Oh I appreciate hearing this. Out of curiosity how many dining halls are there? Just trying to get a sense for whether this limits you to 1 of 3, or 1 of 10 or whatever. Also, do you happen to know - if you do not choose catered, whether you can pay out of pocket to eat at hall dining spots alongside ‘catered’ students? Or are they “swipes” only?
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Congrats!!
yeah, for sure. for me it is less the challenge of getting 5s and more the stress of not knowing until july
In fact that is part of what quickly eliminated Cambridge for my S24, their known habit of giving a lot of conditional offers to US applicants. He just did not want that hanging over him.
But that does not mean you were wrong to choose differently, it just is one of those things you have to balance in this process.
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yeah, oxford doesn’t offer education, so my hands were kind of tied haha. i considered oxford PBS or experimental psych but didn’t want to bother with the TSA since i didn’t have a lot of time to study
Hi there - I would check all the below as this is from friends/family in the UK who attend or attended… but good to check! I also went there in the 90s and this is what it was like for me, so looks like nothing has changed except more non catered options as kids tend to like that more now.
dining halls - the halls which offer catered accommodation will one each, which are open to those with a catered meal plan for that hall only. These are not like US college dining halls which are open to all. Only hall residents can access them.
So if your student is in St Salvatore’s Hall catered - they are eating all their meals there, unless they eat out.
There are other eating places such as the Student Union, and a place in Agnes Blackadder Hall, which are more like cafeterias and pay as you go. There is no concept of swipes.
If you choose non catered, you cannot pay as you go for meals. You are expected to cook your own, and a full kitchen is provided.
This is what I mean when I say it’s very different to a US college!
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that would stress me out too. You basically have to forgo any other amazing offers you may get (and if memory serves you had some good ones on the table and potentially more to come) in exchange for the conditional Cambridge offer…or can you treat Cambridge like a waitlist and accept something else and just eat the registration fee if/when Cambridge is a sealed deal?
Regardless, this is a huge accomplishment – and would be hard to turn down for anything aside from Brown or maybe Yale, right?
(I’m curious: how would you rate the current set of offers + outstanding applications against this one? probably should take this to your other thread so as not to derail this one.)
I’m not sure you are supposed to, but this is absolutely what at least some people in the US do–accept their best US offer and then eat the deposit if Cambridge (or any other UK conditional offer they prefer) comes through.
In fact, although not quite the same issue, the St Andrews recruiter we talked to apologized their normal commitment date was April 11, rather than May 1, then flat out told us it was fine to commit then withdraw as long as we were OK losing the deposit.
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Do you recall the amount offhand?
SUPER helpful thank you!
(throwing this one reply on here in case that answers your question in full, but am happy to move to the other thread!)
i’m trying not to rank them in my head until i have all my offers back 
i’m hoping to avoid ending up disappointed in that respect. i did apply for full rides at vanderbilt, clark, etc which would definitely be competitive with cambridge should i receive them. i’m hoping to visit cambridge before making a decision as well so i can get a feel for the system of grading, exams, etc there, since i’ve learned the hard way that some grading systems absolutely do not work for me and my adhd. either way, super excited 
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With St Andrews, if you have Overseas fee status, it is 2000 GBP (they call it a pre-payment, because it is credited to your tuition). You only have to pay it with an unconditional offer, or four weeks after you meet your conditions.
I just checked, though, and it appears you also have four weeks after you accept an unconditional offer, so not until May 9. This then seems like much less of an issue to me, as at that point presumably you are only holding out for a waitlist decision, and even that might already have come (if it was coming).
Edit: I really should read more fine print. Apparently after making the pre-payment, you then have ANOTHER 14 days (per statute) to cancel and get a refund. So now we are out to May 23.
OK, so total non-issue as far as I am now concerned. But my original point is just the St Andrews recruiter obviously thought it was fine to do the UK and US in parallel and sort it out at the end, and I think that still stands (even though I am now wondering if we was trying to steal 2000 GBP from us . . . ).
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Extremely helpful thank you!
What type of grading systems do/ don’t work for you?
I’m so impressed at your ability to self-study for exams with ADHD. (it runs in my family too and I find that unstructured plans around here oft go to waste.)
I’d actually ruled out UK-style education for our son (fascinated as he was by the whole idea) because of how much more independent one has to be. At Princeton I only got away with skipping a handful of classes before a dean (seriously!) came knocking at my door wondering when I was going to get my shizz together. My hunch based on what you’ve shared elsewhere is that you’re less in need of that sort of structure/monitoring.
(Overstepping, perhaps) into your shoes, I would definitely look into the ready availability of any medication you may need. I was alarmed to learn, for example, that the drug that my son depends on for high-functioning schoolwork is actually illegal in Japan and may be complicated to procure in various parts of Europe.
I’m not sure how much reassurance you’ll get from visiting. Departments have little to do with entering students (since they are admitted by colleges) and colleges may or may not be willing to help much until you’ve met the conditions.
I’m not sure what you mean by “grading systems”, it is about tough exams, often back to back (we had 4 x 3 hour exams in two days) that are summative for the entire year and require you to think about difficult questions (for math, a first required completing 3 questions correctly on each of the four papers, the top students would get 7-10 correct on each) and for essay-based subjects to write very fast (my spouse typically did 4 x 6-8 page handwritten essays in a 3 hour exam). Nothing like the plug and chug that is common in US course finals. You have to enjoy and perform well in high stakes tests (hence the AP offer requirements!) and sometimes nothing else matters (there is a small amount of graded coursework in some subjects, it looks like education includes a graded dissertation in the third year but probably the first year is all or almost all exam-based - it appears you take 4 papers, each will likely be a 3 hour exam).
Read the course structure in detail - everything is on line:
And as far as I can tell, essay-based papers all still rely on handwritten exams, so I hope you can write legibly and very fast (allowances will probably be made for disabilities, but you’d have to get approval to type on a computer and it would almost certainly be one the department provides for you, your exam would presumably have to be in a separate room to avoid distracting others with the noise of typing):
i do best in smaller, more discussion-based classes where i can have back-and-forths with the teacher. larger lecture-based classes, especially if there’s no attendance policy, are harder for me to stay on task during. i also prefer having more cumulative assignments over large assignments/exams that are weighted for a significant part of my grade. i know some of those fit the cambridge style and some don’t, which is why i want to get to know it better.
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i’m actually pretty awful at self-studying, haha. only three of those previous exams were self-studied (lang, which between my school’s strong english program, recent english SAT prep, and the fact that our school had switched to the digital exam, i was able to get a 5 on; gov, which i was able to BS my way through with civics knowledge from activism (i wrote an FRQ on a term i had learned doing the MCQ), and psych, which was the one i got a 4 on, mostly because i only started studying the night before thinking my two semesters of non-AP psych would carry me. they did not.). english lit and psychology will be self-study this year but i’m hopefully going to prepare better.
anecdotally, my school was going to make me self-study honors chem as a prereq for ap bio since i took physics instead of chem, and then despite meaning to work on it for a year and a half it didn’t get done. luckily the ap bio teacher had me for honors bio and vouched for my ability to figure out the limited chem on my own.
but yeah, i’m trash at self-studying, just lucky and had good non-AP classes that provided a strong foundation for me, haha.
yeah, i need to do a lot more research. i hadn’t really started to picture myself at cambridge because i was expecting to be rejected lol, so i’m planning to do a deep dive now.