The Official Cambridge Winter Pool 2013 Thread (includes FAQ and Status Reports)

It's all in the application statistics - http://www.study.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/apply/statistics/

Search for Medicine and sort by college. The open offers graph clearly shows five Open Offers but only 1 acceptance from last year (and six offers with no acceptances from the year before). 'Acceptance' in this instance doesn't mean the number of people who necessarily accepted the offer, but the number of people who took up their place in the autumn (or for deferred entry). As there is a very low rate both of offers being declined and of people missing their grades one it's not an unreasonable leap of logic that the low rate of acceptance is caused by a combination of the two.

I think this is more likely to be a misreading of the statistics. The acceptances across the university were 8 down, Open 4 down.

I would suggest we don't know how open offers who get placed show up in these statistics. The "one" may be somebody who was admitted over the quota. It may be that the other four show up under the college they ended up at.

We don't have any open offer holders who can tell us what their letter says but I have seen one from Oxford and it is quite clear that the place is guaranteed, just not the college.

I see no reason why 80% (or 10/11 in a different year) would decide not to take up an open offer or would be any more likely not to make their grades. The standard for medicine is so high they pool the best of the remaining field, not the weakest.

It is quite clear that open offers are a guaranteed offer-otherwise you couldn't accept it as a firm on UCAS. Universities are not allowed to make a "maybe" offer.

Rejection via Track today.

So so sorry mate, after all your hard work and waiting.

Where are you thinking you may go now? You will thrive and shine wherever......

I was actually talking about my friend.

what.

so you mean to tell me that I and all the other medics were sitting here for the last 18 ****ing days waiting to hear news incase of the small chance of an open offer or being fished...with all dates being ignored etc. and random decisions at random times...ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT NO OPEN OFFERS THIS YEAR?

ah mate, sorry , I can see that now! I think all this bad news getting to me! It has slightly tainted my offer, seeing so many good candidates who could offer so much to Cambridge, fall especially after the pool.



Grim. And on this forum, you get to care about how people do, how they feel. Anyway, glad all well with you, and my thoughts are with the poolees, and hope that they all bounce back soon. You are all considered Cambridge standard, you will all do well, and with the grit and determination you've shown, I'm sure will have even more to offer.

My friend got given an offer by Sidney Sussex after being pooled by Corpus Christi so I wouldn't panic yet lol.

My daughter has received an open offer for vet medicine for 2013 entry. The letter stated it was a definite offer but she won't know the college until after A level results are out. Her results come out a month before as she is an IB student, she has to get 41 points, 776 at HL which is the equivalent of two A*'s and an A and AAA a SL and a full three marks for EE. This is a particularly hard offer. I wrote this just to confirm that it has been explained to us that it is a definite offer and she will go to one of seven listed colleges, but only if she achieves her offer grades and that she will be under the wing of an allocated college until she has finally been given a name. She has accepted the offer on UCAS. I was thrilled for her and was disappointed to see the negativity associated with the past 5 years statistics listed by another tsr member, you have definitely taken the shine off the offer.