So yeah, Cambridge.

Everybody knows now, which makes it hard to motivate myself to write this entry. Still, it's important and worth me recording publicly.

My original application was to Wolfson College (one of the two "mature student only" colleges to take undergraduates) under the advisement of the Chair of Japanese Studies. He felt that I might be happier there than at a more teen-dominated college, given my advanced years(!)

And finally the letter came, one Friday in January. "Sorry, but we don't want to offer you a place this year."

Dammit!

But what's this...? "We have submitted your application to the Winter Pool..." Should another college decide they like your ugly face, they may fish you out of the pool and offer you a place instead.

Well, a quick look at the statistics gave me little cause for hope: I was among the lucky one-in-five to be pooled, but of those only one-in-five get offered a place elsewhere. It's a mechanism usually employed as a safety-net not for students, but for faculties, providing them with an opportunity to make up any shortfalls in numbers if their selection process has left them with too many empty seats. Good if you're looking at a high-volume course like Medicine or Natural Science, less hopeful for a "we'll take who we damned-well want" minor language course like Japanese - any given year for which might have as few as three students.
My heart sank; I swallowed hard and got on with deciding where my life would go next. Time to get used to nothing much happening, I guess.

Two weeks later...

Another letter from Cambridge? But surely it's too late now. "On the basis of your academic record, we would like to offer you a place at St. Edmund's College" on the condition that you can prove you can damned-well afford it.

Good lord.

But I'd started making plans!

Oh my.

I'm going to Cambridge. The other college for mature undergraduates decided to take pity! I can't express what a profound surprise that was. Given that the Japanese course was much more geared towards research than undergrads, I really didn't think I had much hope.

How to explain this bizarre coincidence? Perhaps the course-representative of the interview panel liked me while the college-rep didn't, so he decided to recommend me elsewhere. Perhaps I just got lucky. All I know is that my life, for the foreseeable future, will be significantly different than it might otherwise have been.

It's been a hairy, skin-of-the-teeth affair right from the start (and arranging for funding is going to be just as troublesome), but it looks like I'm in. I'd better get cracking with those studies, and the pre-course reading list...


Oh look, they have a good boat club, too :-)


I really should stop posting these things when I'm at work...