The University's Winter Pool process is designed to ensure that strong applicants who have narrowly missed out on an offer at their original College are offered places at other Colleges. Around 20% of all Cambridge offers each year are made through the Pool.
Unfortunately, sometimes we have more good candidates than we have places. The Pool allows other Colleges to consider these applications - all Colleges would rather admit a strong applicant from the Pool than a weaker applicant who applied directly/was allocated to them. Some candidates are then made an offer directly by another College, others are asked to take part in additional interviews in January and others, unfortunately, are not taken from the Pool and are then rejected. Queens' typically has around 40 candidates each year who are taken from the Pool by other Colleges.
In a few cases, offer holders who haven’t quite met the conditions of their original offer may still be offered a place at another College following a small ‘Summer Pool’ that takes place after school examination results are released. We also hold the August Reconsideration Pool for eligible rejected students.