[quote OnTheBenchOfDoom]@ClarasZoo going back to the winter pool, a high number of colleges put a candidate or candidates into the winter pool. It is not a bad thing, they see you are the type of person they want but may not work for their college etc. Each subject is given a time slot and the department comes together and reads through usually the interview notes from the college they interview for. Each college then makes a list of their chosen candidates.
Colleges are given a random number which decides which college goes first, who goes second etc. The college who is lucky enough to go first chooses their top candidate, so say candidate number 177, any other college who has that person on their list crosses it out. Then the college going second has their top pick and so on. At the end of it all the places are filled to the number they set themselves.
At that stage the colleges with their new picks can choose to either offer straight out on 25th Jan or arrange an interview to take place in early January. As far as I understand it anyway. I looked into this last year to find out what the hell winter pooling was.
Congratulations to those with offers from other places. Out of the 4 offers Ds has only Durham is reduced by one grade so A* down to an A, the rest are still the "entry requirement" grades, no reductions at all.
Good luck to everyone who has an interview, I hope they do well and that the tech works.[/quote]
Thank you- that’s very interesting. It’s odd that the colleges often stick their own in the pool and then fish them out again. My son says he has an image of hook a duck in his mind!