What is the Cambridge Winter Pool and How do I Prepare?

What happens to students in the Winter Pool?

Having been placed in the Cambridge Winter Pool, there is no need to contact anyone or undertake any admin to confirm your place in the pool – so no need to panic! Applicants who are placed in the pool can either: be accepted by a different college without further interview, be invited to attend another interview at a different college, or be unsuccessful in the pool and receive notification from their original college.

The pool itself takes place over a period of four days in January, during which all pooled applicants are made available for consideration by Admissions Tutors at all colleges. Most applicants who are offered a place by another college through the pool are done so without a follow-up interview, but in rare cases applicants can be invited back for a January interview.

Winter Pool dates for 2025 entry

Some Facts from the 2024 Winter Pool

• All of the 29 college pooled some applicants.
• 4,557 applications were pooled in total.
• 49 pooled applicants were invited back for a January interview.
• 1,249 pooled applicants were made an offer. Of these:
  • 1,226 received an offer without being re-interviewed.
  • 23 received an offer after attending a January interview.
• 263 pooled applicants received an offer from the College that pooled them.

How to Prepare

There is no guarantee that you will have anything to prepare for as part of the Winter Pool process. If you are not one of the applicants invited back for an interview, you can think of the pool as just an extension of the normal consideration process; there’s nothing more you need to do.

If you are invited to interview again in January, we recommend just brushing up on the content of your personal statement and practicing interview techniques as if you were back in December attending your original interviews! Use the fact that you’ve already attended at least one interview to your advantage… think about how you fared in those interviews, if there were any topics that came up you found interesting or as if you could know a little more, and how your interview technique could be improved, if at all.

The key is not to stress too much about it and remember that being put in the Winter Pool means you must have done something right in your original interviews! Just stick to the content you know and be confident in your abilities.