Yale-NUS releases tuition, financial aid policies

By Andrew Giambrone, Tapley Stephenson

Staff Reporters

Friday, February 17, 2012

While Yale-NUS College has modeled much of its curriculum and student life on Yale College, the tuition and financial aid policies for the overseas liberal arts college, released Wednesday, more closely resemble those of a Singaporean institution.

Though all undergraduates at Yale are charged the same baseline tuition, Yale-NUS has determined students’ tuition costs based on their citizenship, in accordance with Singaporean law. Yale-NUS is also offering merit-based scholarships — a type of financial aid not available at any Ivy League school. The tuition and scholarship policies, which will be reviewed again after the college’s first year, are designed to attract top students in Singapore and internationally, administrators said.

According to the Yale-NUS website, students will fall into one of three tuition categories. Singaporean citizens have the cheapest tuition costs, at S$7,500 per semester, which is roughly equivalent to $6,000 U.S. dollars. Permanent residents — noncitizens who reside in the country — will be charged S$10,500, while international students will be charged S$15,000.

But unlike tuition, financial aid and scholarship eligibility will not vary based on a student’s citizenship, Yale-NUS Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan said Thursday.

“We’re going to be doing an individual analysis of every student,” Quinlan said. “Even though we don’t know how many students will receive scholarships or be on need-based financial aid next year, we’re committed to trying to make this an affordable education for as many students and families as possible.”

According to the newly released Yale-NUS policies, students admitted to the college’s inaugural class will automatically receive one of three merit-based scholarships.

Students deemed the strongest applicants by the Yale-NUS Admissions Office will be awarded the “Founder Scholarship,” which covers the full cost of attendance. The next tier of applicants will earn the “Merit Scholarship,” which pays for a “significant portion” of tuition and pays for half of one year’s room and board. Those who do not qualify for a founder or merit award will receive a “Community Scholarship,” which also covers half of one year’s room and board, but does not pay for any tuition expenses.

University President Richard Levin said administrators decided Yale-NUS would give merit-based scholarships to keep the school competitive in a country where all colleges and universities offer merit-based awards.

“We’ll have merit-based scholarships as a base layer of financial aid, with need-based aid on top of it for those who need financial help,” Levin said. “It’s necessary to attract the best students, that some component of their package is merit-based.”

Quinlan noted that all the scholarships allocate money to housing costs, which is important since all Yale-NUS students are currently required to live on campus — an uncommon stipulation, as many students at Singaporean schools live at home to save money.

Ronald Ehrenberg, director of Cornell’s Higher Education Research Institute, said merit scholarships allow institutions to attract top-notch talent, though these awards detract from the amount of need-based financial aid an institution can provide.

But Levin said he does not expect the merit-based aid at Yale-NUS to take away from need-based aid. He said the school’s financial aid policy will be competitive with those of many elite U.S. universities, though not on par with the aid offered by Harvard, Princeton and Yale, whose need-based financial aid packages meet students’ full demonstrated need with only grants, not loans.
Ehrenberg also said it makes sense for Yale-NUS to differentiate tuition based on citizenship, comparing the Singaporean policy to those of U.S. state schools, which charge out-of-state students higher fees.

Quinlan said the Singaporean government determines the levels of tuition by first setting the price for Singaporean students and then using a “price multiplier” to increase costs proportionately for permanent residents and international students. Despite the variations in price, Quinlan said Yale-NUS is relatively inexpensive for all students. Still, international students who receive additional financial aid in the form of tuition grants are required to work for a Singapore-based company for three years upon graduation.

“This is much less expensive than Yale or a liberal arts college in the United States,” he said, adding that the Singaporean government heavily subsidizes higher education for its citizens.
Tuition fees for Singaporean citizens are currently set to increase to S$9,000 for the college’s third class of students, Quinlan said, to help cover additional construction and maintenance costs on the new campus.

Yale-NUS will open in fall 2013.

Top 20 Countries Where Non-UK UCL Students Come From

When college applicants plagiarize, Turnitin can spot them

UCLA's Anderson School of Management and Stanford University are among more than 100 colleges using Turnitin's database to detect plagiarism in application essays.

By Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times

January 29, 2012, 5:34 p.m.

The student's admissions essay for Boston University's MBA program was about persevering in the business world. "I have worked for organizations in which the culture has been open and nurturing, and for others that have been elitist. In the latter case, arrogance becomes pervasive, straining external partnerships."

Another applicant's essay for UCLA's Anderson School of Management was about his father. He "worked for organizations in which the culture has been open and nurturing, and for others that have been elitist. In the latter case, arrogance becomes pervasive, straining external partnerships."

Sound familiar? The Boston University student's essay was written in 2003 and had been posted at businessweek.com. The UCLA applicant was rejected — for plagiarism.

The detection of such wholesale cheating in college applications is on the rise due to the use of Turnitin for Admissions, an anti-plagiarism database service that compares student essays to an immense archive of other writings. Around the country, more than 100 colleges and universities have adopted it, mainly in graduate divisions, although Stanford University is among the dozen schools starting to use it for freshman applicants this year.

That growth highlights the search for authenticity in college admissions at a time when the Internet offers huge amounts of tempting free material, increasing numbers of private coaches sell admissions advice, and online companies peddle pre-written essays. In addition, the larger numbers of applications from overseas have raised concerns about cheating that may be difficult for U.S. schools to discover unaided.

"The more we can nip unethical behavior in the bud, the better," said Andrew Ainslie, a senior associate dean at UCLA Anderson. "It seems to us nobody ought to be able to buy their way into a business school."

In the school's first review of essays from potential MBA candidates this year, Turnitin found significant plagiarism — beyond borrowing a phrase here and there — in a dozen of the 870 applications, Ainslie said. All 12 were rejected.

Turnitin — as in, "turn it in" — began in the 1990s and became a popular tool at high schools and colleges to help detect copying in academic term papers and research by scanning for similarities in phrases from among billions of Web pages, books and periodicals.

Two years ago, the Oakland-based firm developed a service for admissions decisions, allowing large numbers of essays to be reviewed quickly and creating a database of students' essays. The service shows sections of essays next to the possible source and calculates a percentage of possibly copied material. It is left up to schools to determine whether the plagiarism was minor, accidental or serious enough to reject the applicant.

"If you are a very selective institution, or a very prestigious institution, and you have a huge number of people vying for just a couple of slots, admissions people want to make sure they have all the information to make the fair decision," said Jeff Lorton, Turnitin for Admissions' product and business development manager.

Internal testing of the database, using past essays, showed plagiarism ranging from about 3% to 20% of applicants, Lorton said.

Colleges want "to be proactive in discouraging dishonesty," said Richard Shaw, Stanford's dean of undergraduate admission and financial aid.

So Stanford will test Turnitin on the 7% or so of its 36,000 applicants who make it past other hurdles to be offered admissions, Shaw said. If plagiarism is detected, students will be allowed to respond but probably will face revocation.

Other schools are skeptical about using Turnitin on prospective freshmen, especially since the company charges large campuses several thousands of dollars a year. Rather, plagiarists can be discovered when admissions officers notice mismatches between strong application essays and weak grades, interviews and SAT or ACT writing samples, said David Hawkins, public policy and research director of the National Assn. for College Admission Counseling. Schools also fear wasting time on false positives triggered by cliches and platitudes, he said.

And experts say it can be easy to tell when several applicants repeat the same material or, more glaring, when they don't change electronic typefaces from their sources.

Turnitin's freshman screening could rise sharply, however, if the service is adopted by Common Application, the online service used by 456 college admissions offices. Rob Killion, Common Application executive director, said there is "a very real chance" it will add Turnitin in 2013.

Among current Turnitin for Admissions users are some graduate schools at Johns Hopkins, Brandeis, Northeastern and Iowa State. They pay annual fees that start at $1,500 and rise depending on volume, averaging about a dollar per application, Lorton said. About half the schools explicitly tell applicants about the detection while others warn more vaguely.

Before adding the tool, staffers at Penn State's Smeal College of Business two years ago discovered 29 essays about "principled leadership" that contained material lifted from the Web, said Carrie Marcinkevage, the MBA program's managing director. Except for a few borderline cases, those graduate school applications were denied.

