CSAT For Computer Science Undergrad Admissions 2016 Entry

Dear all,

My name is Bogdan Roman. Some of you may have seen my name on the CSAT webpage or know me via email regarding the CSAT (or at Queens' interviews, via students, Oxbridge student conferences, Open Days etc).

Dear all,

My name is Bogdan Roman. Some of you may have seen my name on the CSAT webpage or know me via email regarding the CSAT (or at Queens' interviews, via students, Oxbridge student conferences, Open Days etc). I wanted to offer everyone here some peace of mind. I have followed this thread with some interest (and enjoyed seeing you work through the solutions of the example questions). I wish I had seen the last day’s messages sooner.

First, I hope you'll understand that I won't be able to entertain any debates or offer too many details or replies given admissions at Cambridge are now underway (I'm also tied up pretty much all day).One thing that has to be said, and that you should really take onboard is: Don't worry! You are not deselected or rejected based on the CSAT. On the contrary! I urge everyone to read the CSAT webpage, particularly the CSAT FAQ, and to trust that it's accurate.

The CSAT can help you if your interviews were not ideal, or if you are pooled with a similar CSAT performance as successful candidates at other colleges. We want you to do well. We developed the CSAT to be another tool to help us not miss out on any good candidates. For example: you may be too nervous at the interview, or may receive interview questions that happened to be a little outside of the Maths/Compsci areas that you truly enjoy, or the interview may simply not reflect your true capacity and the CSAT can then save you.

The questions are meant to challenge you (trust me, an easy test for CompSci is not in your best interest) but there really is no such thing as a minimum CSAT score or a minimum number of questions we expect you to answer. If it's a challenging test then it's challenging for everyone. We will still make as many, possibly even more offers since the CompSci subject is growing and will continue to grow.

I wish you all the best of luck with your interviews and hope to see you at Cambridge next year.

Bogdan.

Incase anybody cared, I sat the CSAT this morning. You can ask any questions, but I won't be giving out any info that may decrease my chances :P

How many questions did you do? What did you think of the difficulty in comparison to the sample paper?

Out of interest, has anyone solved example question no.15? I thought I had it under control, but on reflection the question makes very little sense...

Are we talking about the sample questions or the real exam (just to clarify lol)

The sample questions lol; I hope yours went well

Cheers man! And best of luck to you too!

Dammit, Q15 was the one question from the samples I didn't get an answer to, sorry! But I'm rubbish at geometry usually lol

That's good, and thanks.

I genuinely think there's something wrong with the question - it just doesn't actually make sense as something to ask - the distance you must start from the south pole is based on n, but the shortest distance is completely different, and I think possible the wrong thing to ask :/

I believe the answer to Q15 is to be starting at the North Pole, so you would be R*pi distance from the South Pole (half of the circumference). Unless you take the distance to be directly from the South to North Pole through the earth and so 2R. You could start closer, theoretically, but you would be repeating the same position twice (if the distance you travel east, n, is equal to a latitude of the Earth length n). Since the question states that there can't be a repetition of the points then you can only start at the North Pole. I could definitely be wrong here though.

I think the question is incredibly vague, or annoyingly picky. You know what I mean.

But all hard maths papers (STEP, MAT etc) are like that with some questions lol

That'd work and I get what you mean, but since you can't visit any point twice (apart from where you started I'm guessing) can't you assume the only place you can start is the north pole?

More than twice

Actually, your thinking might be the reason they asked for the closest, because you could start at the north pole and still meet the other requirements I suppose, so I'm happy now :P

Just finished the test... That was pretty terrible if the same happens at interview I am definitely rejected. I got close to answering so many questions but they said they wouldn't mark them unless we write a final answer


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