Admissions Selection (Biological Natural Sciences)

Prerequisites

The Senior Tutors' Committee expects those involved in the undergraduate admissions selection process to receive appropriate training. These workshops cover the entire selection process as well as interviewing techniques. Led by Admissions Tutors, they are designed to help you make your contribution to the admissions selection process as effective as possible. They include opportunities to practise by interviewing current first-year undergraduates, using authentic paperwork, and they explain how interviews and admissions decisions relate to the University’s agreement with the Office for Fair Access (OFFA).

The workshop will focus on mock interviews, with first-year undergraduates in related disciplines, and on discussion with an Admissions Tutor. We have asked all volunteer interviewees to consent to our circulating their application papers to participants in advance of the workshop, so that you may consider possible approaches to interviewing mock applicants. Closer to the date of the session we will send you copies of the handouts by email, to be printed and taken with you to the session.

Before attending the workshop, please study the online module. This module provides an overview of Cambridge’s undergraduate admissions process and highlights some important principles and practices relating to conducting effective admissions.

• Those with responsibility for conducting admissions interviews
• Those with any responsibility for admissions selection
• Workshops will be scheduled as follows: Biological Natural Sciences and MVST; Physical Natural Sciences and Engineering; Mathematics and Computer Science; Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
• This workshop is targeted at interviewers for Biological Natural Sciences. Interviewers for Medical and Veterinary Science who are not able to attend the workshop for Medical and Veterinary Science may choose to attend this workshop, but should be aware that the focus of this workshop will be Biological Natural Sciences.

• Before the workshop, you are asked to study the online module
• The module includes a link to 'Information for Admissions Interviewers for the Cambridge Colleges', and you are asked to read this document with care

Number of sessions: 1

• to be aware of ways of addressing challenges associated with interviews for admissions purposes, in order to make them more consistent and effective
• to understand how interviews and admissions decisions relate to the University’s agreement with the Office for Fair Access (OFFA)
• to understand the equal opportunities and widening participation issues connected to the admissions process
• to identify ways of personally enhancing the quality of interviews

• Workshops have been targeted at interviewers in particular groups of subjects
• If you would like to attend a workshop targeted at a group of subjects, but are not able to participate on the dates offered, additional sessions will be offered if there is adequate notice and sufficient demand

One session of three hours