IB EE. What are my chances? Are individual project important even? I also did some readings on my interest and kept a NB on it.

Hello Martin!
Thanks for the quick answer.
Just two more questions: Do I have a chance to be invited to an interview if my overall score is going to be about 1.3 - 1.4? And if my overall score is not good enough (1.4), would I still have a chance to get accepted if my interview is 'good enough'?

OK, it's time to bring this thread to a close. Thanks for posting everybody! If you have any more questions about Peterhouse, our courses, application process or why it's the best College come and find me in our College thread.