Why wasn't i even pooled for cs?

Feeling very **** as i just got rejected. I was predicted 4A*s. I got a 7.4 in the TMUA putting me in the top 8.2%, definitely within the acceptance range even assuming everyone above me gets in. I had an amazing personal statement with loads of reasonably large and interesting projects I had done directly related to the course in addition to an entire EPQ on compsci research involving building and analysing a new form of software. In the interview I got both questions i was asked with relatively little help pretty quickly and was able to easily answer the questions i was asked about on my personal statement.

Before today I gave myself an ~80% chance of getting an offer, but I didn't even get pooled. I cant think of any reason i gave them to reject me. Right now i'm just confused at what went wrong.

I've asked for feedback but that will take ages and I really need to know what could possibly have lead to this.

Apply to American universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown and Dartmouth all of which will cover international student fees and scholarships too. 🙂

Are you at a fee paying school? Answering anonymously as I don’t want to out myself on here..I know one if my daughter’s teachers patrols the site & I don’t need to look like a tiger parent!

I did some number crunching using the 2023 admissions data to see how many girls from private schools in the UK might get an offer for maths at Cambridge - off the top of my head that number was around 8 out of roughly 250 places. This was based on an 80:20 M:F ratio. Nearly 100 places of the 250 go to international students & the remaining places were 76% state school sourced. I suspect it’s the same with CS…the number of places actually open to your application is much much smaller than the total places (if you went to a fee paying school). They have quotas to hit & ultimately they are aiming to get up to 90% of domestic places being state school sourced.

The international intake is a racket if you ask me but that’s the price domestic students pay for the government capping fees for the last decade.

I’m so sorry you didn’t get an offer - it’s shocking, confusing & painful.

Maybe it was your attitude?

Are you at a fee paying school? Answering anonymously as I don’t want to out myself on here..I know one if my daughter’s teachers patrols the site & I don’t need to look like a tiger parent!

I did some number crunching using the 2023 admissions data to see how many girls from private schools in the UK might get an offer for maths at Cambridge - off the top of my head that number was around 8 out of roughly 250 places. This was based on an 80:20 M:F ratio. Nearly 100 places of the 250 go to international students & the remaining places were 76% state school sourced. I suspect it’s the same with CS…the number of places actually open to your application is much much smaller than the total places (if you went to a fee paying school). They have quotas to hit & ultimately they are aiming to get up to 90% of domestic places being state school sourced.

The international intake is a racket if you ask me but that’s the price domestic students pay for the government capping fees for the last decade.

I’m so sorry you didn’t get an offer - it’s shocking, confusing & painful.

As far as I'm aware Cambridge doesn't have any sort of quotas about fee paying school intake, they just make effort to consider it as part of the context to make the process fair for people that don't get the dedicated oxbridge support. The low intake is due to low applicant rates, it's not accurate to say there are fewer places open to privately educated students. Their goal is to make the process as fair as possible, the 90% target is an indicator of this, not the goal in itself. A good chunk of the colleges actually still offer dispropotionately in favour of private schools (Trinity & John's especially).