University Entrance Grade Offers

Next year’s intake of bright-eyed and bushy tailed students will now know the grades that they have to achieve in their A-levels to get into Cambridge. In general, the average grade offer for Cambridge is A*AA (380 UCAS Points), which is not much higher than a lot of other Universities in the UK. For example, the average grade offer for studying Biological Sciences at Oxford is AAA, Newcastle and Sheffield is AAB and University of East Anglia is ABB. Thus, in terms of grade offers, it is almost as easy to get into Cambridge as a lot of other Universities. BUT, the reality of the situation is more complex than this since the average grade that is actually achieved by Cambridge students is 559 UCAS Points (almost four A*) and as this is the average, some students must be achieving even higher grades than this. So Cambridge students may well be offered A*AA grades to get into the University but in reality they achieve much higher. Cambridge students out perform their offers.  Thus, the most difficult part is to get a conditional offer in the first place. 

 

So how do admission tutors decide these offers? Academics who interview prospective students have a hard time in identifying the best students as A-level grades have shown an inexorable rise over the last two decades (see Figure). In 2000, the proportion of A grades was 17.8% while in 2010 the proportion of A/A* grades was 27%. What this means in reality is that most students who apply to Cambridge will have very high predicted grades. Thus, the interview is particularly important in trying to identify the students to whom to make an entrance offer. Discriminating between students who are all predicted to get three or four A* is very difficult and every year there are well publicised cases of an A* student who does not get a place. Given the number of exceptional applicants, this is not particularly surprising. So admission tutors cannot really use predicted grades in any discriminating way to make offers. They have to resort to different criteria. I know that some Cambridge colleges obtain the AS exam results of the applicants and will only consider candidates that have achieved better than 90%. Moreover, high grades that are obtained after several re-sits will not carry as much weight as those achieved first time around. It is better to be ready and fully prepared for an exam and achieve your best grade at the first sitting rather than do multiple re-takes. In addition, the way in which the student performs during the interview will be very important in securing an offer.

Drug use at Cambridge

An article in the student newspaper “The Varsity” has just published the results of an online survey into the number of students who use illegal drugs while at Cambridge. The headline figure of 63% of students having taken illegal drugs seems very high. Headlines can be misleading however. Firstly, this does not mean that over 60% of all Cambridge students have taken drugs but only those that responded to the survey. The article does not give the number of students who completed the survey so it is impossible to gauge how prevalent drug taking might be in Cambridge. Percentage figures without an indication of the number of students who filled in the survey is misleading. If say 1000 students did the survey, of which 630 had taken drugs to give the 63% headline number, this would only be 3.5% of the total number of students at Cambridge. It cannot be assumed that the rate of drug taking will be the same between those students who completed the survey and those who did not. In surveys of this kind, there will be a bias for drug takers to want to compelete the survey. Why would students who do not take drugs be interested in completing a survey that they would see as irrelevant to them?

The second point is that the headline figure of 63% is a rather blunt instrument to convey accurately the full details of the survey. Reading the article more closely suggests that the breakdown of this headline figure is 61% marijuana, 2% cocaine and less than 1% heroin. Thus, the majority of the students who use illegal drugs are using the Class B drug, marijuana, rather than the more serious Class A drugs.

Snowy Cambridge

The hand of winter finally exerted its icy grip over Cambridge. Heavy snowfall over the week-end carpeted the city in 10 cm of snow and gave plenty of photographic opportunities. Cycling became treacherous but Cambridge is a small city that can be easily viewed on foot. 

Here are some photographs.

Difficult cycling conditions

Not the best weather for punting

Snowy River Cam with trails left by the ducks

Cambridge University Entrance Interviews

Just before Christmas, hundreds of nervous sixth formers arrive in Cambridge for college interviews hoping to be offered a place at the University. The interviews take place in whichever college the student has applied. The form and conduct of these interviews will vary widely depending upon the experience and quirks of the college fellows doing the interview, the subject that the student has applied to study and the academic background of the applicant. The questions that might be asked have often become the stuff of urban legend – for example, would you rather be an apple or a banana?

