Ask Peterhouse - 2017 entry

Original post by jneill

No the plagiarism system understands it was written by the same person so it's ok.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Cheers, will edit it in.

Reply 363

Fbiemad

@Zacken
Where did you get the information on them shredding the applicant's information? It might be in their computer systems though...

LSE admissions told me they will have all my data in their system, so they will read my old personal statement too. But I do not know if they only keep it for the offer holders or if they will keep it for all applicants who applied.

Reply 364

Original post by Fbiemad

@Zacken
Where did you get the information on them shredding the applicant's information? It might be in their computer systems though...

No, it won't be in their computer systems, that would defeat the point...

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4245718&p=67148324&page=5#post67148324

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4238242&p=67166050&page=45#post67166050

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2801773&p=49947749&page=57#post49947749

[...]

And several more times. :tongue:

Reply 365

Fbiemad

Original post by Zacken

No, it won't be in their computer systems, that would defeat the point...

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4245718&p=67148324&page=5#post67148324

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4238242&p=67166050&page=45#post67166050

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2801773&p=49947749&page=57#post49947749

[...]

And several more times. :tongue:

Haha, thanks mate.
I guess the extra space they give us in the questionnaire will get filled this time :biggrin:

even though I feel like Cambridge doesn't value Personal Statement that much. Its the tests/interviews they take which makes the difference I guess.

Reply 366

Original post by Fbiemad

even though I feel like Cambridge doesn't value Personal Statement that much.

Depends on the (course, college) 2-tuple, imo.

Anywho, good luck! :smile:

Reply 367

Fbiemad

Original post by Zacken

Depends on the (course, college) 2-tuple, imo.

Anywho, good luck! :smile:

Thanks, good luck to you too!

Reply 368

Original post by Fbiemad

Thanks, good luck to you too!

I'll need it. :tongue:

Reply 369

fedoratipbot

7

Another question: If my country only offers AS Latin as the highest qualification for that subject, and I take that in year 13 after doing it for 4 high school years, could I apply and have my application taken seriously by the admissions people at Cambridge/other UK universities? If I work at Latin to the point where I can read/translate at at the level of a very able A2 student but only sit an AS exam (and hopefully do very well) would the admissions folk accept that arrangement (I wouldn't have a Greek a-level either (or at IGCSE/GCSE))?

Unfortunately I haven't any other choice in terms of the qualifications I sit for Latin, but classics is my passion, and Cambridge classics especially so.

Thank yoouuu.

Reply 370

Original post by fedoratipbot

Another question: If my country only offers AS Latin as the highest qualification for that subject, and I take that in year 13 after doing it for 4 high school years, could I apply and have my application taken seriously by the admissions people at Cambridge/other UK universities? If I work at Latin to the point where I can read/translate at at the level of a very able A2 student but only sit an AS exam (and hopefully do very well) would the admissions folk accept that arrangement (I wouldn't have a Greek a-level either (or at IGCSE/GCSE))?

Unfortunately I haven't any other choice in terms of the qualifications I sit for Latin, but classics is my passion, and Cambridge classics especially so.

Thank yoouuu.

Do you mean your country equivalent of AS-Level or the actual AS-Level by a international or UK board offering A-Levels or AS-Levels? Because if it's the latter, your question doesn't make much sense - you could still sit for the exam. If it's the former, then you're better off talking about the actual qualifications and not the equivalent UK one. That'll be much easier to understand.

Reply 371

fedoratipbot

7

Original post by Zacken

Do you mean your country equivalent of AS-Level or the actual AS-Level by a international or UK board offering A-Levels or AS-Levels? Because if it's the latter, your question doesn't make much sense - you could still sit for the exam. If it's the former, then you're better off talking about the actual qualifications and not the equivalent UK one. That'll be much easier to understand.

It's an 'New Zealand only' AS course offered by CIE. My school don't really like our equivalent to a-levels -- which is called "NCEA" -- and so they do CIE's IGCSEs and a-levels instead.

