Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>

Mathematics at Cambridge admissions process

Is the personal statement and interview equally weighted in terms of deciding who is given a place?
I heard that 80% of the applicants go through to the interview and around half are given an offer. Is the personal statement used to decide the students who go through or is this the predicted grades?

Reply 1

Ariichu

I just replied to someone posting the same thing, tbh it might be the same person cause it was anonomous, but Ill summarise. Most people get to interview, the only reason you wouldnt is for 3 reasons: your predicted grades arent high enough (e.g. AAA when you need AstarAstarA), you arent doing the right subject choices (e.g. doing chemistry, economics and english lit when applying for natural sciences), or there is something pretty wrong with your ps (e.g. you say something actively bad or if you come off as pretencious idrk). Most people get to interview for these reasons, and its at interview where they narrow it down. The way it works at trinity hall and I assume other colleges, is that if you were to give a perfect interview would they let you in. If yes, then youll get an interview. If u have any other questions just pm me

Reply 2

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

I believe Cambridge's position is they aim to interview all who have a realistic chance of potentially getting an offer, which would be most applicants if they meet the standard entry criteria (for maths this would be A*A*A including maths and FM - and I think they would probably expect the A*s to be in maths and FM). They may also consider your contextualised GCSEs. I expect the personal statement is somewhat less important for various reasons (limited ability for them to know it is your work and not just written for you, a lot of them probably being quite similar, and in general for maths something like a personal statement probably gives limited insight into the applicant's mathematical ability rather than prose writing ability).

The only exception is Trinity College which is vastly oversubscribed for maths due to longstanding misplaced notions about the relation between the college you study at and what you study. As a result Trinity routinely rejects pre-interview applicants with A*A*A*A* and flawless GCSE grades. Note also you cannot be pooled if you are rejected pre-interview. As a result it's not recommended to apply to Trinity for maths, as the teaching is primarily delivered centrally by the department, and you can have supervisions at any college, not just your own - so going to another college you may well have supervisions at Trinity and vice versa in any event. There are plenty of other "old" colleges that are central as well which offer similar living options (e.g. Corpus Christi, Queen's, etc).

Generally though if you aren't applying to Trinity and have met the standard entry criteria unless there is some glaring concern from your GCSEs or reference or your personal statement is complete gibberish, I would expect you will most likely get interviewed. Then the interview will determine if you get an offer, and then your STEP performance will determine if you achieve that offer. Bear in mind about half of those who get offers fail to meet them due to missing the STEP condition.