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

What is the Cambridge Winter Pool?

The Winter Pool is a system used at the university to ensure that the best applicants across all colleges end up receiving an offer to study at the university each year, regardless of which college they applied to. If a college is especially over-subscribed in any given course, applicants who are considered strong are put into the Winter pool (also known as the inter-College pool), where all colleges can consider them. Director of Studies for each subject then confer during the admissions period, comparing applicants to their college with the overall standard to see how they compare. They do this with the ultimate aim of accepting the best students from across the university – colleges can select strong candidates from the Winter Pool who were beat out of a place at their chosen college rather than accept a weaker applicant who applied to them directly.

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.