Since then, Turnitin has helped find plagiarism rates of between 3% and 5%, Marcinkevage said, adding that the technology is worthwhile since it "covers a lot more ground" than humans can.

Dominican University of California, in San Rafael, recently began using Turnitin in graduate programs. Applicants sometimes "resort to whatever means possible to get an edge. It's unfortunate, but I think it's human nature," graduate admissions director Larry Schwartz said.

A few suspicious reports are being investigated and most suspected plagiarists will be given "the benefit of the doubt" and a chance to submit a second essay for scrutiny, Schwartz said.

At UCLA Anderson, one recent applicant didn't search far for essay material. He stole verbatim from the school's website in citing "exceptional academic preparation, a cooperative and congenial student culture, and access to a thriving business community."

If plagiarists like that are denied admissions, future business leaders may include fewer unethical careerists, said UCLA Anderson's Ainslie. "If they are going to do that," he said, "they are going to do it in every aspect of their lives."

Colleges obsess over rankings, students shrug

 

When U.S. News & World Report debuted its list of "America's Best Colleges" nearly 30 years ago, the magazine hoped its college rankings would be a game-changer for students and families. But arguably, they've had a much bigger effect on colleges themselves.

Yes, students and families still buy the guide and its less famous competitors by the hundreds of thousands, and still care about a college's reputation. But it isn't students who obsess over every incremental shift on the rankings scoreboard, and who regularly embarrass themselves in the process. It's colleges.

It's colleges that have spent billions on financial aid for high-scoring students who don't actually need the money, motivated at least partly by the quest for rankings glory.

STORY: College administrator faked SAT scores

It was a college, Baylor University, that paid students it had already accepted to retake the SAT exam in a transparent ploy to boost the average scores it could report. It's colleges that have awarded bonuses to presidents who lift their school a few slots.

And it's colleges that occasionally get caught in the kind of cheating you might expect in sports or on Wall Street, but which seems especially ignominious coming from professional educators.

The latest example came last week at Claremont McKenna, a highly regarded California liberal arts college where a senior administrator resigned after acknowledging he falsified college entrance exam scores for years to rankings publications such as U.S. News.

The scale was small: submitting scores just 10 or 20 points higher on the 1,600-point SAT math and reading exams. Average test scores account for just 7.5% of the U.S. News rankings formula. Still, the magazine acknowledged the effect could have been to move the college up a slot or two in its rankings of top liberal arts colleges. And so it was hard not to notice Claremont McKenna stood at No. 9 in this year's rankings, which to people who care about such things sounds much sweeter than No. 11.

"For Claremont, there is I would think a psychologically large difference between being ninth and 11th," said Bob Schaeffer of the group FairTest and a rankings critic. "We're a top 10 school,' (or) 'we're 11th or 12th' — that's a big psychological difference. It's a bragging rights difference."

If it was an effort to gain an edge, it backfired badly. Another popular list, Kiplinger's "Best College Values," said Friday it was removing Claremont McKenna from its 2011-12 rankings entirely because of the false reporting. The college had been No. 18 on its list of best-value liberal arts colleges.

Competitiveness may be naturally human, but to many who work with students, such behavior among fellow educators is mystifying. Contrary to widespread perceptions, they say, students typically use the rankings as a source of data and pay little attention to a school's number.

"When I started in this business, I thought, 'The rankings are terrible,'" said Brad MacGowan, a 21-year-veteran college counselor at Newton North High School outside Boston. "But spending all this time with students, I just don't hear that much about them. I'm sure it's colleges that are perpetuating it."

It's hard to know how common cheating like that reported at Claremont McKenna is, given that while U.S. News cross-checks some data with other sources, it relies largely on colleges themselves to provide it. Modest forms of fudging through data selection are undeniably common, especially in law school rankings. The most high-profile case of outright cheating involved Iona University in New York, which acknowledged last fall submitting years of false data that boosted its ranking from around 50th in its category to 30th.

But most rankings critics say by far the most pernicious failure of colleges isn't blatant cheating, but what they do more openly — allowing the rankings formula to drive their goals and policies.

