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Personal statement/interview question

Hello, I am looking at applying for maths at Cambridge. I emailed a couple of questions over to the one I am looking at applying for (Trin. Hall) to learn more about admissions, and one of the things I asked about was the proportion of people who are invited to interview, their response was around roughly 75-80%. From what I have seen, this generally seems to be the case for the other colleges, so I was curious about why they would reject those 20-25% based on the PS, references and predicted grades, as it was interesting to see that despite the low acceptance rate, such a large number of applicants make it to interview, especially since the majority of applicants will be stellar candidates, all of whom being predicted mainly A*s minimum, with generally glowing applications. I ask so I know how to structure my application in such a way that I have the best chance of success in being invited to interview, as this is the first step I need to concern myself with, as although their is a good chance of getting to interview at least, I want to make sure I am as competitive as possible (Of course, that is just the first stage, but naturally I need to mainly focus on that at present, so that all else can follow), because I worry if I only look at the ones that succeeded, I could fall victim to survivorship bias.

Reply 1

Ariichu

The only reason you wouldnt be invited to interview, is if you dont have the right predicted grades, you arent doing the right A level choices, or if you said something in your personal statement that was a red flag. The way that cambridge, and trinity hall specifically (which is probably the college I know most about) works on giving interviews, is that if you were to give a perfect interview would you get a place. Everyone for which that is true (and it is for most people since they are all strong applicants) will get an interview, which is why lots of people get interviews. If you write a good ps, it doesnt even need to be amazing, have all A stars predicted (im not sure what the maths entrance requirements are) and do the right A level combinations (e.g. if you were doing maths, history, english lit and french you probably wouldnt get an interview) then you will get to interview.

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