Advanced Diploma in Economics Cambridge - 26/27 intake

@rinwoo and I are current AdvDipl students, part of the 25/26 intake. Ask us anything you want to know 🙂

My status changed yesterday from Under Review by Department to Decision Pending - Your application is under review - do you know by any chance what this means?

What is your background? Based on you background how hard is the Diploma year?

Do you know how tests, exams etc are graded? Are those graded on a linear scale (many students can get the same result) or is it curved (Gauche normal distribution - meaning you are graded relative to the performance of other students)

This means that your application has likely been approved by the faculty and moved to a review by the admissions committee. The committee stage checks your transcripts, test results etc. if everything is in order on that side, you are likely to be offered a place. Would congratulate you, but dont want to jinx it 🙂
I have a mixed methods background, I have done a BSc at UCL and MA at Goldmisths. Had some stats during my undergrad, mostly taught in Python/R. I worked for a couple of years as a data analyst but pivoted away from that, but I am a bit of an outlier in terms of career/background. I am 29, most of the cohort is around 22-24.
When it comes to the difficulty, I would say my performance is somewhat average in our cohort. The maths is ok, you will use a lot of Lagrange optimisation (mostly equality constrained, rarely KKT method), integration comes up only a couple of times during the course. Also make sure you are comfortable with using summation and expectations operators, that will be quite important. You will be given a reading list over the summer to prepare for all the necessary maths and other knowledge gaps.
The most challenging part for me was the confusing notation and setting up the problems properly. I also struggled with econometrics a lot initially, since I was trained to do the things we were learning in R/Python, but here evertyhing is taught mostly pen and paper. Also the quality of teaching is quite mediocre, it is not bad, there are some great professors, but it does not stand out as massively better compared to other universities. Also, literally none of the teaching staff have any job experience outside of academia whatsoever, so it is good to manage ones expectations in terms of applicability of the learned material.
In terms of difficulty, the autumn term feel harder than the spring term, since there is a lot of content and not a lot of time to properly integrate the new knowledge. Overall you will be basically taking lectures with second year undergrads with some additional diploma specific material.
This was also a big question for me before I started. Truth be told I still dont know the answer one hundred percent. My impression from asking around the faculty and the students from previous years is that there is some normalisation of the final grades distribution but is not too severe. I think you will be marked together with the undergrads, which takes the pressure off a bit. The cohort is quite small, last year there were around 12ish people, with 4-5 going through to the masters. Our cohort is even smaller, just nine people. Because you are marked together with the undergrads, the group dynamic is not at all cuthroat competitive as I was initially afraid. It is quite laid back actually. For example out of the nine of us, only four/five turn up to lectures and seminars on a regular basis.

And do you maybe have an explanation for why there is such a big gap between places offered and acceptances in the Department stats? Is it because people did not meet the conditions or because they had other options?