The College 2011
College Reports Admissions In October 2010 we admitted a total of 146 undergraduate students, of whom 131 were of Home/EU fee status. The total included four exchange students: one (Theology) on the Junior Year Abroad scheme and three (one Law, one MML and one Linguistics) on the ERASMUS scheme. We maintained our normal balance with 48% women, and 52% studying Arts subjects. In this cohort, 63% of our Home applicants, 65% of our offers and 62% of our intake were from maintained schools. We again made full use of the Intercollegiate pool system and made 69 offers through the Winter Pool and five through the Summer Pool after A-level results were published. This year was the first in which an A* grade was awarded at A-level, and our standard offer was A*AA. The higher target was not a problem for the majority of our offer holders, and did not result in a significantly higher proportion of missed offers among students offering the A-level qualification. We therefore held our standard offer at A*AA for the 2010 admissions round. Innovations in the process for the coming year include, in addition to the new fee regulations and OFFA admissions targets, a move to online applications for overseas and non-standard applicants, marking the end of paper applications for all but a tiny minority of applicants. The move from paper to electronic processing continues in later stages of the process, and Girton’s Head of Tutorial and Admissions, Angela Stratford, has played an important role in the specification and testing of the interview-handling module for the University-wide student database, which will benefit all Colleges in years to come. Our normal outreach activities continued this year, with visits to Girton of groups of Y10 and Y12 students from our link areas of Camden and the West Midlands, and visits to schools in these areas from the Schools Liaison Assistant and Admissions Tutor. There was a very successful visit of 24 Y12 students under the CUSU Shadowing Scheme, capably organised by Tom O’Pray, the JCR Access and Academic Officer, and we also ran our third Medicine Day for sixth-formers from our link area and local schools. We also hosted a small group of teachers as part of the University Teachers’ Conference, and it was useful to hear the teachers’ perspective on education issues and to strengthen links with their schools. Open Days were held in May, June, July and September, and are an effective means of encouraging applications to Girton. In addition to our normal acitivities, we took part in the pilot of a new initiative, called HE+, which aims to raise the number and quality of applications to Cambridge and other Russell Group universities. We worked with the Cambridge Admissions Office and a consortium of schools in our link area of Dudley, led by King Edward VI College, Stourbridge. The programme involved extension classes run by teachers in schools to explore core subjects outside the school curriculum; sessions led by the Schools Liaison Assistant and the Admissions Tutor on the application process, and visits to Cambridge for masterclasses led by Fellows, giving a taste of university-level teaching. Over 100 students visited Cambridge in Lent Term via this scheme. We are pleased that funding has been secured to repeat this programme in the coming year. 51