20th March 2019 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Cambridge University has announced that it will make 100 extra places available after the A Level results in the summer, but only for disadvantaged students. Reported on the BBC, the university has been criticised recently for being socially exclusive and it is keen to broaden its undergraduate intake. Cambridge wants to accept students from poorer backgrounds, but insists that this scheme is not a quota.
The students considered will be those who originally applied to Cambridge, but were not successful. They will make use of the “adjustment” process which allows students with strong results to change their decisions about university choice. The students will have to be from areas labelled as deprived, where admissions to Oxford or Cambridge have previously been low. Ethnicity will not be a factor when determining which students to accept.
The Sutton Trust have commended the plans which will mean a broader intake of undergraduates leading to more ‘working class’ and ethnic minority students being accepted. However, it is only considered “a step in the right direction”, and in the interests of fairness, the trust would like to see university places completely determined after the A Level results have been published. A major criticism of the current system is not that elite universities don’t accept enough disadvantaged students, but that those students are not encouraged to apply to a top university in the first place.
The director of admissions at Cambridge, Sam Lucy, said that they receive over 14,000 applications in the UK for only 3,500 places, and the university is aware that many students don’t show their full potential initially or at an interview. This new initiative should mean that the university doesn’t miss out on talented students from disadvantaged areas.