Winter Pool

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The Winter Pool or inter-College Pool is an important part of the undergraduate application process for Cambridge University in England, intended to ensure that the best applicants are offered places.^[1] Approximately 20-25% of undergraduate places are awarded through the Pool.

Process[]

Each college can place applicants in the winter pool. These applicants' applications are then considered by Admissions Tutors and/or Directors of Studies of all colleges during the pool, which takes place over three days in January prior to admissions decisions being released by the university.^[2]

For each subject, each college will create an ordered list of the pooled applicants they want, and take turns choosing applicants. Colleges with specific student requirements (i.e. the mature colleges and the women-only colleges) are given priority over applicants eligible for their colleges. Some applicants will be fished (selected from the pool) by the college that originally pooled them.^[2]

Once all the colleges have fished as many applicants as they need, the pool ends. Some fished applicants will then be re-interviewed by their fishing college before final admissions decisions are made.

Criteria[]

Colleges can pool any candidate, either because the college has no space but believes the applicant is strong enough to get a place, or because the college wants to compare that applicant to other pooled applicants. Most applicants in the pool are pooled at their original college's discretion, but some candidates meet the compulsory pooling criteria. For applicants applying for 2022 entry, compulsory pooling has been suspended for all subjects with pre-interview assessments as well as maths.^[3]

There were, as of the 2020/21 admissions cycle, only two grounds for compulsory pooling. For post-qualified applicants, their achieved grades at A level or equivalent (listed below) and, for applicants with overseas interviews, an interview score of at least 8 in all interviews. The second criterion does not apply to medicine applicants.^[4] Previously, AS-Level UMS have been used as pooling criteria, but after A-levels became linear this was discontinued.^[4]

As of 2012, there is only one specifically identified category for pooled applicants, which is S — in special need of reassessment. This is for candidates whose initial interview scores are of questionable accuracy, for example if a candidate received very different scores from different interviewers, experienced technical issues (in the case of interviews conducted over the internet) or was affected by significant extenuating circumstances (for example illness or the loss of a family member).^[4]

Pooled applicants who are "fished" by a college may be offered a place immediately or they may be invited for interview. In 2020 just 89 applicants were invited to re-interview, 34 of whom received offers.^[2]

Statistics[]

Each year about 3,500 applicants receive offers from their preference college and a further 1,000-1,100 applicants are made an offer by another college through the Pool. On average one in five applicants is pooled and around one in four pooled applicants receives an offer of a place.^[2]

Statistics released by the University show that some colleges regularly receive particularly high numbers of applicants, and these colleges tend to take fewer applicants from the Pool. Other colleges regularly draw a greater proportion of their undergraduate intake from the Pool.^[5]

References[]