Giving feedback to Cambridge

Glad to hear it, even though you wanted to go to Jesus!

If a student misses the offer they are set then it is up to the college to decide what to do. An Arts student with 2 A*s who misses a 3 A* offer is very likely to get picked up in the Summer Pool (I can think of two students this summer for whom that happened - not at my college but whose files I saw in the Summer Pool)

There are a number of reasons why a studennt might get a higher offer, some of which I have discussed already, and when one is considering whether to give a student a higher offer their educational background may well come into it. That being said, most students from private and strong state schools get the typical offer. We absolutely don't automatically give private school students higher offers.

Thanks for that. Do you know how many people, excluding Maths were successfully pooled in the 2014 summer pool, either across the University or just Christ's please. I had thought that the summer pool was only really
for Maths applicants or for people with extenuating circumstances so It is good to know people who miss high offers outside these two groups also get summer pooled.

Haha I did I won't lie. It's j the giant green fields where I can hide and no one can find me

I j thought not worth the stress of competition, but then boom Christ's topped that anyway. I'm glad I did in the end because for the first time, I feel proud of doing something.

So getting in at Christ's this year for NatSci was awesome

In my defence, I always recommend Christ's and sell it to everyone

Steady Fish, you have an offer not a place .

It would be better if the first line of the decision letter told you simply whether you were accepted or not. The letter I received was an emotional rollercoaster. First it said I had been rejected. Then the tone changed to a positive tone and the letter said I had been pooled, only to say no one had fished me in the next paragraph.

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After having been rejected from King's, I have a similar question about the UMS grades and not being auto-pooled: my official best of 3 average is 92.5%, however one of my French papers was incorrectly marked and my teacher estimates it should have been marked 20 UMS higher, making my average 93.6%. My school failed to send the request for remark off on time so this is why my paper was never actually remarked. I noted this on my SAQ and sent the college a signed letter from my teacher announcing this. I know that obviously there is no proof of this and I might as well be lying, but is there really nothing that can be done about this?

http://www.study.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/apply/statistics/
Tweak the settings there. 52 in through summer pool. You could look at how many got in for maths then subtract or whatever.

Should have got it remarked

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Suggestions wise:
I still have no idea why I got in and others didn't (92% and what I thought were bad interviews). A little bit more transparency/feedback about the decisions process would be nice though I appreciate it's a lot of work and it's not top priority, it'd just be a nice thing to have. Overall I think Cambridge is doing really well, there's loads of info about everything on your website and it's probably the most transparent about the process out of all the unis but the massive competition just makes it seem somewhat 'random' as to who gets in which might be helping to perpetuate the myths about private schoolers being favoured etc.

Feedback is available to everyone who doesn't get an offer and I am going to be spending a significant chunk of my time over the next six weeks writing feedback letters (did around 150 last year) to those who request it. The best feedback for those who get offers is the offer letter!

As you say, we are probably the most transparent university in te UK about our admission processes and we have produced graphs anoymising the data which show the correlation between UMS/GCSEs and offers in certain subjects.

I can assure you that it is certainly not 'random' who gets an offer. We don;t always get it right by any means but we take each application and offer very seriously and give it a lot of consideration.

Thanks for that. Do you know how many people, excluding Maths were successfully pooled in the 2014 summer pool, either across the University or just Christ's please. I had thought that the summer pool was only really
for Maths applicants or for people with extenuating circumstances so It is good to know people who miss high offers outside these two groups also get summer pooled.

Haha I did I won't lie. It's j the giant green fields where I can hide and no one can find me

I j thought not worth the stress of competition, but then boom Christ's topped that anyway. I'm glad I did in the end because for the first time, I feel proud of doing something.

So getting in at Christ's this year for NatSci was awesome

In my defence, I always recommend Christ's and sell it to everyone

I'd also like to give my praises to the application process. I applied to Emma (sorry!) and they were brilliant with sending information, all of which was done by email which was great purely for the speed of it. I received my offer letter on time, an email shortly after saying the same thing and my offer came through on UCAS a day later, all of which was very prompt. The speed of this was very good, as I didn't truly believe my offer until it came through on UCAS, as I knew then they couldn't take it back!

The information about interviews was clear and easy to understand as well, meaning there was one less thing to worry about.

The only thing left to say is that I would like to know if my college does an offer day, as I've never looked round the college due to not staying overnight on interview days and my family are very excited to see it.

Thank you very much for taking our opinions into consideration, as unhelpful as mine is!