Feedback to Cambridge 2016

A comment about the waiting periods.. I really appreciated the Cambridge reps like yourself staying online a lot and answering everyone's questions. I think everyone will agree it made the process a lot more relaxed and we felt more secure about where our applications were. Huge thanks

i have an s 1 offer and they A*ed my physics and i am grateful as this is better than not being an offer but why cant i get feedback just cuz i got accepted i know i obviously messed something up really badly to get this terrible offer I am fairly sure it is my interview but i want feedback anyway why does cambridge not give feedback to applicants with crappy offers

If someone could create a FAQ page of all your answers, it could be very helpful for all future applicants.

I definitely think the policy of delaying giving out direct offers till pooled offers are ready is good, I would've hated finding out that I'd been pooled and having to wait to find if I'd been fished.

I definitely think the policy of delaying giving out direct offers till pooled offers are ready is good, I would've hated finding out that I'd been pooled and having to wait to find if I'd been fished.

If I have received an offer, is there anything else that I should prepare for in the mean time before I do my course? i.e in the summer holidays before I start?

Couldn't be happier about receiving an offer btw

This.

Is there any way to minimise the number of re-interviews from pool so that as many people as possible get a decision on the same day?

The only other feedback I can think of is all colleges sending email decisions to everyone at the same time (to be followed by formal letter). It can be stressful for applicants to hear someone getting in when they are still stressed and worrying about their decision.

Hello everyone and congratulations to all who have received offers and commiserations to those who have not and best of luck (and apologies) to any who are still waiting.

Every year we have an internal review of the Admission round at Cambridge and last year I ran a thread to try to elicit some feedback on our processes from students who have gone through them. This thread is an attempt to do that again.

I am not in a position to provide feedback on your application or say why you didn't get in but rather this is an opportunity for you to say if there are things about the process that might be improved and which I can then feedback. I will also try to explain some things which might seem odd about the process.

The thread will be open for a week and I will then report back to my colleagues. Thank you for your points and also for the applications.

The only complaint I have about the admissions procedure is the unseen material in the interview. As a Law applicant, I was given a few definitions within the interview that I struggled to get my head around the first time I heard them, I think especially so as I was a bundle of nerves! For next year's interviews I would definitely recommend giving the definitions to candidates to refer back to, as I think this held me back fairly significantly. Overall though I found everyone to be extremely helpful and polite, just gutted that things didn't work out for me!

If someone could create a FAQ page of all your answers, it could be very helpful for all future applicants.

Hello, welcome (officially) back!

One thing I've noticed virtually last few hours is that some colleges seems to have sent the decision letters by second class which caused serious (and unnecessary, I'd say) extra-stress for the applicants waiting for their result.
Considering the difference of first class and second class is not that significant (even for hundreds of letters they have to send) for famously wealthy Cambridge colleges, is it not possible from next year to ensure all posts are sent by first class?

Thank you very much for your continuous effort to fill the gap between Cambridge and applicants.

For the most part I felt the whole process was very well designed and administered. The only (small) issue I had was with the request for written work - in my case two essays for PBS, but I imagine it applies to some other subjects too.

For my A level Psychology course (OCR), we don't write essays as such - there is structured writing in the exams, but given the time constraints it's very different to writing an essay, and a lot of teachers don't set essays at all because they're just not useful exam preparation. The guidance for submitting essays did say that other written work could be substituted, but I thought it left it quite unclear as to what would be acceptable. I ended up submitting the answers I'd written for two classroom tests because that was all I had, and I really wasn't sure at the time whether it would be acceptable or not!

Perhaps it would be more useful if the guidance issued was subject-specific, and took into account what kind of work students are likely to be doing already?

Again, I stress that this is a small issue and on the whole everything went very smoothly - not least of all thanks to your support on TSR!