Admissions, Outreach and Support

Building on nigh on six centuries of academic tradition, today Magdalene College seeks to attract the very best applicants from across the UK and around the globe.

Our Admissions Tutors, Directors of Studies, teaching and support staff put in herculean efforts each year to ensure that we admit those students with the greatest academic potential.

Efforts to give our Admissions Tutor as broad a field as possible from which to select begin in some cases years before applications are made. Our outreach team is directed by Dr Sara Caputo, the Admissions Tutor for Access, supported by Schools Liaison Officer Tess Bottomley, and the newly appointed Widening Participation Officer, Carys Myers. Our annual (and - thanks to recent generous benefactions - growing) cycle of events seeks to encourage applications from the most academically gifted students in the UK, with a specific focus on those in Magdalene’s ‘link areas’ of North Wales, the Isle of Man, and Merseyside – with the North-West of England recently highlighted by the university as underrepresented, and a pivotal target for attracting the best talent and the brightest minds wherever they are, and whatever their backgrounds.

Over the past five years, in addition to reviving our longstanding biennial conference in Liverpool, we have begun co-hosting Cambridge’s ‘North-West Conference’, and have doubled the number of pupils attending residential events for VI formers during the Easter vacation. Many attendees from these events have gone on to make successful applications to study at Magdalene and other Cambridge colleges, with a few even braving admission to the Other Place! We have been delighted to see hundreds of entries to the new Armstrong Essay Competition over the past few years, and also to work closely with other colleges and central university teams to host events for the Brilliant Club, STEM SMART, HE+, ClickCambridge, and the Cambridge Students’ Union.

We have massively expanded our offering of online ‘webinars’, in which Magdalene academics offer taster lectures to aspiring students. The format not only allows us to work with many more VI formers than we could otherwise reach, but also means that we have been able to involve many more Fellows in our work with schools without having to transport them halfway across the country. In addition to taster lectures, we also host a series of application support sessions, including an introduction to the Cambridge admissions process, choosing a subject at university, and an introduction to student finance. These all help to support pupils, their parents and their teachers in making a competitive application. All of this is in addition to hosting school visits throughout the year, and visiting schools and colleges across our link areas.

Thanks in no small part to the impressive work of our outreach team, we received over 700 applications for undergraduate study in the most recent round: our highest number on record. We have seen a particular increase in UK applicants over the past few years, which has significantly outstripped the increase in UK applicants to Cambridge as a whole over the same period. Our aim to interview the majority of applicants has meant a considerable effort on the part of our Directors of Studies, whose December is spent less looking forward to Christmas and more focusing on making it through to the end of interviews!

We take pride in assessing each application holistically, and carefully reviewing every component: in addition to the much-vaunted Cambridge interview for those invited, this includes considering candidates’ admissions assessments and submitted work, personal statements, school references, and academic record. We also take into account a range of contextual data to ensure that we are evaluating academic potential appropriately for every applicant, irrespective of their background and any educational or personal disruptions that they may have faced. Candidates work incredibly hard to ensure that the Admissions Tutor and Directors of Studies have an unenviable task in selecting the strongest in a field chock-full of highly qualified, talented young people. We do our best to ensure this job gets harder with each passing year.

Once interviews have taken place, the intercollegiate winter pool allows moderation of candidates across Cambridge, and has in recent years seen a considerable and increasing number of strong Magdalene applicants who have performed well in the application process given offers at other Colleges, in cases when we have not had space for them ourselves. This whole operation is overseen with grace and aplomb by the Admissions Tutor for Undergraduates, Dr Simon Ravenscroft, whose background in the philosophy of religion has prepared him well for some of the more esoteric queries the College receives during this period. He is ably assisted by Jo Woodman and Remke van der Velden, whose Stakhanovite efforts ensured that over 1000 interviews took place smoothly in December with nary a paper out of place.

By Mr Cei Whitehouse, Academic Registrar

This article was first published in Magdalene Matters Issue 56.