Official Cambridge 2019 Reapplicant Thread

That is true as the "General" Engineering applicant numbers have risen since 2016 whch should counter the decline of Chemical Engineering Applicants.

Surely today Chemical Engineering covers a lot more industries in addition to the Oil and Gas industry?

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/applicants_who_applied_in_at_lea#incoming-983940

Thought this was quite interesting... but it's just me spending the last of my days where I can still dream about Cambridge before offer day looking at stats :'(

At least I don't feel like I've wasted my time doing a gap year...

LOL.

What's the summary of the data?

LOL.

What's the summary of the data?

Wait........... doesn't this mean that Cambridge does actually retain past data about applicants? So it wasn't true that I have heard somewhere that past applicant data is destroyed or something and they wouldn't know if you've reapplied??

Basically a massive table showing people who applied (more than once) in various rounds and whether they got an offer or not.
I opened the table up in excel and filtered by engineering... surprisingly it showed that quite a few people applied one year, got an offer, evidently didn't go to Cambridge, applied the next year and got an offer again.
Also shows people who got an offer the first time but for some reason reapplied and didn't get an offer the second time...
Also shows people who applied both times and were rejected twice :'
I didn't bother to count how many of each there were.

Wait........... doesn't this mean that Cambridge does actually retain past data about applicants? So it wasn't true that I have heard somewhere that past applicant data is destroyed or something and they wouldn't know if you've reapplied??

I think now that GDPR is a thing means that they can’t hold onto data from previous admissions anyway.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/applicants_who_applied_in_at_lea#incoming-983940

Thought this was quite interesting... but it's just me spending the last of my days where I can still dream about Cambridge before offer day looking at stats :'(

At least I don't feel like I've wasted my time doing a gap year...

lol from looking through the list (I'm on a trip so can't really use Excel) it seems like basically almost all CompSci reapplicants get rejected again

more evidence that I'll embarrassingly get a second rejection in a couple of days

Stats aren't subject to GDPR in the same way. The data is anonymised.

Individual application files are destroyed, but the aggregated datasets aren't.

@CompSciCat I did notice one person (row 337) applied in 2015, got a offer. Reapplied in 2016, got another offer. Reapplied in 2017.... got rejected.

Interesting... What does GDPR mean?

And definitely weird that probability of success fluctuates so much. But what I always find unsettling every time is that there defo isn't a 100% success rate for reapplicants (obviously)

Just had a play with it, also looking at Engineering:
In 2015, 5 got an Offer and reapplied in 2016, only 1 got another offer in 2016.
Meanwhile in 2016 9 got an Offer but reapplied in 2017, 6 got another offer in 2017.
So there's quite big variations per year.

And looking at Engineers who applied in 2015 AND 2016 (45), only 9 got an offer in 2016. That's a 20% success rate, which isn't much better than the overall offer rate for Engineering that year (18%).

While for 2016 and 2017 59 reapplied and 22 got offers, a much better success rate (37%). It's curious there's such wide variations...

18 Reapplicants in 2016 got 4 offers = 22% (vs 17% of all 2016 CS applicants)
20 Reapplicants in 2017 got 3 offers = 15% (vs 15% of all 2017 CS applicants)

So a marginal(ish) benefit - aka not a disadvantage...

And looking at Engineers who applied in 2015 AND 2016 (45), only 9 got an offer in 2016. That's a 20% success rate, which isn't much better than the overall offer rate for Engineering that year (18%).

While for 2016 and 2017 59 reapplied and 22 got offers, a much better success rate (37%). It's curious there's such wide variations...

My guess is that A-level reform had an impact, 3 or 4 A*s already achieved with a low-ish average (perhaps 91% or so) looks more impressive when you aren't competing with a load of people who have 96+% AS UMS averages.

My guess is that A-level reform had an impact, 3 or 4 A*s already achieved with a low-ish average (perhaps 91% or so) looks more impressive when you aren't competing with a load of people who have 96+% AS UMS averages.

Are you saying those with linear a levels have an advantage? - I guess it can go both ways, if you got an A* linear, Cambridge wouldn't know if it was a low or high A* since they don't request for raw marks (so it helps you a bit if you actually only scraped an A*), but if you had say 96%+ ums A* then you're more at an advantage as they know you got a high A* and that's more impressive if you get me :'D
But for maths (important for engineering), it was still modular until last year. And you know how terribly picky they are about maths UMS... I'm reapplying now with 4 modular A levels and 2 linear A levels (and you could say that at least I'm happy my physics is linear) so I'm guessing a level reform may not have been the main reason for 2017...

Are you saying those with linear a levels have an advantage?