The Winter Pool

The pool is designed to even out applications across the Colleges to ensure that the best applicants are offered places.  If your application is pooled, you may be asked to attend a further interview at another College in early January, or you may possibly be offered a place at another College without further interview.  We pool only those applicants who we feel are deserving of a place at Cambridge but we have no room for; applicants who were very strong on paper but gave a poor performance at interview; or those applicants whose interview scores differed considerably between interviewers.  This normally amounts to around one in five applicants at St John’s, and, of these, around one in five receives an offer of a place or an interview at another College.  If your application is pooled, but no College is able to take it forward, you will hear from us, normally by the end of January.