Colleges, they argue, have caved to the rankings pressure in a range of ways. A big one is recruiting as many students as they can to apply, even if they're not likely to be a good fit, just to boost their selectivity numbers. And they've showered shower financial aid on high-achieving, and often wealthy, kids with high SAT scores.

In the mid-1990s, roughly one-third of grant aid, or scholarships colleges of all types awarded with their own money, was given on grounds other than need (typically called "merit aid'). A decade later, they gave away three times as much money — but well over half was based on merit.

Yes, some colleges recruited better students, but there was a price to be paid. Consider a 2008 study by The Institute for College Access and Success that examined the $11.2 billion annually four-year colleges were awarding in grant aid. Of that, $3.35 billion was awarded as merit aid. That would have easily covered the $2.4 billion in unmet need-based aid that the colleges said their low-income students still faced.

Rankings critic Lloyd Thacker, founder of the group Education Conservancy, calls that a shift in financial aid from "charitable acts to competitive weapons." Or, as Schaeffer describes it, "they end up giving the money to rich white kids."

The vast majority of students attend college within three hours of home, so national rankings have little meaning. What matters? Usually more mundane or subjective concerns. One student who went to MacGowan's office last week for a college planning meeting, junior Bridget Gillis, said she'd yet to even see a college ranking guide. Her criteria: "If they have my major, if it's a nice campus, how big it is, if they have the sport I want to play in college (field hockey)."

The latest version of a huge national survey of college freshman conducted annually by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute asked students to list various factors affecting their choice of college. Rankings in national magazines were No. 11 for current college freshmen, with roughly one in six calling them very important, well behind factors such as cost, size and location.

Those findings may be somewhat misleading. The leading factor cited, by almost two-thirds of students, was their college's "academic reputation," which can be hard to disentangle from its ranking. A reputational survey ranking accounts for 25% of a college's score in U.S. News, and fame from a high U.S. News rankings contributes to reputation, even if students say the ranking itself wasn't a factor. Such circularity is one of many things critics dislike about the U.S. News methodology.

But the survey data do suggest students generally heed the magazine's advice not to use the rankings to make fine-grained distinctions between schools.

"As someone who is asked every year to comment on the rankings, it seems to me that who cares most is the media," John Pryor, who directs the UCLA survey, wrote in a blog post last year. "Second would be college presidents and development officers. Way down the list seem to be those who are actually trying to decide where to go to college."

Thacker says the rankings do have negative psychological effects on students, though usually only the top 10 to 15% who are applying to competitive colleges. But it has affected a much broader swath of colleges that have been unable to suppress their competitive urges for the educational common good.

"It has more an impact on colleges, presidents and trustees than it does on students," Thacker said. "The colleges have shifted resources and changed practices and policies that were once governed by educational values to serve prestige and rank and status."

That effect, he says, is dishonorable, even if some colleges at least feel guilty about it. More than 80% of college admissions officers surveyed for a report last fall by the National Association for College Admission Counseling felt the U.S. News rankings offered students misleading conclusions, and roughly the same proportion agreed they caused counter-productive behavior by colleges. Yet more than 70% said their schools promoted their ranking in marketing materials.

The fact that the highly regarded dean apparently involved in the scandal at Claremont McKenna may have been driven to submit inflated test scores is an indicator of the scale of pressure that surrounds the rankings, said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at NACAC, the counseling group. That pressure comes from all corners of the university — trustees, alumni, presidents, even politicians,

"It's clear from the (Claremont McKenna) story that admission offices are under pressure," he said. "The key question is, how do you stop the madness?"

Bob Morse, who oversees the U.S. News rankings as director of data research, says many of the behaviors the rankings have incentivized in colleges are benign. He points to universities like Northeastern and Southern California that have moved up in recent years through concerted efforts to improve their stats in variables that go into the formula — but which also are good for students. Things like more small classes, programs to boost retention, higher faculty-to-student ratios. And why, Morse asks, should colleges be criticized for casting a wider recruiting net?

But even Morse, who says colleges paid the rankings little attention when they debuted in 1983, says he's been shocked by how seriously they now take their standing, and the lengths they go to move up.

"None of those things when we first started we had in mind would even happen or even could happen," he said. "It's evolved in ways that have taken on a life of their own. To us, it's proof people are paying attention."

