Happy Christmas to everyone

Many of you have been emailing to thank us for the day you spent here in Cambridge and I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed coming to interviews! Do make sure you tell everyone that it wasn't as bad as you expected and that you had a great time. We don't want people to be scared of making an application to Cambridge.
The Admissions Office will be closed now until 5th January 2012 so it only remains for me to wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year. All best wishes for 2012 whatever it holds for you.

Some people have been asking me an important question

"When do we hear of the outcome of our application, and will it be by email or letter?"

Yes, a good point! We send our decisions by letter to the mailing address you provided in your UCAS application. You should expect to hear towards the end of the first week of January. If you are a UK applicants and have not heard by Monday 9th January 2012, you are welcome to email admissions@christs.cam.ac.uk although you must be patient because if loads of people email all at once I'll only be able to deal with one at a time; obviously each one has to be dealt with individually.

Decisions will also be communicated to UCAS during the first week of January but don't panic if you don't see your status changed for a day or two. There will be huge pressure on the UCAS website so you might need to give it a bit of time before you can get logged in or for your status to be updated.

Information about the outcome of your application can be found here http://www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/apply/ourdecision.html

All going well here!

Well, here we are into the third day of our very busy week. There's nearly a hundred of you coming each day this week and everything is going smoothly. I had this comment from one of our applicants; I hope those of you who are still to be interviewed will find it encouraging "I would also like to thank you for a lovely stay I had in college. My room was very nice and people I met were very supportive. It was definitely a pleasant experience. So, thank you for that!"

I hope everyone has a great time, whether or not they stay in college. Don't forget you can book lunch for the day of your interviews if you wish. This only applies to you, I'm sorry we can't provide lunch for parents because they are not supposed to be in College with you!

We seem to be missing some fee status forms, it may be that we have overlooked to record receipt on our database so if you know you have not completed the fee status form at http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/prospective-students/undergraduate-applications/applinfo/ please do so and return it to me as soon as you can.

If you are going to post the form the address is The Admissions Office, Christ’s College, St Andrew’s Street, Cambridge CB2 3BU

If you need some guidance filling in the form, the following advice might help:

Section B “when did your residence begin” you can put your birthdate if you have always lived in the country of birth.

“Main reason for residence” is usually living with family, although it could be study

Section C “Details of external funding” UK students intending to take a student loan should put Student Finance.

Section D “Details of ELQ status” does not apply unless you already hold an undergraduate degree and are therefore applying as an affiliated student.

Please let me know if you have any problems.

A few more things . . .

Just to let you know (if you have not already discovered it) that Cambridge railway station will be closed all day on Sunday 4th December. I don't think this will affect many of you but if you plan to travel by train on Monday 5th, please try to allow extra time for your journey because station closures inevitably mean disruption the following day.
If you have taken AS levels please bring along to interviews your statement of results showing your UMS scores. Some of you may have had remark enquiries, if so please bring the letter showing the outcome of the enquiry.
Please don't worry about your Fee Status form, we haven't had time to acknowledge them all because we have been concentrating on getting the interviews arranged. We have a huge pile of nearly 700 waiting to be processed and filed so we can't easily check whether we have recieved yours! We have nearly finished logging them on our system so if we don't have yours we'll let you know.

Next week is a big week in admissions

Finally all the admin is done and everything is ready. There will be nearly 400 of you coming for interviews next week, that's more than  half of the total number of people we are interviewing in Cambridge this year. If you are coming for your interview next week, make sure you've had a good look at all the information available on both admissions web pages and try to leave plenty of time for your journey.
I hardly like to mention it but this time last year there was REALLY heavy snow in the north - let's hope this doesn't happen again until after the 15th December (when our interviews finish!)
We're really looking forward to meeting you all. If your first interview is NOT at Christ's, you don't need to come to Christ's first unless you want to. You can just go straight to wherever your first interview is located and then make your way to Christ's. There are good maps on the websites and Cambridge is very compact so nothing is very far away.
When you get to Christ's, call in at the Porters' Lodge; they will give you a College map and show you how to find your way around. They'll also give you information about our interviewees waiting room.
Wishing everybody all the best in your interviews!