Oxford-Cambridge Feedback from Rejection

that guy is not applying for medicine.

i really hate it when people don't even check the forum they're posting in.

Reply 61

OP

oh yea law at keble. well i guess this thread isnt COMPLETELY related to medicine, probably a college thread would have been more relevant. but yes iso gets on my nanny goat too

Reply 62

zoomzoomzoom

Isometrix

that guy is not applying for medicine.

i really hate it when people don't even check the forum they're posting in.

apologies, just looked at the title, not the forum. My bad.

Reply 63

Musty_Elbow

2

I want my feedback letter, but they sent it to the headmaster.

He told me that I did "fine" at interview, whatever that means, but that my BMAT let me down (5.3, 5.3, 9). I tried peering at the page, and next to 5.3, 5.3, 9 = D,D,C. And i was like woah. I know i didnt do very well, but i didnt "fail" the first 2 sections! Anyway, i think i am over the cambridge rejection hump. I really wanted to reapply at first, but now Im pretty set on edinburgh with an unconditional!

Do you think the college will send me feedback directly? Cos i want a copy of the letter!

Reply 64

OP

ur school really should give you that letter if it has ur name on it its ur right to see it. go ask for it and say u want to show ur parents or something

Reply 65

anonymity007

mattbroon

I want my feedback letter, but they sent it to the headmaster.

He told me that I did "fine" at interview, whatever that means, but that my BMAT let me down (5.3, 5.3, 9). I tried peering at the page, and next to 5.3, 5.3, 9 = D,D,C. And i was like woah. I know i didnt do very well, but i didnt "fail" the first 2 sections! Anyway, i think i am over the cambridge rejection hump. I really wanted to reapply at first, but now Im pretty set on edinburgh with an unconditional!

Do you think the college will send me feedback directly? Cos i want a copy of the letter!

I'd email the college directly/ get your parents to write to your head to have a copy of the letter.

Also, it's highly unlikely that D,D,C is related to your bmat for 2 reasons:
1- There's no way 5.3 is a D, it's probably a B
2- Cambridge do not assign scores to s3, they don't consider it at all
You probably read it out of context when glancing. What college did you apply to? if they truly did give you D,D,C then that's just ridiculous.

Reply 66

OP

found this on another thread
Remember, if you really want feedback, you can try asking the college to provide, under the Data Protection Act, copies of all documents they hold on you, including any notes that your interviewers made, and how your application was scored (e.g. aptitude test score). They will invariably charge you £10, but IMO it's well worth it - I requested copies of my interview notes after being rejected by Oxford for clinical school (for those of you who don't know me, I did pre-clinical medicine at Oxford), and it was truly fascinating to see what had been written about my interview performance...

I think I remember reading somewhere that it's University policy to keep documents pertaining to unsuccessful applicants for a year afterwards, so it's not too late to ask now.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?p=17041018&highlight=oxford+feedback+interview#post17041018

There's no point sending an email. IF you are going to apply under Section 10 of the DPA you need to do it formally and send a £10.00 cheque. Be thorough in your request, i.e. state all the data sources you may want and then ask for everything else they have, university-wide etc etc
write a formal letter itemising everything you want to see, such as notes from all interviews, data on your aptitude test performance, and, if it's possible to do so without breaching anyone else's confidentiality, details as to where you came in the ranking of candidates. Then finish off by saying that you'd like any other information the University might hold. I'm not sure whether the University and the College are two separate entities for the purposes of requesting data, though? I just wrote to the Director of the Clinical School in my case, and received a reply asking me to send a £10.00 cheque to an address in Wellington Square. My advice would be to send the letter to the college you applied to, and they can redirect it if need be.

