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

Email the college if you still haven't received the decision letter and ask for an email copy if you need it that quickly. If you mean, when does Cambridge send out the information about taking up one's place, this won't be until much later.

If your son/daughter is not eligible for public funds in the UK, your decision letter will have included details about the financial conditions that must be met, and that should be sufficient for your purposes.

I am sure you WERE actually pooled! I would hypothesise that the college just sent out ( re-used) a previous letter template that they had sent out to their first tranche of 'rejected' applicants and omitted to change date or format for the final letters for the returned poolees.The admin person may have felt these people could have the same letter since they knew they could not offer them a place and the situation hadn't changed. But if you have admin assistants of variable quality or actual decisionmaking power they may just feel the original letter 'will do' and needs no further personalisation to reflect the higher achievement of the pooled applicants. If it was a commercial direct marketing operation they would have loads of pre prepared letters marked o, p, q etc for all sorts of admissions scenarios - mainly because they wouldnt want to be offending customers!. The lack of thought and control comes down maybe to not having a very centralised procedure, therefore reactive behaviour and too much variation between colleges. Also no one at the top thinking sensitively about what all this means to the 'Cambridge brand image' or individual applicants self confidence and happiness.

(Yes - I do work in Marketing!)

Minerva, I am assuming that with the disappearance of AS (and the UMS) the whole admissions procedure will have to change for Cambridge and that might be quite a good moment for the University to reconsider admissions procedure overall.

Minerva, this thread has been a life line for me. I had an exam last week, got another one on Friday and I have been sooo stressed! I'm sorry I'm one of those people joining after the event, but to show my gratitude I'd like to add to the stats.

I applied for Classics. Pooled by Newnham and fished by St. John's for re-interview. I've been dreading the rejection letter/email/track update ... then today I got an offer by post!! I still can't believe it after all this time. At least I can do my exam on Friday without falling apart.

Thank you and everyone who has posted on this thread.

My daughter finally got her rejection* letter (via email) yesterday afternoon. It’s a huge relief to have closure.

She will probably be heading to Durham (University College) which looks like a wonderful place to study. She is very excited and I’m sure she will thrive there!


Thanks Minerva for your help and support. Good luck to all the ex-poolees!


*from Gonville and Caius for English Lit with no re-interview (she herself hasn’t posted elsewhere on this thread)

For the stats : fished by Fitzwilliam today for HSPS, originally pooled by King's College. Good luck to everyone on the thread, it is still possible to be offered a place!

For anyone interested this is the feedback that they gave me, international ex-poolee reject from pembroke for NatSci Bio:....

Wow they took the time to be very specific. Commiserations on not getting in but I hope the feedback was useful to you!

For anyone interested this is the feedback that they gave me, international ex-poolee reject from pembroke for NatSci Bio

yeah it was good, just want my TSA scores now... even the rejection letter was very personal- its nice of them.
how did your application go?

It went well... back in 2009

You never get to know your TSA score. Even current students don't know theirs.

The high number of applications per offer requires us to place a significant emphasis both on existing exam results and performance at each individual interview.

Minerva, this is for your stats; my daughter was pooled by caius and re-interviewed by Murray Edwards on 12.1.2013. We received a letter from caius on 22.1.2013 (dated 17.1.2013) that she was not successful to get a place in Cambridge. I still love her and am proud of her for getting so far, and congrats to everyone who secured an offer. Thanks a million for this thread and all your advice and stats.

It hasn't come through UCAS yet D: But I went ahead and e-mailed them, purely because I am confident that no harm will come of it - I sent a very carefully-worded e-mail assuring them of my gratitude throughout.

For anyone interested this is the feedback that they gave me, international ex-poolee reject from pembroke for NatSci Bio:

Thank you for your request for feedback on your application to Pembroke College. I hope you will find the following information, which gives you a sense of the general picture of applications to Pembroke College, and your own application in that context, useful. This year, we received 870 applications for entry to Pembroke College in 2013 or 2014 and made 160 offers including 10 for 2014; of these 11 went to students from the inter-collegiate ‘Pool’ who had originally applied to other Cambridge Colleges. On paper the field was extremely well qualified and strong. Applicants who had sat AS Levels averaged, for example, 90% across their three best or three most relevant AS/A2 Level subjects; those doing IB were usually predicted overall scores in excess of 40 points; and those doing Scottish qualifications had regularly achieved several A1s at Higher Level. Where they sat GCSEs, the average candidate had achieved 7A*s. A relatively large number of students also had outstanding references: in some subjects, a significant number of the places this year went to applicants who were described as being academically among the best students teachers/lecturers had taught. The top group of candidates performed extremely well in tests and in interviews. Applicants who received offers averaged 95% at AS Level and several A*s at GCSE. The exceptional quality of this field meant that, to our very great regret, many excellent applicants were squeezed out at the margins by others who we judged to be stronger overall.


I now write with specific reference to NSB and to your own application. We received 190 applications for the Natural Sciences tripos and made 31 offers in the subject this year. The high number of applications per offer requires us to place a significant emphasis both on existing exam results and performance at each individual interview. In the context of our overall field, your GCSE results were above average but your AS results were slightly below average and did not place you in the top group of our applicants in advance of interview. It is worth noting that the very strongest applicants tended to achieve results that are well above 90%s in all of their relevant subjects. At interview, you performed very creditably. You showed yourself to be mathematically able and you had some very good ideas surrounding some of the problems being discussed. For example, you spoke very well on the differences between compound eyes and simple eyes and worked methodically through the advantages and disadvantages. However, you did slightly less well in other elements of the interview. Your interviewer noted that you had difficulty recalling some key facts and your scientific knowledge was not as good as the very best candidates this year. For example, you lacked a detailed understanding on the question on depth perception and were not able to provide clear scientific insight. Overall, your performance was thought strong enough to merit inclusion in the Pool but not strong enough to lift you into our very top group of applicants following the interview. We should again stress the importance of the exacting standards across all existing exam results and interviews. This is an inevitable consequence of the strength of competition for places and our decision does not mean that we in any way doubt your clear academic ability.

I hope this helps to explain our decision. We refine and improve our processes every year, but the choices remain extraordinarily difficult. Indeed, depending upon subject, we believe that around two-thirds of the applicants we assessed this year would have done well at Cambridge had we been able to admit them. We sent rejection letters to a large number of candidates who were, by any reasonable standard, very strong, and we realise that, when such applicants are unsuccessful in applying to Cambridge, it can often be very disappointing for them. We know how much students invest in their applications and are very grateful to have received yours. We wish you the very best for the future.

Thank you so much for posting this. What wonderful feedback. You should feel very proud. My daughter applied to Pembroke to study Phys NatSci and was also pooled. It's interesting to see details about numbers of applicants and information about what the college was looking for in them. Best wishes for the future.