I should probably introduce myself first and foremost, I’m Simone Hanebaum, I’m the Schools
Liaison Coordinator for the Faculty so I’m your point person on most things pertaining to
admissions and our outreach initiatives, and will be discussing our application process.
So this is the general overview, we’ll go into some aspects of this in greater depth and
detail than others but this is generally what it looks like for the Cambridge admissions process.
Of course, choosing your course and you’re all here so we’ll go into the details of why
you should study law. I think Felix covered that very well, but just to kind of stress,
just to think about what kind of law courses suit you and your learning style, what you need from
them. We’re a very academic course compared to some other law schools in the country,
so that’s something to kind of bear in mind. Some people may prefer something that has a little bit
more vocational work built into it, others may not, but that’s just something to keep in mind,
and of course you’ll be able to talk to some current students later today to get a little
bit more information from their perspective. I know Felix covered what a college does and
their purpose in the Cambridge system. In the context of admissions, this becomes a kind of
stress point for many applicants. We often get questions like what college is the best
for law or, you know, what college has the best law library and things like that and the
reality is is that’s not really the right way to approach choosing your college, the reality is,
is that most of your teaching in terms of your lectures here in the faculty. Your college
will arrange supervisions but that will include interaction with academics that aren’t based in
your college simply because not every college has fellows that teach in every single paper.
So the better question to ask yourself is really where do you want to live? So, to keep in mind the
kind of lifestyle you want to have while you’re at Cambridge, do you want to be an old college
or a new college, do you want to be closer or not close to the faculty, perhaps you want to be close
to the river because you want to take up rowing, things like that kind of factor into that decision
because really when it comes to those basic services, all colleges provide them.
So, the best way to do that is really just to think about instinct and fit.
There’s also the alternative perspectives, which is available, which can give you a student
perspective on colleges on colleges and there’s no problem with making an open application which is
where you don’t select a college and you leave it open to allocation during the admissions process.
There’s no prejudice against your application for doing that, we only recommend
against doing that if you have disabilities or any mobility concerns that might limit
your movement or specify some additional needs that you may have and for those students,
we direct them to the Disability Resource Centre that has a great accessibility guide that can
outline colleges that provide accommodation and other supports that suit your needs.
The next step in this journey is to think about your admissions assessment arrangements,
which is really just a very longwinded way to say
tests and other assignments that you have to do in addition to your UCAS application.
For many courses, they require applicants to sit these assessments pre-interview and they usually
happen in November. Law is different and it’s especially different this year. So historically,
if anybody knows people who have studied law at Cambridge before, they’ll be mentioning something
called the CLT, the Cambridge Law Test, which they would have sat at interview. As of this autumn,
so for people who are applying for admissions this fall for start in 2023, we’ve moved over to
the LNAT and will be requiring students to sit the LNAT before the 15th October UCAS deadline.
So, what does that look like? So, just for context,
the LNAT is an aptitude test that assesses your verbal reasoning, comprehension,
inductive and deductive reasoning and analytical capabilities. Essentially,
it’s testing for the skills that you need to be a successful law student. It’s already used at eight
other Russell Group universities in the country, including Oxford, and internationally as well,
so it’s a well-established benchmark here in the UK for this type of assessment.
It’s made up of two components; one of which is a multiple choice component
and the other one is an essay and the essay is quite short, you’ve only got about 40 minutes
to write it and there’s a choice of questions there. I stress that it’s not an intelligence
test and it does not assess your knowledge of law, so you do not need a pre-existing knowledge of law
to write the test. It assesses rather for the skills that are useful to become a lawyer
in a much more general way, and if you go over to the LNAT website and look at the sample
test questions, both from multiple choice and the essay, you’ll see what that looks like because for
the multiple choice, it’s a reading comprehension style test, so you’ll have a paragraph or two
of text and then a list of questions based on that test that assesses your comprehension.
