Oxbridge 2025

[SnowFairy2000]

Let's start the journey here !!!

@5starzz Ucas application was submitted end Sept (engineering @ C) and the MyCamb application arrived the next day. DC has submitted the supplementary statement for this. Now doing ENGA past papers in preparation for the ESAT in a week's time. Once that's out the way I suppose prep for a possible interview will begin...?

Question! DD submitting Cambridge application imminently but is dithering re her other choices. According to her Oxbridge applying friends, it's fine to submit the UCAS early application (for the October 15th deadline) with just the one Cambridge college listed - and add the other university choices in later.

Is this correct? Is there any disadvantage to doing this?

@flowerdress it’s totally fine to only partially submit choices for the 15th deadline. It is marginally less bother if you put two choices in as you then pay the full ucas fee - if you only enter one you pay a reduced fee and then have to do a little top up before adding any more (which is deranged) but it’s not a big issue if he isn’t ready to even come up with one more at this point.

beware letting the decision drag on and on, consuming unexessary time and emotion, but there can be perfectly good reasons to delay.

The deranged system is no more! One fee for UCAS, regardless of number of choices. Waived if student gets free school meals.

Good luck to him @boobashka. My DS has just gone into his 3rd yr of engineering at C. He basically had his head down doing as many practice papers as he could and school gave him a couple of practice interviews. It threw him off a bit when there wasn't any small talk in either interview, just straight into questions and problem solving!

DS is also, in theory, studying for the ESAT.

I went through the interview process ages ago, and help run mock interviews at my school. Please tell your DC that if they get an interview, and then find it really hard and/or think they messed it up, not to second-guess the interviewers. There is zero point in asking candidates easy questions which they will all get right, part of the point is how they deal with pressure. Even when DC are told this in advance, the difficulty of the questions can come as a shock.

Yes, totally agree with this. DS thought he'd completely messed up and was convinced he wouldn't get an interview based on his ENGAA (and he'd done a LOT of prep), and again with the interviews which he thought he'd not shown himself at his best, but he was wrong on both.

Good luck to them all - it's such a stressful process on top of their A levels, and trying to enjoy life a bit! Still if they get into C (or anywhere for engineering) the workload is insane, so probably best to party before they get there 😉🤣

Juja may I message you too? My dc apply for MFL including an ab initio language too.

@Soundofshuna of course do PM me

@PhotoDad The deranged system is no more! One fee for UCAS, regardless of number of choices. Waived if student gets free school meals.

oh hurrah. So much more sensible

I've started a new thread about this - but anyone applying for Maths at Cambridge can sign up to the STEP Support Programmes interview preparation webinars.

See https://maths.org/step/events for details on how to book!

That looks extremely helpful - thank you. Do you happen to know when maths interviews might take place this year? I think I’ve read somewhere “first three weeks of December” but I think that’s for all subjects and wondered if it varies from department to department. Thanks!

This year Cambridge term ends a bit late, so I would think almost all interviews will be in the 9th December to 20th December slot. But some interviewers interview for more than one college so it might run a little either side, and maths interviews usually are spread over almost the entire interview period.

@Justlurkingmostly I should add that every college arranges its own interviews so it will be a case of things varying college by college rather than by subject. With the added complication of needing to share some interviewers between 2 or more colleges.

Very helpful once more — thanks again!

DS has submitted his form to school now, just need the school referee to add their bit. DS hasn’t been that impressed with him really, he promised to have it completed a few days ago. Head of year too ! Appreciate he’s busy but it’s not like DS
landed it on him out of the blue.
Anyone visiting Nottingham on Saturday for the open day ? A work colleague’s daughter is a fresher there and absolutely loves it. Colleague likened the campus to centreparks ! We saw Durham, York and Warwick over successive weeks and liked them all. Warwick at the moment is tops if DS is unsuccessful with an interview at C !

I hope the referee gets it sorted soon @Thekatzenjammerkid - the deadline is on Tuesday! DS submitted his on Sunday and the school sent it off today so 🤞TMUA is next week so 🤞🤞

@Coldilocks yes done today thank goodness !

Hello all! Hope you don’t mind me randomly popping in to join the thread. Fairly last minute decision to apply here for maths from a state secondary grammar school.

