Giving feedback to Cambridge

Hi, I was fortunate enough to receive a conditional offer in maths, but I just have a couple of questions out of curiosity:


Thanks for your responses

Charlie

I am sorry to hear that you were unsuccessful, I am afraid that a lot of people are even with very high predictions. There has been quite a long discussion on the thread about private vs state schools, so I'll add my thoughts here rather than reply to each post individually.

As has been pointed out, there is no state school quota. We have a target that 61-63% of our UK intake should come from state schools. This was calculated very carefully to reflect national achievement of our offer levels. Around 60% of those achieving A*AA and above are from the state sector and so it is only right that our intake should aim to reflect the national picture.

In the 2013 admissions round (the last for which full data is currently available), 29.7% of Home applicants were from Independent schools, while 38.6% of entrants were from Independent schools.

We tend to get it in the neck from both sides of the debate and our figures are open to use and abuse by people wanting to show bias one way or the other. From our perspective, however, we just want to teach good people and are prepared to look for them in Basingstoke, Bejing or Bradford. When making decisions, we are going to take into account all the information we have about that student, including the educational context from which they come.

We are not bias but we do discriminate in the original and non-perjoative sense of the word - in that we recognise the different backgrounds from which people have applied to Cambridge and make careful judgements about their applications and their potential. Although we have a lot of data to help us, it is ultimately a human decision and these are prone to error. We will not always get things right, there are lots of people who get turned away who culd have done really well here had they got the chance and equally there are people whom we admit who, on reflection, properly should not have been admitted. But while we are not perfect, we do our best to ensure that we make the best and fairest decision possible given all the information that we have in front of us at the time at which we make the decision.

But I'm probably biased having gone to an independent school on a scholarship and thus been on the wrong side of any positive discrimination present in the system.

X

Could you ask Oxford to create a similar thread? There are several things I would like to tell them.

(Cambridge looks more student-friendly on several points. )

Could you ask Oxford to create a similar thread? There are several things I would like to tell them.

(Cambridge looks more student-friendly on several points. )

Try asking clh_hilary...

Posted from TSR Mobile

They could. They haven't.

This thread is the work of a particularly friendly and diligent admissions tutor at Christ's college and as far as I'm aware its completely off his own back, he was at corpus(?) before and did the same thing there.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Another parent of an unsuccessful applicant. I want to raise one area of admission procedure may need seriously consideration for improvement. That is how Cambridge select applicants for interview, especially calling oversea applicant (residing and studying outside UK) to attend Cambridge interview. For Oxford, they will carefully select applicants for interview, and so there is a genuine chance of getting an offer when you got an interview. But for Cambridge, you invite like almost 80% of applicants for interview. With that high %, I believe there is inevitably high number of unsuccessful candidates who have already shown no choice on their paper (or unsuitable) to Cambridge. I don't see the reason why Cambridge would still want to meet so many applicants whereas Oxford will make up their better mind in selecting their truly wanted candidates for their interview.

Even worst for oversea applicant like my daughter, she has applied Architecture at King's. She has requested for oversea interview option in her application. Later, King's sent email to ask her if she could attend personally an Cambridge interview. And specific stating in the email that there is very few successful offer if only attending overseas interview for her subject. With this email interview invitation and statement, we seriously thought that my daughter has a strong application (at least) on paper and good chance of getting an offer if we go Cambridge interview. So she went UK for interview at King's. But the 2 interviews were really like a causal talk and ran uneventful. Unfortunately, she didn't get an offer, not even been pooled. We then requested for feedback from King's and stated our question specifically why they invited her for a Cambridge interview. They gave their feedback simply saying that my daughter was unfit to Cambridge course. But didn't go into detail of where how unfit she is (or how bad in interview)? As you have suggested before, if applicant is strong on paper but weak in interview, she at least worth given a chance pooling or receiving a higher offer! I still don't get the idea why King's asking her to spend all that money and time to just attend those 2 30-min interview for nothing.

My suggestion is DON"T invite applicants for interview when you are not interested in offering them. It just waste their money, time and emotional fluctuation. Take Oxford's practice (or other top universities), select applicants carefully and only invite those you are truly interested. Most people in TSR know getting a Cambridge's interview is NOTHING. They all know almost every applicants got interviews (cool joke). Why you have to do that? Can't Cambridge be more serious in selection of interview.