The LNAT registration will open in September for the next admissions pool so don’t try
to log on and sit it before then because those results won’t be counted and as I said,
you’ll need to do it before the UCAS deadline. There is a cost associated with writing the LNAT;
last time I checked, and this could be subject to change, it was £75 for UK
and EU-based testing centres and we realise, and Pearson, the test provider realises, that that is
a substantial amount of money for some people and there is eligible, or you could be eligible for
bursary support offered by the testing provider, Pearson. So, if you go to the Pearson website,
it does have information on that bursary scheme that can give you more information there,
and really that website is where you’re going to book your test, it’s where you’ll see your local
testing centres, it’s where you’ll see test examples and so you really should familiarise
yourself with that particular website. I really stress that domestic students should familiarise
themselves with the multiple choice questions. I know that multiple choice isn’t always used
in secondary school and so it takes a while to kind of get used to how the questions
operate and what they’re asking of you. The more you practise, the better it will be.
Of course, the other large substantial part of your admissions application is
the UCAS application itself and particularly the personal statement, which we realise again is a
source of concern and stress for students who have only a limited amount of space to communicate why
they want to study law, why they’d be good at it, and to demonstrate their passion and potential for
the subject. So, a couple of bits of advice. First and foremost is to be yourself.
Write with integrity, don’t write and say you read a book if you didn’t; at best, you might
be a little embarrassed if you get invited to interview, at worst, you might look disingenuous
to those who are interviewing you. So, be honest, write about what you’ve actually done,
don’t try to put down what you think a Cambridge Fellow wants to see on an application.
The personal statement should also cover your interest in the course,
the relevant subjects you’ve studied and the skills they have given you,
and your super-curricular exploration and I stress the skills they’ve given you because law
at Cambridge does not have subject requirements at A level. We require A levels but we don’t require
a specific subject within that, and our students have taken a wide variety of subjects. They have
taken law, they have taken English and history, they’ve done all STEM subjects, they’ve done
theatre and music and art. So there isn’t really like a soft A level option, at least in our books.
What we’re looking for are students who show academic excellence in the things they are
doing and can show a connection between what they’re learning in the classroom and how it’s
going to help them study law. So this is where if you’re doing STEM, you might want to think
about things like problem solving and logical reasoning for your traditional essay topics,
absolutely, your writing and reading comprehension skills for perhaps things you want to stress but
all of these A level options give you different skillsets that are applicable to studying law,
so have a think about that and because we don’t have subject requirements, this is where
your extracurricular or super curricular as we call it here in Cambridge, comes into play.
So, what is super-curricular exploration? It’s anything that gets you thinking about legal ideas.
It can be reading a book, doing a podcast or rather listening to a podcast. It could
be attending your local court in person or on demand, for example, the Supreme Court
has some proceedings available online. It could be work experience but we stress that that’s not
an expectation because that often relies on familial connections that not everyone has.
It’s online courses like our Exploring Law course, which I know has been flogged to you all morning
but please do check it out, it’s a really great resource and our atplus.com resource,
which a university-wide one but it can cover a wide variety of things, reading the newspapers,
it’s anything that gets you thinking about the law
and following up on those things that excite you and interest you further.
So, your UCAS application is due on the 15th and after the 15th October deadline is the SAQ,
which is a week later on the 22nd. It’s just a supplementary application questionnaire
that allows you to just provide a little bit more information and detail that we don’t get
from your UCAS application. So, it might cover things like topics that you did in A level;
there’s also an optional Cambridge-specific personal statement. If you elect to do it,
because it’s optional, it should not replicate your personal statement for UCAS, it should be
something different and you won’t be penalised if you don’t complete it, many of our students
haven’t, some of our students have, that’s really a space where you want to maybe say why
Cambridge specifically but you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to and just an awareness,
the SAQ, because it comes in through email, often gests shunted to your junk folder so please check
it around this period in time so that you don’t miss it and that your application is complete.
The next step is we’ll take your LNAT results, we’ll see your UCAS application,
your teacher references, read that personal statement, we’ll get all of that information
and then the colleges will shortlist students to come or to have interviews in December.
Historically, this has meant travelling to Cambridge. What this means this year is that it is
online again for the most part, and I’ll touch on that in the next slide. So the purpose of the
interview is to allow us to get a holistic and comprehensive view of you and your potential.
The amount of interviews can vary from college to college as can the format but they’re relatively
short, they’ll always be with academics in law based at the colleges and it will be
predominantly academic and subject focused. So what does that mean in the context of law?
We don’t expect you to have pre-existing knowledge of law but you’ll be engaging with similar
problems that you did just now with Janet. For example, you may be given a scenario that you have
to then reason through, you may be given some real or fictitious legislation to read and then you
have to apply in a particular scenario that may have follow-up questions from the lecturers there.
