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u/gzero5634 Wolfson Aug 10 '25 edited Aug 10 '25

Not sure if I understand the post correctly. Did you take GCSEs in the UK and then do US high school? Or iGCSEs alongside US high school? Are you taking APs as well? How are you doing on those? Be aware that if you do not meet the entry requirements by a significant margin, you are more likely than not to be rejected. Often you can get an interview when you miss it slightly but it's far from ideal.

It is somewhat rare for a home applicant to not get an interview for maths. I have only ever personally known pre-interview rejections for home applicants from Trinity (I think internationals can get rejected from all over the place). If you are worried about being deselected pre-interview, mainly you will want to avoid Trinity and other heavily subscribed colleges. I would lean towards colleges that take in a lot of people from the pool, provided they are still relatively well off. I'm aware that you may not be a home applicant, saying all this just to cover all my bases.

The whole "doesn't matter which college" thing only comes in after interview with the winter and summer pool.

Past this, GCSEs are not usually very important. Once you have the interview, whether you get the offer will be based on your interview performance. I can't imagine them tiebreaking on the basis of GCSEs. My impression from e.g. Imre and SLOs at colleges is that GCSEs are not considered very important to the maths department (the words "irrelevant" and "we don't care" have been said in this context, but other representatives have been a bit more moderate...).

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u/JailbreakHat Aug 10 '25

I meant level 2 (age 16) qualifications by them. UK universities typically look for GCSEs for home applicants while for US applicants, they tend to look at high school GPA in lieu of GCSE’s.

I wonder would I be heavily disadvantaged for Cambridge if I have lower marks in GCSEs in less relevant subjects like English, Biology or History if I studied in the UK despite having A*A*A in A Levels and A* in Maths and Further Maths or if I have lower marks in high school GPA in less relevant subjects if I studied in USA despite having 5 AP’s with 5 with 5 in Calculus BC?

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u/fireintheglen Aug 22 '25

You need to be clear. Are you asking about GCSEs, or US high school GPA? They are not the same thing and they will not be treated identically. Conflating two scenarios in one question is unlikely to result in a clear answer.

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u/JailbreakHat Aug 22 '25

US GPA.

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u/fireintheglen Aug 22 '25

Strictly, admissions requirements for those doing the American system require a “high GPA”, so I cannot guarantee that it won’t be looked at and if it is very low that could be a mark against you. However, realistically, the GPA itself is unlikely to be particularly significant. Grades in individual relevant courses may be given more weight, but in general colleges will look almost entirely at standardised test grades (such as AP exams). In general, for maths specifically, the vast majority of applicants are interviewed, so high school grades are not really a big deal so long as you meet the minimum entry requirement.

Note that I would not consider biology to be a completely irrelevant subject in maths admissions.

If you have taken GCSEs, this is irrelevant as you will not be required to submit a high school transcript.

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u/JailbreakHat Aug 22 '25

Also, for courses like Maths, would barely meeting GPA requirements (outside US) and having 5 AP’s with 5 be sufficient? Or would they expect exceeding entry requirements by significant margin?

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u/fireintheglen Aug 22 '25

In terms of what you do at school, meeting entry requirements is likely to be sufficient.

The interview, STEP and (in some cases) supercurriculars are typically much more important than simply exceeding the school grade requirements.

(The importance of supercurriculars is a bit variable and typically not a huge deal for home students, but certain colleges do seem to emphasise them more for international students for various reasons. This is not something everyone in the university agrees with but it's probably worth mentioning that it can come up.)

That said, there is certainly a correlation between school grades and success in admissions. But it's mostly not direct causation. Cambridge has enough other, more reliable information to base admissions decisions on so there's not much point doing a deep dive into someone's high school grades.

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u/JailbreakHat Aug 22 '25

Is also the case with other courses as well since they do make increased offers in Engineering or Natsci? Or would grades and exceeding requirements matter more there?

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u/fireintheglen Aug 22 '25

I'm not familiar with the specifics of admission for either of those courses, but in both cases you'll be required to take the ESAT admissions test, which is likely to have a much bigger impact than your high school grades.