Hello my name is Jane Garrison and I'm the Admissions Tutor at Queens' College in Cambridge.
Hello my name's Sian I'm one of the schools liaison officers at Queens' College Cambridge
we're really sorry that we can't welcome you to college today
and to have a look around and to see Queens' and the University of Cambridge for yourself
but we hope that you might find some of the resources that we've put online useful to you,
there are lots of ways you can get in contact with us and find out more so check out our
social media channels or send us an email to admissions@queens.cam.ac.uk there are also
various videos available online there's no such thing as a silly question but so feel free to
ask what you want to know we will do our best to support and help with all your admission queries.
One of the things I'm very often asked as admissions tutor
is what sort of thing we look for in our students for us the most important thing
is you're going to come to here and you're going to do well in the environment that we teach in
so we want to see people who are passionate about their subject we want students who are
going to thrive in the learning environment in lectures and supervisions and maybe practicals and
these can be a little different perhaps to some universities that you might go to have a look at
we want people who are prepared to go the extra mile who are not satisfied just with the textbook
answer we want to find things out for themselves and who are really motivated by learning
there's various different ways that we can assess your application lots of information through UCAS
forms in various different ways so things like references from a teacher we will also have access
to your previous examination performance which we can look at and contextualize as well as any
assessments that we set for you be that sending us in essays or doing an assessment test either
at interview or before the interview in your own school the main way in which you can communicate
your interest to us academically is through your personal statement that's your opportunity to
explain to us why you're the best person to come to study that particular subject in Cambridge.
There's lots of things you can put in there most important thing for us is a lot of academic input
we'd like to see your personal statement as being about two-thirds to three quarters
concerning your academic interests what you've been reading what you've been listening to,
if you have the opportunity to go to any talks or to any lectures around your subject area
even if they've been online give examples of super curricular activities you've undertaken
this is a way of providing us with the evidence because one of the things that we're looking for
as an institution is people who can take best advantage of the opportunities that we have.
We're an evidence-based research-led institution so we're looking for the kind of proof that you're
a good person to come to study here I spend quite a lot of time talking to young people
about what they expect from the assessment process at the University of Cambridge and
almost all of the time the most intimidating thing for people is the actual interview itself
now it's important to emphasize that interviews are not the be-all and end-all of the process
they're not the kind of tiebreaker that we use to make our final decisions the make or break aspect
if you like. The academics involved really want to find out what you know it isn't in any way in
their interest to trip you up or to talk about things that you have no hope of knowing about
we want to interview an opportunity for you to tell us about what you know
so in terms of how you might want to go about preparing for interviews I've got a couple of
suggestions that hopefully might be helpful to you. First of all it's a good idea to read back
over all the material that you might have sent us have a look back at the personal
statement are the things that you've mentioned that you wanted to talk about in interview
by the way if it's in the personal statement it's pretty fair game for us to use them.
Have a look through it and remind yourself what you've already told us because they're
good settling in questions the likelihood is that an academic might choose to use these it's
a sort of way to make you feel at ease and make you feel more comfortable to start the process.
Have you sent us any written work if so go over that because again that's something we've got of
yours that me we might want to talk to you about. Another really important thing to do as well is to
have some good practice of talking about your subject it can come quite naturally for some
people on some subjects so if you're interested in something like politics or history that might be
quite straightforward but maybe not so natural if you're a mathematician or your physicist
so it's worth taking the opportunity to talk to an unfamiliar adult or a friend maybe about your
subject and try and make them as interested in it as you are. It might be an opportunity that you
have in school to talk to a teacher you don't know or it might be one of your parents friends will be
willing to listen to you talk about your academic interests, perhaps suggest to your family that one
day a week at supper you talk about your academic interests rather than having a conversation about
something else. Take the opportunity to have a really good chat about your passions
why are you interested in that subject some of the elements that really interest you about it.
The point is that you take the opportunity to talk about your passions why you are interested
in that subject some of the really interesting elements of that and things that you like,
take advantage of any opportunity to talk about the things that interest you, that motivate you
that express your passion for the subject so that you're used to doing that before you get
into the interview context of having to do it with some unfamiliar adults in Cambridge
and a lot of the time while you're at university as well that's what you're going to have to do in
the supervision system itself. Secondly make sure within interview context that you take your time,
sometimes people may ask you a question you might want them to rephrase it
I'll give you a little bit more information before you answer we're not rushing you we want to see
what you can do so don't necessarily leap in with the first thing that pops into your head.
Sometimes the first thing that comes into your head might not actually be what you're thinking
so don't be afraid to change it as you work your way through it,
very often we want to take you on the journey through the question and at some point you
might get stuck, now that's absolutely okay we're more interested in the thinking process
that you've gone through in getting to an answer than perhaps the actual answer itself
so some questions you might get from us might not actually have the right answers
bear that in mind we're interested in how you think about problems and how you approach them