Cambridge college independent/state split....

[Glowey]

Some Cambridge colleges have a disproportionately higher number of students from independent schools compared to other Cambridge colleges - do you think a state school pupil has any advantage or disadvantage applying to one of these colleges....ie are all colleges trying to balance out their state/independent numbers or not?

I don’t know the split at Gonville and Caius (sp)?, one of the more traditional older colleges. However FWIW I know from someone there that Caius is really working on outreach this year. They have developed a good SM presence with a hashtag something line #caiusschools. The videos, etc, I saw were aimed directly at pupils and seemed good. Nor were the topics exclusive to Caius; some were quite general.

It is a reasonable place to start

Most colleges are already now achieving the target ratio of 75-80% state intake. Around 25% of A-level A / A star grades are achieved in the independent sector. Cambridge offers need to reflect this, as all their offers will be A star A, A or A star, A star, A. The exception seems to be Trinity, which still has a disproportionate ratio of offers to the independent sector..

I believe Cambridge are actually dropping the state / independent sector targets anyway as of next year. This is because they found it made no or little difference to the socio-economic backgrounds of their actual student intake because most of the state school offers were going to those at grammars - ie. DC with similar socio-economic backgrounds to those at independents.

They are now going to be focusing on POLAR and ACORN data instead - not school sector, as this has proved to be a blunt instrument for WP purposes.

That’s really interesting. Could you elaborate on POLAR and ACORN data please?

POLAR tracks % of participation in higher education across different areas and ACORN measures other socio-economic factors in various areas..Cambridge already use this data (Google Cambridge Admission Statistics, it's all there), but they will be emphasising this more going forward as it gives a clearer picture than school sector.

ACORN data is based on your postcode and how affluent/deprived an area it is.

POLAR is based on the proportion of young people who go on to higher education in your area.

These are not specific to Oxbridge or created by them, they are used in other contexts. You can look up your own Acorn band, for example, if you register on the website.

Admissions tutors also know perfectly well that you need to apply some common sense to these. E.g if you are in a big city, postcodes can be very mixed and someone in the same postcode could be living in a detached 5 bed house or in a council house. And if you live in the middle of a highly rural area with very few young people, the polar score might be very low but it doesn’t mean it is necessarily deprived.

The main thing any potential student needs is an excellent academic record. I do think interview prep is particularly important at the more traditional colleges, even choice of outfit matters as they want you to fit with their perception, but being at a state school shouldn't matter. One pet hate my friend who was at Clare has is mumbling in the interview, your accent doesn't matter, your diction does

Not checked numbers but it very likely reflects (in part) different splits in the applicants. If a college is known for taking fewer state school students then fewer apply and so the college takes fewer and the cycle perpetuates. It's quite hard to change this quickly as long as applicants get to choose colleges. Speaking from an Oxford tutor perspective.

even choice of outfit matters as they want you to fit with their perception

As an Oxford tutor, choice of outfit does not matter AT ALL. Not even a tiny bit. Even more so now our interviews are all online so would expect someone to wear whatever they would wear on a normal day at home or school.

Provided they are fullly dressed. And maybe not night clothes. But other than that I could not care less.

It's not necessarily worrying independent /state split as the UK independent education is dying.

Exactly this. Applicants have completely different approaches to what they wear and it really doesn't matter at all. There is no correlation between clothing and success. We mark on how well they do in the problems presented in the interview. They should just wear whatever makes them feel comfortable. It's always something that comes up at open days and lots of applicants seem to worry about it but they need not.

And “more traditional” colleges don’t have different interview criteria or styles. Some really misleading comments on here.

Absolute rubbish stated as fact.
Interviews now take place online. For the majority of the time, the interviewer might be sharing their screen and not even able to see the candidate. Admissions test far more important than any interview element these days, certainly at Cambridge.

Cambridge maths doesn't have admission test.

Not as such, no, but they will be given lots of problems to solve at interview with an interviewer sharing a screen.

Of course C maths has an admissions test - STEP. It has a bigger cull effect than many other admissions tests, just at a different time

STEP?

STEP is after the offer. It's much fair hurdle rather than subjective.

The Caius Instagram account is absolutely fantastic, I agree!