In fact our national qualifications are really weird. They're a single certificate, and graded at Excellence, Merit, or Achieved, where Excellence is similar but not quite the same as A*-A for an a-level, Merit B-C, and Achieved is somewhere around a D, but its an opinion firmly held by some people that our national qualifications are much, much easier than a-levels. Students regularly complete the 'equivalent' of AS Mathematics in year 10, and the perhaps move to another school where CIE a-levels are offered and struggle quite a bit with the jump in difficulty to AS Mathematics. And the fact that NCEA results don't have percentages/UMS upsets a lot of teachers and their high achieving pupils too, because they like to know exactly how well they perform in a subject. And you get a different certificate for each year that you do it, from level 1 (yr11) to 3 (yr13).

Anyway the difficulty with this is that you can't easily pick one subject from our national curriculum and then do the rest of your subjects as a-levels with CIE. Our universities don't let each combined qualifications like that count towards the tariff required for NZ university entrance.

So anyway, what this all means is that the highest level of Latin I can do is either CIE'S 'AS Latin' course, bespoke for NZ, or NCEA's watered-down internally-assessed Year 13 Level 3 Latin qualification, which is probably even less difficult than AS Latin :frown:

*

Which is a bit of a bummer tbh.

*just to illustrate the difference in difficulty, the unseen translations of CIE/OCR's AS Latin exams have no vocabulary glossed at all besides the few really awkward and unfamiliar words that pop up. In NCEA, from year 11-13, every word is glossed, even simple words like "you," "me", "to be" and "have".

Reply 372

Original post by fedoratipbot

...

Cheers, this should be useful for the AT to use to reply to you! Have you already seen this: http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/newzealand ?

Reply 373

fedoratipbot

7

Original post by Zacken

Cheers, this should be useful for the AT to use to reply to you! Have you already seen this: http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/newzealand ?

Holy moly our country has its own webpage.

Thanks, this seems quite informative.

Reply 374

Original post by fedoratipbot

Holy moly our country has its own webpage.

Thanks, this seems quite informative.

Every country has one. :tongue:

No problem! :smile:

Reply 375

210555

Original post by Zacken

Don't worry, all you gotta do is shine at interview, there's no point worrying about all the small details you can't change - I applied with no AS levels, nothing but a crap grade in STEP I and I made it through based solely on that interview.

Ooh, my bad, I assumed everybody would have one. Sorry! Just change "pre-interview test" to "interview".

Hi there. It's good you're posting on here. Info and advice from AT's and students IMO give a really good overview of the admissions process. It would appear you felt your interview maybe swung it for you? Can I ask a question? How much research and prep did you for it? Congrats on your place, hope you have a great time!

Reply 376

bread4lyf

How are candidates who apply:

(1) Post A-level
(2) Reapply after being unsuccessful

perceived? Do these ways hinder your application slightly? I am looking to apply to physical natural sciences.

Thank you

Reply 377

Original post by 210555

Hi there. It's good you're posting on here. Info and advice from AT's and students IMO give a really good overview of the admissions process. It would appear you felt your interview maybe swung it for you? Can I ask a question? How much research and prep did you for it? Congrats on your place, hope you have a great time!

Definitely! I feel the interview was a pivotal piece of the admissions process for me because I didn't sit any AS-Levels prior to it because of some weird circumstances meant that I'd be sitting my AS and A2 Levels at the same time after one year of study instead of the normal 2. Not to mention I had a 2 in STEP I taken a year (or technically two) early, which didn't look good at all. So the interview must've really swung things around.

I didn't end up doing much research and prep for my interview because I got my invitation halfway through a family holiday overseas and went from there to Cambridge directly, so there wasn't any time for prep during that period. But I guess having sat STEP I early really did help me improve at the sort of maths thinking they test at interview and got me through, so there's that.

Thank you very much! Hope you enjoy your undergraduate years too! :smile:

Reply 378

Someboady

17

hi i have a question.. im currently doing computer science, maths, further maths, physics and aiming to apply to do computer Science at University... I am passionate about the subject, i know that at least... but due to the lack of teaching (we have an IT teacher not a computing teacher) at my College I am uncertain I would be able to achieve an A/A* (i would have to self-teach)...this would mean I would miss an offer since Oxbridge base their offer on 4 all subjects?.. Im worried about this so I may drop computer science since it isnt a requirement but will Universities look down upon the fact that ive dropped the subject i really want to do at University?

Reply 379