Official Cambridge 2020 Applicants Thread

Thinking of applying for 2020? If you're currently in year 12 (England and Wales), Year 13 (Northern Ireland) or year 5 in Scotland can apply to FREE residentials at Peterhouse, Trinity, Homerton and Pembroke by filling in this application form. Each of the events has its own eligibility criteria so do check before applying.

Thinking of applying for 2020? If you're currently in year 12 (England and Wales), Year 13 (Northern Ireland) or year 5 in Scotland can apply to FREE residentials at Peterhouse, Trinity, Homerton and Pembroke by filling in this application form. Each of the events has its own eligibility criteria so do check before applying.

When will these residential events be taking place?

It says on the form linked from the post you quoted:
https://cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9TXQGQ7vKdSCnfD

1) What A-levels are you taking and what grades are you hoping for?
Maths - A*
Computer Science - A*
English Language - A (I know I'm weird doing both Maths and English, everyone gives me a weird look when I tell them my subjects!)
Further Maths - A (we'll see)

2) What subject are thinking of applying for at Cambridge?
CompSci

3) What are your GCSE Grades?
9999999998 (8 was in Spanish since people always ask)

4) Why Cambridge?
I'm a bit of a workaholic and my stupidly high standards for myself mean I want to go to the best uni I can.

5) Besides Cambridge what other unis are you thinking of applying?
Warwick, York, maybe Imperial and Edinburgh

6) Have you gone to any of the open days for Cambridge?
I haven't been to any official open days, but my family went to visit this summer (mostly for sentimental value for my parents, and for me it was a chance to see how weird some of the streetlights look) and we went round the few colleges that were open, like Queens'. (My dad also wanted to do some punting and somehow didn't fall in.)

7) What are you currently doing (academically especially) to make your application stronger.
I'm getting involved in a bunch of extracurriculars to try to represent my different interests, like bar mock trial and the gold arts award. I think my school is doing the UKMT maths challenge next week which I'm looking forward to because last year I was doing alright but the fire alarm went off 10 minutes in and the teachers didn't bother letting us finish it properly. I've also been going to some hackathons in the past year (been to 5 so far and somehow won them all...) I'm still looking for other maths related stuff I can do that will be much more relevant to my application.

8) Would you have to sit an admission test, if so, which one.
The CSAT, which would be on the day of the interview, assuming I get one.

I'm considering a gap year but I don't know if it's harder to get accepted for deferred entry and I'm not convinced I'll get the A*A*A entry requirement for Cambridge CompSci, so maybe I won't be trying for 2020 entry, who knows (I'm a bit of a pessimist if you couldn't tell.) This is the first time I've really participated in a thread like this so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ if anyone knows of any good maths things you can get involved with then please let me know!

hi, i'm in year 12 and take maths,further maths. How do u get a* in maths? I'm already struggling with it a lot and worried i wont make the grades. do think only naturally good at maths people get good grades ? do u find it hard to revise maths , like do u have time in year 13 to revise maths and do u think taking further maths helps u revise maths when u do fm? thx

In my opinion, the best thing you could do for maths is a ton of practice questions. The more questions you do, the more you develop your understanding of the topics and the easier things become. You can do this with past papers and online websites like IntegralMaths and MyMaths but those do depend on if your school has subscriptions for them. I like the website revisely.co.uk as it has lots of resources, including videos and past questions, so maybe check that out; it has both maths and further maths.

I think further maths does help with maths because some things overlap, meaning you go over them more (such as algebraic long division) and also since it’s harder, it makes normal maths feel a lot easier!

Thinking of applying for 2020? If you're currently in year 12 (England and Wales), Year 13 (Northern Ireland) or year 5 in Scotland can apply to FREE residentials at Peterhouse, Trinity, Homerton and Pembroke by filling in this application form. Each of the events has its own eligibility criteria so do check before applying.

I'm applying for Economics as well! Which college were you thinking of?

hi, i applied but i stated that i didnt have predicted grades because i'm in year 12 and our school hasnt given it to us yet , will i still stand a chance?thx

Yes - we will contact your teachers if you're selected and ask for predictions.

2)What subject are thinking of applying for at Cambridge?
History
8)Would you have to sit an admission test, if so, which one. no i dont have to