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The Official Cambridge Offer Holders Thread 2017 Entry

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Original post by Steliata
What about those lectures you skipped 😉


what even

I can't

when you get roasted by applicants

kms
Original post by EnglishMuon
I think you'll find old buildings aren't sparse in Cambridge :wink:

That's very true 😂
Original post by Zacken
what even

I can't

when you get roasted by applicants

kms

😈😈😈
Reply 2362
Avatar for R T
R T
13
Original post by rayofsunshine98
Just found the NSAA paper... I think I've just been sick mentally.

Just out of curiosity, did anyone find any like blogs or anything written by previous applicants that were useful when applying?? Or in terms of the confidence wobble that many of us are having/have had recently? I'm asking because I didn't really find anything and I think I might have found something like that really useful, especially if it was written whilst you were in the middle of it all? I know about Lucy Parson's site and her book (highly recommend if you haven't read it) but I'm debating setting up my own blog covering everything from applications to getting through exam season etc and wondered if anyone had seen anything like that and thought it might help future applicants. I'd value some comments on this from you guys, who are like the only people I know in this situation.


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does it help to hear that I got a high 2i in my physnatsci degree and I'm struggling with it? :wink: does it help more for me to reassure you that the general intelligence of natsci students would not find that simple, let alone manageable?

I think the difficulty of such tests, and of the interview itself, is that all A-Level students are stuck in the mindset that only 95%+ is acceptable. Even by glancing at the questions there, I can absolutely assure you that the average mark will be well below 70%, most likely hitting about 50%. This is intentional.

edit: having done the entire paper now, perhaps i exaggerated the difficulty (when I looked at it, i thought that q1+2 would likely take more than 2 minutes and there would be a difficulty gradient). Classic example of an exam where you should instantly skip a question you don't immediately know how to do.

Regardless, isn't this the offer holders thread? Or are you a fellow hooligan who doesn't really belong here?

You can make a lot of mistakes and be accepted by Cambridge. I made a mistake in my interview involving a negative force and assured the interviewers it was right even after they questioned me about it lol.
Original post by Zacken
what even

I can't

when you get roasted by applicants

kms

Applicants dont realise "breaks" = emergency body response to being in cambridge. I collapsed in second year labs after doing ~60 hours work in 3 days.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by rayofsunshine98
That's my other thought..and maybe when we are all at Cambridge next year we will all have to do guest posts on each other's blogs for another perspective. Sorry if you've said this already in here (I have a brain like a sieve at the moment) but what course and college were you??


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Well I had a go at making a blog 😂

https://studentsofames.wordpress.com

Original post by R T

Applicants dont realise "breaks" = emergency body response to being in cambridge. I collapsed in second year labs after doing ~60 hours work in 3 days.


Yikes 😱😱😱
Original post by R T


oh damn, hope u were alright.

afaik mathmos go crazy and wonder the streets at night instead.
Reply 2365
Avatar for R T
R T
13
Cambridge's philosophy is to put pressure on its students in the same way that the earth's crust would crush carbon mineral deposits. Those that can handle, adapt to and enjoy the pressure get to be little diamonds and everyone else wails in agony or gets spat out by a volcano as they try to survive their degree with a decent mark... :wink:

I am of course kidding, but the cold hard reality of going Cambridge is a mirror of the

kubler-ross model



Haha! Again, just joking! :wink: A bit of expansion behind me collapsing in second year is that I was going for my blue at the time, and tried to rearrange my work schedule to do most of the work during a few days to give me time to make all the practice sessions, hit the gym with a decent routine, etc. Alongside having friends, a girlfriend, wanting to play computer games - this was all impossible. I was effortlessly the best in school which is why doing loads of stuff was possible there. At Cambridge I had to work hard for it, which means sacrifices have to be made (somewhere). One reality of cambridge is that in the set {friends and social life, work, time-demanding EC (e.g. sport, music), sleep} you can only pick 3. There are a handful of people I knew who made 4/4 work, but they are all ridiculously driven (the sort of people who can never relax) and incredibly intelligent and diligent.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by R T
does it help to hear that I got a high 2i in my physnatsci degree and I'm struggling with it? :wink: does it help more for me to reassure you that the general intelligence of natsci students would not find that simple, let alone manageable?