Thank you for reading this.

You have kindly pointed out in a number of places in this thread that feedback is not given by the admissions tutors to offer holders, which given the number of the letters you are writing to those who have rejections, I can fully understand. However, my daughter has an offer for which it would be helpful to receive feedback. Her offer is Pre-U D2 D2 D2 in Economics, History and Geography to read law. In terms of UCAS tariff points that equates to 435 points compared to 420 points for an A*A*A* offer, 400 points for an A*A*A offer and 380 points for the typical offer in law. She pointed out that in the statistics published by the Admissions Office for the 2013 cycle, Cambridge only published acceptances up to 420 UCAS tariff points.

As my daughter's offer is three levels above the typical offer, compounded further by the fact that subjects such as Economics and History are so subjective as to make the attainment of a D2 grade something of a lottery, she feels her offer is somewhat extreme. An offer which is one level above the typical offer is par for the course, two levels above the typical offer would no doubt have some justification of some sort, but three levels above the typical offer feels tantamount to a rejection.

I fully appreciate why the policy exists of not giving feedback to offer holders, but would it not be reasonable for those with the most extreme offers to also be offered some kind of explanation?

If PendaMErcia's child is aiming for Maths they have STEP offers as well as A level - and the offers are often very high indeed. About half the mathmos either don't take up or fail to meet their offer. The system for mathmos is quite brutal and perhaps Cambridge should be setting its own admission exams at an earlier stage rather than rejecting so many after A level.

I applied to Christ's and got rejected, unfortunately, but they handled the entire admissions process very well. I knew exactly what was happening and when, which was very reassuring. A girl I know applied to Jesus and had no idea when application outcomes were sent out - she thought she'd be contacted on the day of Oxford outcomes! Maybe there should be a univeristy-wide blanket email after interviews are completed outlining the decisions process, like Christ's sent out?

For EU students, the conditions given are relatively high, on a par with those required in the A-levels, many of which are also surpassed. From my d's experience in France, with a French (i.e. not international) BAC, she had to get 16 (read A*) in 2 STEM subjects and 16 overall. That is the 99th percentile. It made her entire life a race to prepare for these exams.

But no such ''necessary pooling'' exists for international applicants, I presume? While I fully understand that it is hard to create the same criteria to put international applicants with a variety of different qualifications in the Winter pool, it seems rather unfair that only UK applicants should have this chance (if that is indeed the case, of which I am not sure).
Just to give an example, I have applied to Pembroke and received a straight rejection after my interviews, even thought my grades (the high school transcript) were perfect (and by perfect I mean 100% of what I could have achieved) and I was predicted to achieve 100% in my final examinations. So even thought apparently I must have royally tanked my interviews, it would have been nice to be put in the Winter pool based on my grades, not just on the decision of the college I have applied to.


Sorry for posting in this thread as my comment is not directly connected to Christ's admissions, but perhaps Cambridge as a whole could give this some thought Thank you for reading!

I am the parent of a first year Cambridge student - he fortunately received a direct offer last year and did not have to endure the pool. Your "Ask an admission tutor" threads were very helpful in demystifying the process - so a rather belated "Thank you".

Having seen the process last year and watched the various threads this year, I have some comments:

Pooling system
The pooling system has been improved - it seems to have been much smoother this year but there are a few things to be ironed out - and I may be repeating other comments:

Emails should be the preference form of communication and there must be a day on which all offers and rejections go out to all applicants. Some applicants this year waited a week for an offer or rejection (not including the small number of medicine applicants still waiting for a decision). I can't imagine what the waiting applicants and their families went through. The applicants are by-and-large 18 years old and feel that their whole future rests on this decision. The failure of some colleges to recognise this is cruel.

Offer communications should clearly say what they are (the word "offer" in the subject line?). There should no "roller coaster" communications.

Offer conditions
From what I can see, more "hard" offers have been made this year - 3 or 4 A* offers and, in particular, Magdalene seems to have given a 3 A* offer to all the science offer holders who have posted on these threads. You have explained the idea that some variation is appropriate in some cases but great care must be taken. Making a higher offer "standard", which it seems Magdalene has done, is unfair. From what I can see, Magdalene did not warn applicants that this year they were making 3 A*offers standard - the applicants could have applied to another college had they known. Certainly applicants for Engineering have fair warning that your college and a number of others may ask for STEP and they can choose to apply elsewhere.