Be warned - the University have 40 working days to respond, and I heard at pretty much the end of that period - and furthermore, when I got in touch to ask why there was a delay, I was told that I'd never sent a cheque in the first place Luckily I was able to provide a bank statement which showed they'd cashed the cheque over a month beforehand! If you haven't heard within about 30 working days, you might want to ring somebody up and check that hasn't happened to you.
It's also possible that your referee has received some form of feedback, so it may be worth asking at school. One of my tutors for next year sent a letter to my referee thanking them for my reference (I assume this is the done thing) and included quite extensive and personal feedback, which was rather nice. :smile:

Reply 67

that's a bit excessive tbh. seems like a lot of hassle and a waste of money, when in most cases you can probably identify the main reason(s) as to why you were rejected.

i remember when we declared our SAQs, the last page I saw was a whole load of text to do with data confidentiality. and i'm sure that they stated that they could withold any information that they had on you during your interviews, and you had to click "agree" at the bottom to send it off.
did anyone else remember seeing anything along these lines on the SAQ?

Reply 68

OP

well obv that only applies to cantabieess

Reply 69

OP

or cantab-babies if you will :P genius......

Reply 70

-42-

1

Hmm, well for Oxford there's the OAF so there may well have been the same small print on that, can't remember to be honest... Has your friend got any other Medicine offers by the way?

Cheers,

--Dave

Reply 71

OP

oaf was scrapped this year and my cousin? not yet waiting to hear back from nottingham kings and edinburgh

Reply 72

Tech

12

NissanMicra

i was referring to oxford system guys, i prefer oxford over cambridge for sure but the system seems so dodgy im trying to understand it. plus i dont want my independent schooling to work against me (despite being there on full scholarship :frown:

). my cousin was similar to me she had 10 A*s 2 top 5s and full marks in bio AS etc etc so it seems like a complete jackpot! and we'd like to know for what exact reason she was rejected.
plus she was never asked about 'what she knows about or has researched about'...a tad unfair but c'est la vie. She requested feedback but she showed it to me and it seems very contrived, how specific will we be able to ask for?

sorry to hear about your cousin. some people just get unlucky with interviews. they asked me a chemistry question on pH in my first interview which we really hadn't been taught and after insisting that I had been taught it, my interviewer just told me to work it out from first principles... it was obvious by this stage I was going to get rejected! they could have asked me any number of things that I would have pwned - any number of things about my work experience, research, interests, but I didn't get that chance either.

I specifically wrote to the college to ask for feedback and they told me they would send me a private letter with feedback in a few days, when it arrived it was very similar to the generic rejection e-mail (competition is very tough, we had to turn away a number of good candidates, sorry.)

and before anyone asks, I too had a string of A*s at GCSE and high UMS As at AS, just short of 20 on the BMAT (which was probably my weakest point, I scored very poorly on the essay but pretty highly on the logic and average on the science).

oh - and your independent schooling will not work against you. I go to a suitably average state school and we had a large number of rejections from people with 100% UMS in various AS-levels, strings of A*s at GCSE etc etc, and out of 5 people to get in from my sixth form this year, 4 were originally from private schools. (and no I'm not accusing oxbridge of favouring private school children either! just providing some more data)

Reply 73

anonymity007

Tech

sorry to hear about your cousin. some people just get unlucky with interviews. they asked me a chemistry question on pH in my first interview which we really hadn't been taught and after insisting that I had been taught it, my interviewer just told me to work it out from first principles...

WTF

Reply 74

OP

anyone else heard back?

Reply 75

NissanMicra

anyone else heard back?

i think it's a bit late asking now considering all decisions for oxford were made in late december, and for cambridge in early jan.

Reply 76

OP

i meant heard back for feedback...they're still dishing it out at this time

Reply 77

Musty_Elbow

2

I e-mailed my college last week, and they are sending a copy of the feedback to my house. The college was clare and the subject was medicine.

Reply 78

sinan90

Isometrix

Downing showed no mercy this year. i'd like to meet the people they actually did take in, because to see people like you being rejected just sums up what the competition is like there.

Well I got in, and although my AS UMS marks were below average, at least from what they said at other colleges at least, I think I was helped out by my BMAT score hugely, otherwise I don't think I would have had much chance.

Reply 79