[Official] Trinity College Applicants 2020

I'll try not to say too much (confidentiality) but it is possible I did the same test as you. I think it would've been very difficult for somebody to spot the odd function by themselves though.

I thought all Trinity maths applicants did the same test. Oh well all we can do is wait. I'd still be pleased even if I got accepted through pool. If you somehow get rejected would you consider reapplying next year?

Apparently there are different tests on different days. I really don't want to get pooled to a far out or all girls college but those are the ones that make the most pool offers. There are some colleges I'd be fine with getting pooled to though. Cambridge is Cambridge anyway so if I get an offer I'll take it regardless of the college.

I'd definitely consider reapplying if I got rejected - how about you?

I don't think I'd really to be honest - there's no guarantee I'll get in the second time and it'll just hurt even more if I get rejected again. I get why people would reapply but I guess if I get rejected that's Cambridge's way of telling me that I'm not cut out for their style of teaching. And I agree with the pooling thing, if I get pooled I'd rather it be somewhere closer to the city centre.

Any colleges you particularly don't want to end up at?

1) Mathematics
2) I got 10 9s and an A^ at GCSE; I’ve got an A* in mathematics, and am taking physics, history and further mathematics.
3) Read quite a lot; done olympiads and been on maths camps
4) Good maths community. Chose Cambridge as I'm not a big fan of the Oxford comma.
5) Warwick, Imperial, UCL, Durham

Anybody else?

IKR!

which interview did you find worse? firz or hughes?

What subject are you applying for? Computer Science
What are your GCSE grades and A level predicted grades? International (American) student so:
ACT Composite: 36 (35 35 36 36)
SAT 2 Math Level 2: 800
SAT 2 Chemistry: 800
AP Calculus AB: 5
AP Computer Science: 5
AP Physics 1: 5
AP Chemistry: 5
AP Calculus BC: haven't taken it but predicted 5
Seven other APs which are humanities (out of which I have six 5s and one 4)
What subject-related activities or supercurriculars have you done? Robotics team (though more engineering than compsci, I suppose), Science Olympiad (more natsci and engineering as well), research project, nothing very groundbreaking but all very interesting to me
Why Trinity? I like big and competitive colleges and it seems very pretty which is always great
What other universities are you applying to? KCL, Edinburgh, Imperial, UCL
I have an interview on 9/12/2019 (Whew I almost wrote it month/day/year by instinct)

Hi! i have an interview for NatSci (Physical) and i feel exactly the same... and have you seen the previous posts in the thread? Do you have any thoughts about the question 7 on the sample paper (NatSci ipp) given on the website? (I assume that we might will have the similar types of paper before the interview?) Anyway i have been really confused about that question and failed to find anyone for help up to now...
btw i guess doing some past papers of those olympiads may help, but those questions on the sample paper seems quite random and might come up covering any parts in those subjects as there is no syllabus

i have an interview for chem engineering via Natural sciences and the tests seem so hard i have no idea how to prepare... what are you doing for it?

Decisions?????

It’s tomorrow...

really impressive! i hope you get in!

Might as well post it here for the final time for any future applicants and those considering re-applying:


Rejected from Trinity College for Medicine-- for the second time.
I loved Trinity so deeply, more than the university itself, so I had gone against my better judgement and there applied for the second time.
I wish I hadn't.
Maybe I would have gotten an offer had I applied to another college, maybe not, who knows? But I think that at least I would not have been so nervous in the beginning of my first interview had I applied somewhere else. But knowing now that I will never be able to study at Trinity, that I wasn't even deemed worthy enough to be put into the pool, just hurts so much beyond what I can put into words.
To anyone who might come across this post for the later application cycles: Think long and hard about applying again. And do not follow your dreams, just make the rational choice. Because sometimes, even if you do everything right (good personal statement and reference, a BMAT above 6 (home applicant) and an overall great interview performance), it still might not happen.

I won't find out about the actual reason for my rejection until about mid-February, when my teacher receives the application feedback. Who knows what they will cite as the reason this time? I can understand my rejection last year but this year, having put in everything I had into my application, I am merely at a loss for words.

The second half of my first interview and the second one had gone quite well. In the first half of the first one, despite trying my absolute best not to, I was way too flustered and nervous because it was with the Director of Admissions, so I knew that she would be the one making the final decision and since it was my second year this time round, I was way too nervous to have been able to give as good responses as I would have been able to had I not been so flustered (I can understand and appreciate that we were short on time as they had so many applicants to interview but the questions were very rapid-fire, the interviewer gave me about 2-3 seconds to think about my answer for each question and she would immediately move on to the next question if I didn't start giving my response within those 2-3 seconds, in spite of my asking whether I could think about my answer for a moment. Again, I can appreciate that we were short on time but after not being able to answer a few questions within the 2-3 seconds I did not know that I had to answer in and she immediately moved on to the other questions, I became even more nervous.) But with the second interviewer, I had answered all of the long problem-solving questions within seconds and I could tell from his expression at the end that he was quite pleasantly surprised by my performance. The second interview had went a lot better because I could finally stop myself from being so nervous and be a bit more confident and I could see that both of my interviewers were impressed with my answers (I am merely being objective here and telling you what I saw in their expressions, who on earth am I to brag otherwise, a person who has been rejected for the second time from their dream school, even though they had poured their heart and soul into their application) so I had allowed myself the tiniest of hope that maybe, just maybe, the second interview would be able to make up for my awkwardness for the first half of the first one, in spite of the fact that that was with the Director of Medicine Admissions. Evidently not.

I had been too upset to even post here after my rejection last year and had spent the whole day in bed, crying my eyes out. But I cannot even do that this time.
Unless you are also being very, very rational about it, do not follow your dreams, it might end up being a huge waste of time even if you do your best to do everything right. Trinity was, I believe, the most competitive college, as most of the science olympiad students choose to apply there, so the bar is set quite high and even though I am not an Olympiad student, I would still like to think that I was quite a competitive applicant as well (although I am a home student, I had studied high school in another country where the university entrance exam was extremely, extremely competitive -- if you are familiar with the Chinese Gaokao, it is very similar to that in terms of difficulty and competitiveness-- and I had ranked in the first 100 among over 2 million candidates (being in the top 1000 allowed us admission into the top universities in the country and the top 100 was only differentiated by less than a fraction of a point-- by getting one question wrong in Physics instead of Maths for instance--) and had even ranked 1st in the country among 1.5 million candidates in the other nation-wide exam and had a few other quite competitive achievements as well. I had made so many sacrifices to be able to study here (I do not wish to go into detail but they were truly quite significant) and to think it has all been for nothing (just because I was very nervous in the first 10 minutes of my interview ?) breaks my heart so, so much beyond what I could explain here...




(Also posted in the Medicine application thread. I just wanted to share my experience here as well so that maybe someone else could avoid making the same mistakes as I did. And also, make sure you do everything you possibly can to ensure that you won't get flustered/nervous in your interview because that is the worst thing you can possibly do. Confidence is key because when you get flustered, you cannot think properly. I had prepared quite a lot for my interview (had finished the A Level curriculum and done a lot wider reading into anything Medicine-related but all of it goes out of the roof when you get nervous and you end up giving terrible answers))