The questions are aimed at getting the students to think and to identify those who can use their brains. It is very difficult to discriminate between students based on their predicted A-level grades as most are expected to get three or four A-grades so the interview is one of the ways to identify whether the students can think for themselves or have simply been spoon-fed and tutored to achieve high A-level grades. It is unlikely therefore that the students will be asked to regurgitate factual knowledge from their A-level syllabus. Of course, some of the questions will be aimed at putting the student at ease such as why do they want to come to Cambridge, which book are they currently reading, why do they want to study subject X? Most of the students will have prepared responses to these banal questions. The more discriminating questions might require the student to use their A-level knowledge and apply it to situations with which they are not totally familiar. For example, why does a car get more miles per gallon of petrol if the tyres are properly inflated? Why do you often find sand on the bottom of a swimming pool? What might account for the leaves still left on this tree in the autumn?

Some questions will not necessarily have a correct answer such as the apple and banana question, but are aimed at seeing whether the student can give a clear, reasoned argument. For example, what do you consider the greatest scientific discovery of the 20^th century? Antibiotics, structure of DNA, contraception, vaccination? There are lots of possible answers but the interviewer will be looking to see if the student can present an argument justifying their choice.

Of course the process is stressful and certainly not perfect. It possibly favours the more confident students but by asking off the wall questions that are difficult to prepare for in advance, it is hoped that all the applicants are given a fair chance that is not dictated by the quality of the school they went to.

New Term

They’re back! The new term in Cambridge started yesterday and the students are all back in town. The traffick in Cambridge was chaotic at the week-end as parents dropped off their little darlings. It’s one of the only times that the city centre is open to general traffick –usually its restricted to pedestrians and bicycles. There are groups of new students wandering from bar to bar in the evenings on “orientation” events.

My Department has suddenly sprung into life. From a very quiet summer period we now have hoards of students traipsing up and down the stairs four-abreast and generally blocking the way. They are all collecting their lecture and coursework hand-outs ready for the start of lectures/practical classes on Thursday. The first year students are bright eyed and bushy tailed, the second year students cool and nonchalant and the third year students starting to realise that the end is nigh. The bicycle population in Cambridge had quadrupled over the weekend and it is now very difficult to find a spot to park my bike outside the Department.

Bike Congestion

Dead Heat

As an academic I am officially a “University Officer” which means that I am also a member of the Regent House which is the governing body of the University and responsible for setting the rules. We have just voted on a motion of no confidence in David Willetts, the Government Minister of State for Universities and Science. If the motion was passed, the University would have sent a letter of no confidence in Mr Willetts for his handling of the increase in University fees. Amazingly, the votes were tied at 681 each way so the motion failed and Mr Willetts will have one less letter to open. I was somewhat surprised and disappointed at the number of votes against the motion given that this was a symbolic gesture by which academics could voice their disapproval of the fee increase. In contrast, Oxford University voted 283 to 5 in favour of a no confidence motion. Must be a hot bed of radicals in Oxford or perhaps they just have a better moral conscience.

OCR Biology F215 A Level Exam

My daughter has just sat the final paper in her A level Biology (OCR paper F215). I have spent the last couple of months helping her revise so I had an interest in the overall content of the paper.  To get some idea about the questions that cropped up, I have followed the various discussions on chat forums and some students have been very unhappy about this paper. Their main criticism is that the paper was heavily biased toward ecological processes and concepts and did not have sufficient spread of questions covering all the syllabus topics. Facebook campaigns have been started and e-mails sent to OCR, the BBC and Ofqual. OCR has even issued a statement in response to the student’s concerns. Since OCR thinks that there was no problem with the paper, I have analyzed the mark distributions according to which core modules they come from. The results are:

Module 1 (Cellular control)                                                                     
20 marks

Module 2 (Biotechnology)                                                                      
20 marks

Module 3 (Ecosystems)                                                                          
28 marks

Module 4 (Responding to the Environment)                                         
19 marks

Assessment Objective 2 (Application of Knowledge/data handling)   
6 marks

Assessment Objective 3 (How Science Works)                                    
7 marks

At face value, it would appear that the questions were reasonably spread across all four Modules, with perhaps a slight bias towards Ecosystems. BUT, this does not take into account the content of each module. Based on the number of pages in the OCR Biology revision book by Heinemann, Module 1 = 33% of the syllabus, Module 2 = 28%, Module 3 =19% and Module 4 = 20%. On the exam paper, Module 3 questions account for 32% of the module specific marks but this module is only 18% of the syllabus. Perhaps the students have a point about the paper not being completely fair.