A place at Oxbridge is a matter of luck

·         By Tabatha Leggett

·         Notebook - A selection of Independent views -, Opinion

·         Tuesday, 24 January 2012 at 1:06 pm

Schoolgirl Elly Nowell sent a rejection letter to Oxford ahead of hearing the result of her interview last week, claiming that it “didn’t quite meet the standard” of other universities. In her letter, Nowell complained that holding interviews in formal settings “allows public school applicants to flourish… and intimidates state school applicants, distorting the academic potential of both.”

Naturally Nowell’s letter elicited a huge media response, with some admiring her tenacity and others complaining that she has merely reinforced the stereotypes that Oxbridge is so desperate to shake off. Either way, the letter has raised some important questions about state-school access and thrown some light on the Oxbridge interview process.

To argue that Oxbridge aren’t doing their bit to increase the intake of state-school applicants is unfair. Given that private schools account for just 13% of A-level exam entries, the fact that just 59.3% of Cambridge students are state educated is fairly surprising. But, Cambridge spends over £3 million a year on widening state-school access, through shadowing schemes, open days and student conferences. They are doing everything they can to widen access.

It’s too easy to claim that the Oxbridge interview system favours public school applicants, but it’s equally easy to claim that there is a pressure to admit more state school applicants to fill a quota. In fact, one Cambridge admissions tutor told me that during the winter pooling process – a system that allows undersubscribed colleges to look at the strong applicants that oversubscribed colleges don’t have room for – that a college with a deficiency of state school pupils might be told to “look closely” at state applicants. “This is a euphemism for ‘ignore the independents’,” he said.

This is an old argument, and in reality, neither view is strictly correct. Getting offered a place at Oxbridge is about more than favouring students with a certain background, whatever that background may be. Largely, it’s about luck.

We’ve all heard the story about the Oxbridge interviewer who threw a ball at his interviewees as they entered the room: dropping the ball meant missing out on a place, catching the ball meant getting a conditional offer, and throwing the ball back guaranteed you a place. Unfortunately, the process isn’t quite as exciting as everyone likes to make out. Getting a place at Oxbridge means knowing your subject inside out, and being lucky on the day of your interview. And let’s not underestimate the caliber of those who get turned down.

Last year 27 percent of A level entries were awarded an A or A* grade. The problem is that the number of students receiving top grades increases every year (and that’s assuming that exams and coursework are an accurate indication of the sort of intelligence that Oxbridge are after).

It’s not a question of writing a good personal statement either. Aside from the fact that expressing anything of interest in 2,000 characters is almost impossible, the nature of online UCAS applications means that anyone can write a personal statement for you; you can even buy personal statements online. Of course references aren’t much help either, since they depend largely on students’ relationships with their teachers. Teachers from schools that aren’t used to Oxbridge applications, for example, won’t understand what Oxbridge look for in a reference, and teachers at sixth form colleges won’t know their students for long enough to write accurately.

The current university admissions system leaves those looking for the brightest pupils with a problem. Last year, Cambridge received 16,000 applications and offered 3,400 students places, whilst Oxford offered just 3,200 of their 17,000 applicants places. These are all straight A students, and the majority of them would probably thrive at Oxbridge. This forces admissions tutors to make life-changing decisions based on a couple of 20-minute interviews and additional exam papers.

But preparing for Oxbridge interviews is a tricky business. Yes, you can make sure you’ve read all the books you mention in your personal statement, and you’ve looked up your interviewers’ interests, but ultimately there’s not much more you can do. If you happen to share a particular passion for a certain topic with your interviewer, who – if you are accepted – will become your Director of Studies, of course you’ll be offered a place over someone with differing interests.

These tutors are looking for students who they want to teach; students who they want to spend their time with. If one interviewee gets on with his interviewer on a personal level, he’s far more likely to get a place than another interviewee who may be equally academically talented but interested in different aspects of the course.