My particular concern about these high offers is that they are potentially discriminatory. Care must be taken in giving them to ensure that there is no bias but the other aspect is the effect on those with these high offers. They may choose not to "firm" Cambridge, feeling that the pressure to achieve a much higher offer than expected is too much (and that they are less "worthy" candidates because they have been given higher offers). It seems to me that those most likely to be put off in these circumstances will be those who are less self confident (and it is pretty well documented that young women tend to be less confident about their abilities than young men) and those whose schools or parents are less able to support them in achieving such high offers (more likely to be those at state schools). I am aware that many Cambridge students exceed their offers, even the very hard offers, but those statistics will not necessarily reassure the less confident holder of a hard offer. Careful monitoring is needed.

General information
Colleges should be encouraged to be much more open with prospective applicants. My particular gripe is the difficulty we had in trying to find out the room and meal charges from some colleges - they behaved as if this was an unreasonable request and that no one had ever had the temerity to ask before. Their responses were frequently quite unhelpful. And the costs DO vary considerably.

Thank you for asking for feedback.

Sorry I just wish to disagree with some posters about some points that I wish for you to keep the same.

I am a person who worries a lot before receiving results etc. Because I was in a gap year and the only person I knew applying to Cambridge, I was able to ensure I didn't learn the date that responses were sent any more than January time, so didn't spend the time before extremely worried and have a very sleepless night. I feel reminding applicants when the date is regularly would upset those who simply don't want to know. The date is clearly shown on the Cambridge website and the websites of all Colleges, so applicants should be easily able to find it out, should they want to.

Also, I received both a letter and email from Emma. I was out the morning/early afternoon of the response day with a big group of people and received the email on my phone. The layout of this email meant that the subject and summary shown did not tell me the result of my application. If,as someone suggested, the outcome was shown in the subject of the email, I would have found out my result in front of people, something I really didn't want to do, as dealing with rejection would be terrible in public. Because of the layout I was able to wait until I was home alone and open my letter, allowing me to find out my outcome in a situation I was happy to do so.

Just some points to think about when considering some changes, and thank you for allowing feedback.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Sorry if this is a little off-topic but I wonder whether Admissions Tutors make an attempt to judge the amount of parental input that some students get in the applications process? Of course it's hard to quantify, but as this thread demonstrates, many parents become very involved and personally I think it has more influence than type of school.

I would say I was relatively low-key in my involvement when my daughter applied two years ago, but I took an interest and was keen for her to get in. We spent hours chatting about the topics on her personal statement which didn't come up, but I also recorded an earnest documentary series related to her subject. She didn't watch it until the night before the interview (tore herself away from Come Dine With Me!) and as a result was able to talk intelligently about a turbulent area of the world she had known nothing about two days before. i have no idea if it clinched her getting a place, but I'm sure my input helped her focus on her application. Anecdotally, I know of a history applicant who was coached extensively by her (history teacher) parents, and of some very clever children who applied after good AS results (usually to Kings because they'd heard of it) with no parental guidance at all. The history applicant got in, the others had mixed fortunes.

I'd actually be interested to know how many Cambridge students are the sons and daughters of teachers or academics who know the system and have plenty of time to prepare their offspring - although there's obviously a limit to the number of statistics you can gather!

As I said before I know it's hard to quantify, and you make valiant efforts to ensure the application system is fair, but I just wondered if it's anything Admissions Tutors ever discuss?

Out of interest does this mean that you should in a purely rhetorical sense have targets to admit a higher proportion of private school students for sciences subjects as with the standard offer being A*A*A of the those achieving above this grade threshold surely a larger proportion would come from the independent sector than the proportions for A*AA students? Taking this to an extreme the average grades of successful applicants are nearly 3A*'s in sciences and taking the above argument surely this means you should base your suggested targets off the proportions at this level which correct me if I'm wrong would have been even more biased towards the independent sector?

Surely admissions should be purely meritocratic and such redundant guidelines should not exist?

But I'm probably biased having gone to an independent school on a scholarship and thus been on the wrong side of any positive discrimination present in the system.








Posted from TSR Mobile