A 100 international applicants statistics

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Dear King’s College, Cambridge,

Can I please request the following data, if available?
1) Number of international applicants for A100 in 2015, 2016, 2017 entry cycle (each)
2) Their statistics including A level/ Pre-U/ IB grades, GCSE grades, BMAT scores, school of origin
3) Their interview score (name-anonymous)
4) Were there any international A100 applicants with extenuating circumstances since 2014? If so, did they get an offer?

I look forward to your reply.
Thank you

Yours faithfully,

Helen Chang

King's College, Cambridge

1 Attachment

Dear Helen Chang,

This is in reply to your enquiry received by the College on 5 September and made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). I can confirm that the College does hold some information related to your request, but some of it is exempt from disclosure. The information that is disclosable is the answer to your first question. Counting only the fully completed applications that we received:

We had 28 international applicants for Medicine for entry 2015.
We had 53 international applicants for Medicine for entry 2016.
We had 25 international applicants for Medicine for entry 2017.

For questions 2 to 4, I can confirm that the College does hold some information related to your enquiry (interview scores are held only in the paper applications which we keep for successful students during and after their time here, and for unsuccessful students only for a year after application), but it is exempt under section 40, personal data. Disclosure would require the processing of personal data for reasons other than those for which it was collected. Therefore, the information is exempt under section 40 of the FOI Act.

We hope the following information will be helpful to you:

HOW DO WE ASSESS APPLICATIONS?

At King's, we are looking for promise and potential. So although existing and predicted grades form a central criterion for admission, as do interview scores, we are careful to interpret grades and interview results in light of your personal and educational background. We assess each application individually. We are interested to learn about your existing knowledge and skills, but we endeavour also to find out how you would deal with the new materials and ideas you would encounter at Cambridge. All candidates are considered strictly on the basis of their academic promise.

During the application process, we look at:
* your academic record, including GCSE and AS (or equivalent) grades and marks and A level (or equivalent, e.g. IB) grades or predictions, this record being considered in the context of the quality (but not type) of schools/colleges at which it was achieved;
* your school/college reference;
* your personal statement;
* your admissions assessment (taken at interview)
* your performance at interview(s)

With this holistic view you can understand that it is not possible to predict your chances of success based on predicted grades and/or interview scores. Our advice is to apply if you look like you can achieve the standard offer of A*A*A for Medicine at the end of sixth form (or equivalent).

We read the whole of each application and take all parts of it into account before deciding which students to invite for interview. As we only invite students for interview who could potentially be made an offer, it would be unusual to invite a student predicted less than our standard offer for Medicine that year. The standard offer has changed over the past four years. For further information you might find this useful:

http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk....

Please use the interactive graph generator at the bottom of the page to generate any reports of interest.

We have no set quota for the number of applicants we invite for interview - we invite all candidates who we could potentially make an offer to after reading the paper application. In an average year, this is 80-90% of applicants.

If you have further questions please ask me in the first instance. I attach a leaflet outlining the College's FOI Act policies and procedures. If, after following those procedures you are still not satisfied with the way in which your request has been dealt with you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally, the Commissioner will not entertain your complaint unless you have exhausted any relevant internal review procedures.

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Patricia McGuire (Dr)
Archivist
King's College
Cambridge CB2 1ST

Tel: 01223 331444
FAX: 01223 331891

Dear King’s College, Cambridge,

Thank you for the reply.
If I have obtained A*AA already for my A level studies in stead of A*A*A, is there no possibility of getting an offer in the later stage? After sending emails to various colleges, I have got replies from most colleges saying that A*AA is unlikely to get an offer as it does not meet the condition; however, from one college, which wasn't King's, I got a reply saying that A*AA is still eligible to apply and there will be a good chance of getting an interview when BMAT is scored high. Could you clarify whether my understanding is correct for Cambridge?

Yours faithfully,

Helen Chang

King's College, Cambridge

Dear Helen,

Though this isn't really covered by the FOI Act (because it's not about recorded information - we don't have any records that answer your question), I can say this.

We can only speak for King's College, so we can't confirm or even comment on any specific information you have received from another College, because it only applies to that College. If another College has given you different information about their own specific offer conditions, you would need to communicate with them about this and decide whether or not you want to apply there. We also can't confirm anything for Cambridge University as a whole.

At King's, our standard offer for Medicine is A*A*A and you would need those grades in order to make a competitive application at King's College. You can of course still apply to King's without being able to achieve our offer (nobody can stop you doing that), but it's impossible to predict the likelihood of an offer that is below our standard offer for a subject.

We have more detailed information about making a competitive application on our website.
http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/study/undergr...

Hope this helps,

-Patricia

-----------------------------------
Patricia McGuire
Archivist
King's College
Cambridge CB2 1ST
 
Tel: 01223 331444
FAX: 01223 331891