@Pallando the resources you shared are so helpful thank you for that. And thanks to the person who mentioned the SAQ which I somehow hadn’t even realised was a thing. Anyway, I’d be so grateful if you have any thoughts or wisdom to share on whether it’s totally mad to apply to Trinity college for maths at Cambridge or would we best to go for a different college. We have asked my son’s school to send the application back to us today which they have very kindly humoured us in doing, so we do now have the option to change college over the weekend if we want and they will send it all off Monday morning.

My son went to the Open Day there and really liked it, it seemed like a no brainer to apply there and I (kind of) now understand the whole pooling thing. So we had applied but I read something elsewhere on social media (student room I think) saying its stupid/naive to apply here unless you are a serious maths whizz (my son is very talented in maths but hasn’t done anything super impressive - I had never even heard of Olympiad maths til about 2 weeks ago etc - and has good but not percent A-level prediction and a very mixed bag of GCSE results, mainly due to his fairly recently diagnosed ADHD I think, though his maths and further maths grades there were strong. And the admission tutor there said they only care about how their predicted A-level maths grades and interview performance/STEP scores basically). Because they are so inundated with applicants and they can’t interview everyone, that compared to other colleges there is a strong chance you don’t even get listed for interview and a chance to even get pooled…

But then this evening on the other hand I read that if you do get to pooling stage you are much more likely to get fished from the pool if you’ve come via a Trinity maths application as their recommendations may hold more weight….

Or am I simply overthinking this?! Everything I’ve seen and read til now has said don’t worry too much about exact college choice, it doesn’t really matter etc. School aren’t exactly super super au fait with Oxbridge particularly and have no opinions on the matter (perhaps they just don’t want to get involved with this debate which is totally fair enough and we understand it is my son’s decision at the end of the day). My son himself is not too bothered either way about exactly which college and will probably largely just go with what I recommend to him. Though liked the idea of a lovely pretty looking red brick college near the river in a central area and being able to live on site etc.

Argh!! My mind can’t take much more of this already! I think it doesn’t help that I am an Oxbridge reject myself and the whole thing is (fairly pathetically I know) bringing up some unpleasant feelings and memories. My son is a very different character to me, much less highly-strung and also much less the technically ideal on paper candidate, so we do know it is a long shot and I genuinely think he will nonchalantly take the whole thing in his stride either way. But I need to try and protect myself from being driven demented by the whole process here…

Grateful for any insights as to this.

Part of me is even thinking at least if you say Trinity or bust then if you don’t get an interview, it’s a short albeit brutal end to the whole thing without too much time and energy invested in it all. And if you do and succeed in even getting pooling you’re ahead of the game. But I don’t want to plan for failure, if we are going to use one of his slots for Cambridge I do want him to give it his best shot.

What are his PGs and GSCEs?

@Britneyfan we had this thought, that at least if you get no further at the pre interview stage, you can just crack on and not get too invested.
My son goes to a bog standard state school. Sixth form has engaged the services of someone who’s had long time experience preparing students for Oxbridge (helping with personal statements, interview practice etc). Apparently she’s actually employed by the local private school but has connections with our school from back in the day. The other week she asked them all which colleges they intended applying for. Three of them said St John’s and one said Kings. She reckoned that in 20 years St John’s had never offered a place to anyone from our school and they just couldn’t understand it especially because the college has fostered links with the school. Might say more about her involvement with the school’s preparation (or lack of) than anything else, but she advised the students to try other colleges which they have done. That doesn’t tally with what they said at the open day but who knows.

Consensus usually is that pooling means that College choice doesn't impact chance of entry except Trinity for Maths, because, as you say, if you don't get interviewed, you can't get pooled.

Trinity obviously has the largest Maths cohort in Cambridge, but because of reputation, a lot of them are international applicants (and presumably up to their eyebrows in Olympiads), which could skew the stats further.

Hi @Britneyfan, have a play on this site:
https://tableau.blue.cam.ac.uk/t/InformationHubPublic/views/CambridgeUndergraduateAdmissionsStatistics/CollegeCoursegraph

If you select the "college" radio-button and "sort by offer rate" and "course: mathematics" you'll see why Trinity has the reputation it has...
I don't know the ins and outs of maths, but it's food for thought!

(Lighthearted) If he likes red bricks, he should look at pictures of Robinson College!