There are no trick questions, it’s not a final hurdle, the whole application matters so if you
step out of that room and think oh, that did not go very well, it’s okay, we look at all
of it when it comes to deciding whether or not people have a place in Cambridge.
So what are we looking for? Well, we want to see that there’s a fit with your interest and
your aptitudes. Are you interested in law and do you have talent and affinity for the skills
that are required to study law? Do you have an enthusiasm for complex and challenging ideas and
do you have clarity of thoughts and analytical ability? So, are you able to think things through
and articulate it clearly? Are you enthused and energised by the idea of working with something
complex that you might not actually know much about? That intellectual flexibility is really,
really important; can you take what you know from reading the news, from your studies,
and then apply it to things that you don’t know and are you curious about that process? Those are
things that we’re looking for in the interview. So your best options for preparing for it
are first and foremost again, be yourself, talk in the way that you talk, wear what is comfortable
for you, we don’t expect you to show up in a suit and if you’ve got a really wonderful goth
aesthetic, no one expects you to show up, you know, in a preppy jumper or anything like that,
be yourself. Review your application, so go back to that UCAS application and remember what you
wrote, maybe revisit some of those super-curriculars or your notes on them
from the things that you’ve done so that you’re prepared to talk about them.
Stay on top of current events, so keep reading the news and read widely in the news. Don’t just
choose news providers in any kind of particular political area, try to read as widely as possible.
Don’t over-prepare, so don’t come out with, you know, a rehearsed answer
because that can kind of fall flat and, again, it feels disingenuous.
They really want to know who you are in that room and what your potential is to study law with us.
A final bit of advice on that is that when you are in the room and you are thinking about problems or
rather on the screen thinking about problems is to make sure that you’re articulating your thoughts
aloud because they want to see the process but you can’t show somebody verbally the process if
you’re not thinking aloud, right? So be sure that you’re thinking through and saying okay, well,
if X applies here and the legislation says Y, then I think A, B or C will happen, for example.
So make sure you’re thinking through aloud, it’s okay to take pauses, it’s okay to ask somebody to
rephrase the question if you don’t understand. So, on a note about online,
most of our interviews this autumn will take place virtually with the exception of Trinity College,
which will be interviewing domestic students in person, and this is accurate as of today
but please do keep checking in on websites for further information if things change and other
colleges decide to do things a little differently. Essentially, all the same
advice for preparing for things applies regardless of the format it takes place in but, of course, be
sure that you have a stable internet connection, that you have the appropriate technology,
particularly a microphone and camera and of course make sure it happens in a quiet place.
The final outcome is usually given to applicants in January and that’s when decisions are made.
There are two possible outcomes, of course, so the first is, hopefully,
you’re made an offer. It may be from the college you applied to or it may be from another college
and that’s the result of your application getting pooled and this is what prevents
this idea of gaming the Cambridge admission system. The pool is, so say we’ve got college A
and it has three places to take law students but it has five really good applicants. It’s going
to send those two other really good applicants into the pool so that college B who may not have
has as many good candidates that they thought they would but has two spaces, they can pull
students out of that pool. So, that’s what kind of makes sure that, that makes sure that those who
are exceptional students and should have a place in Cambridge have the opportunity to do so.
The results, of course, may be both conditional or unconditional offer. Unconditional is more
common for those who have already had their A level results in hand and the typical offer
is an A star AA or equivalent and the vast majority of students meet that or exceed it
and of course you may be unsuccessful but that shouldn’t deter anybody from applying, we can
only give places to those who apply so, you know, you’ve got nothing to lose by taking a shot.
We’ve got some useful resources that may help so things like the university admissions pages,
our website, our Think Cambridge Law blog has got a lot of information on there that
may be helpful including a really good list of super-curriculars. Inside Uni is a student-led
project that has interview resources by subject in college at both Cambridge and Oxford
so do use it if you want to get a sense of what interviews look like at different colleges.
You can follow us on social media and, of course, you can always contact us by
email at outreach@law.cam.ac.uk and we’ll be happy to deal with your queries that way.
I realise that I have spoken relatively quickly so we do have some time for a couple of questions
at the moment so does anybody have questions pertaining to the admissions process?