I think the difficulty of such tests, and of the interview itself, is that all A-Level students are stuck in the mindset that only 95%+ is acceptable. Even by glancing at the questions there, I can absolutely assure you that the average mark will be well below 70%, most likely hitting about 50%. This is intentional.

edit: having done the entire paper now, perhaps i exaggerated the difficulty (when I looked at it, i thought that q1+2 would likely take more than 2 minutes and there would be a difficulty gradient). Classic example of an exam where you should instantly skip a question you don't immediately know how to do.


Did you have a look at the Section 2 paper as well? Some interesting questions in there; the range of difficulty is quite wide and it's made quite a bit harder by the fact that you're given only 40 minutes to choose and solve two of them!
Reply 2367
Avatar for R T
R T
13
Original post by Forecast
Did you have a look at the Section 2 paper as well? Some interesting questions in there; the range of difficulty is quite wide and it's made quite a bit harder by the fact that you're given only 40 minutes to choose and solve two of them!
Spoiler response because response is long and i appreciate a lot of you dont care about natsci.

Spoiler

(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by R T
...


Really interesting insights, thanks for this :smile: I did Q2 and Q4 when I took the test thinking that I'd be better at the organic chemistry question, turns out that the other one was more straightforward!
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by R T
does it help to hear that I got a high 2i in my physnatsci degree and I'm struggling with it? :wink: does it help more for me to reassure you that the general intelligence of natsci students would not find that simple, let alone manageable?


I think you're very much over exaggerating this (from my experience, of course - I might certainly be wrong), unless there's a genuinely really big gap between average mathmo ability and natsci ability.

An average undergraduate first year mathmo should be able to easily do STEP by the end of their first year (a far far harder exam than any of this AA stuff), so it's rather surprising to hear that a NatSci would have the least bit of trouble with the NSAA - of course, I don't know very much about the NSAA and it's relevance to the NatSci course, so that might account for it to a small extent, but I don't know...
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Doonesbury
Firstly, just because a course is listed in Extra doesn't mean it actually is in Extra. Some universities are rather lazy and don't remove their courses from Extra... so you need to call the university first to check.


Thought this wouldn't be too relevant tbh as OP is not going to apply through Extra.

Spoiler

Reply 2371
Avatar for Doones
Doones
OP
21
Original post by wolfmoon88
Thought this wouldn't be too relevant tbh as OP is not going to apply through Extra.

Spoiler



Yeah, i know. But it's relevant if someone is using presence in Extra as a predictor for presence in Clearing. :wink:

Spoiler



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Original post by Xphoenix
Next Jake Wright/Joe Binder/Ibz/Holly Gabrielle???


You never know 😂😂


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Original post by rayofsunshine98
You never know 😂😂


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We'll look out for you :wink: :biggrin:
Original post by Xphoenix
Next Jake Wright/Joe Binder/Ibz/Holly Gabrielle???


I'll be starting one :wink:

Hope all the clips of me terroring Zacken won't get too boring tho... :rofl:
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by NeverLucky
I'll be starting one :wink:

Hope all the clips of me terroring @Zacken won't be too boring tho... :rofl:


100% will subscribe

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Original post by Doonesbury
Yeah, i know. But it's relevant if someone is using presence in Extra as a predictor for presence in Clearing. :wink:

Spoiler



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Fair, glad you are good! (Just relatively inactive because of revision but otherwise I'm coping :redface:)

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Original post by wolfmoon88
100% will subscribe

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Go away....I thought I sent you to the shadow realm...
Original post by NeverLucky
Go away....I thought I sent you to the shadow realm...


Will go back soon... just got boosted once, but will fall back

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Original post by wolfmoon88
Will go back soon... just got boosted once, but will fall back

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But what does pot of greed do??

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