Winter Pool

What is the Winter Pool?

Each year the University of Cambridge receives over 14,000 applications for around 3,350 places.
In order to ensure the best applicants receive offers of a place regardless of the College they have
applied to, all Colleges participate in the Winter Pool. The Winter Pool, also known as the inter-
College Pool, serves to ensure that Colleges are accepting applicants at comparable high levels of
ability.

As a result, following admissions interviews in December there are three possible outcomes to your
application:
• You will be offered a place, normally conditional on grades to be achieved at A level and/or
other examinations that you are taking
• Your application is unsuccessful
• Your application is forwarded to the Winter Pool for consideration by other Colleges

In a typical year, around 3,000 applicants are made offers from their preference College, and
around a further 600 to 700 applicants are made an offer by another College through the Pool.

What happens during the Winter Pool?

During the Pool, which takes place over a two-day period in early January, the application forms and
papers of each pooled applicant are available for consultation by Admissions Tutors and Directors
of Studies. Colleges seeking further applicants in your subject will have the opportunity to scrutinise
your application and the option to re-interview you or to offer you a place without further interview.

Admissions Tutors also use the Pool to look at applicants from other Colleges before confirming all
their offers. Therefore a small number of pooled applicants may receive an offer from the College
that interviewed them in December.

What do I need to do?

There is nothing that you, your teachers/advisers, or your parent/guardians should be doing in this
period, and it is certainly not necessary or helpful to make direct contact with any College. If you
receive information that a College cannot offer you a place and has pooled your application, it is
understandable that you may feel some initial disappointment. However, the fact that you have
been pooled means that your application is still being considered. We understand that it is a difficult
time, but the best thing you can do is to wait to be contacted by one of the Cambridge Colleges.

Pool interviews
If another College wishes to re-interview you, they will contact you in early January (probably by
telephone). Overleaf is the timetable of dates in connection with the Pool in January 2010. Before
these interviews, it is a good idea to try to do some research about the College that is going to re-
interview you. You can consult their website (www.cam.ac.uk) or check their entry in the University’s
Undergraduate Prospectus. Information about preparing for interviews, which you may also find
useful, can be found on the University website at: www.cam.ac.uk/interviews/. You can also
telephone the College Admissions Office for advice or, of course, ask questions at the interview
itself. If the cost of travelling to Cambridge for a second interview would be problematic please
advise your preference College.
The outcome of the Pool
If you have not heard from any College by the time the Pool interviews take place, the likelihood is
that your application is not going to be taken further by another College. In this case, your
application papers will be returned to the College which handled your application in the first place
and you will receive a letter from that College by the end of January (and, in due course, from
UCAS) about the final outcome of your Cambridge application. It is important to realise that there
may be many very good applicants in the Pool who do not get the offer of a Cambridge place. We
are constrained both by numbers and also by the size of Colleges and University departments, and
cannot take all those who have the ability to do well at the University.

If you are successful in gaining a place through the Pool, you will be contacted as soon as possible.
You should in no way feel that you are somehow ‘less good’ than those obtaining places direct from
the College they applied to (or were allocated to if you applied via the open route). Applicants from
the Pool do equally well academically when compared with those who receive an offer from the
College that initially considered their application.

Pool timetable 2010

6 – 8 January selected applicants invited, by telephone or email, to return to Cambridge for
second interviews

6 – 16 January some offers are made to pooled applicants without further interview

14 – 16* January Pool interviews held in Cambridge (*there may be additional dates if required)

8 – 31 January pooled applicants who are not called for further interview will hear about the
final outcome of their Cambridge application from their original College

16 – 31 January decisions on pool interviews are communicated to applicants

Some facts about the Winter Pool in 2009

• 29 undergraduate Colleges pooled applicants
• 3,185 applications were pooled in total
• 507 pooled applicants were re-interviewed
• 850 pooled applicants were made offers, of these:
• 610 received a direct offer without returning for Pool interviews
• 240 received offers following a Pool interview
• 108 pooled applicants received offers from the College that pooled them

Produced by: Cambridge Admissions Office (November 2009), Fitzwilliam House, 32 Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1QY
Telephone: 01223 333 308 Fax: 01223 366 383 Email: admissions@cam.ac.uk Website: www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/