Getting offered a place at Oxbridge means knowing your subject inside out, and being lucky enough to get on with your interviewer. That’s all there is to it. Ultimately every college will admit the students that they think will achieve the best possible grades in their tripos, because exam results are all that really matters, regardless of what sort of school they come from. Claiming that state school applicants are disadvantaged by the interviews system is unfair; in reality, a rejection could be down to something as simple as not sharing interests with your interviewer.

So who is good enough to get into Cambridge?

The pinnacle of academe? King's College, Cambridge. Photograph: Steven Vidler/Eurasia Press/Corbis

It's a life-changing roll call. As the admissions tutor reads out names, the men and women gathered around the table reply crisply to each one: "Yep ... yep ... yep." Each "yep" is actually a no. It's a rejection of a candidate who has applied for a place at the University of Cambridge.

The weakest of the field have already been sifted out; up to a fifth of applications are declined before the interview stage. Now the tutors are gathered to consider the results of those interviews. Five women and seven men are gathered at a table, in a light-filled, rectangular room at Churchill College to discuss admissions to study natural sciences.

The easy ones go first. These are the candidates whose academic track record is – by Cambridge standards – marginal, and whose performance at interview has been disappointing. As one candidate's name is read out, one of the academics notes that he got an interview score of two, out of a possible 10. "Oh dear," says Richard Partington, the senior admissions tutor, who sits at the head of the table. Next to Partington is a steel trolley with the applicants' files.

Then, they get down to business. After the straightforward rejections, and those they have already decided to offer places to, there is a band of candidates who fall in the middle. They might be teenagers who have done well at interview, but whose academic performance seems patchy. There are some with impeccable credentials on paper – but, in a phrase that is repeatedly used, "failed to shine" at interview.

Cambridge has opened up the admissions process to give a clearer picture of the effort that goes into the assessment of each candidate. Competition is intense: around 16,000 candidates are chasing just under 3,400 undergraduate places. Churchill College has 39 places in natural sciences and more than 170 direct applicants. The academics will make about 45 offers, in letters that arrive on candidates' doormats this week. To help preserve the anonymity of the candidates, most of the academics in the room have asked for their names not to be used.

As the wind shakes the bare branches of trees outside, the academics discuss an interviewee from a sixth-form college. One notes: "He was extremely careful with everything he was doing, but not exactly engaging in the discussion. I think mathematics is something he does quite well, but he doesn't shine."

The boy is an unusual case – he has won a scholarship to study in the UK after going to school overseas. His home country is a poor one, not known for its education system. One of the women says: "I would take him and keep a close eye on his progress. He might need a boost in confidence."

"Let's take him," Partington agrees. "Everyone content?"

Next up is a girl from a leading private school, who was strong on paper but stumbled at interview. "She seemed surprised by quite a lot of the things we were talking about – [she would say] 'Oh right' as if she hadn't seen it before," one of the academics, in a wine-coloured sweater, says.

"Had she not revised?" Partington asks.

"We asked them what they'd done recently, and based the questions on that, so it was starting with something familiar, but seeing it in a different context," the academic replies.

Partington suggests: "One possibility is that she's someone who's learned in a compartmentalised way."
Another tutor says: "The comment I've put down is: 'Needed help with next steps.'"

Partington wonders aloud if tutors can lead a student through an entire degree. "We could," one of the men responds dryly.

Both Oxford and Cambridge are regularly accused of bias against state school applicants – most famously, in the case of Laura Spence, the girl from Tyneside who was refused a place at Magdalen College, Oxford, more than a decade ago. The tutors gathered at this table are aware that Cambridge is committed to admitting between 61% and 63% of its UK students from state-sector schools and colleges.

At present, that proportion is 59.3%. The university has also agreed with the Office for Fair Access – an official watchdog set up when the Blair government brought in top-up fees – to increase the share of students from neighbourhoods where few people have gone to university.

Churchill College is a low-rise modernist stack on the edge of the city centre, a series of interlocking brick cubes. It does better on state-school intake than Cambridge as a whole. This is partly because of its reputation for science, which attracts more state school pupils. The split at Churchill is 70/30 in favour of the state sector. That is still out of kilter with the school system as a whole – just 7% of pupils in England attend private schools. But it is a bit closer to the split at sixth form, where private schools account for around 13% of the total number of A-level exam entries.

In its prospectus, the college is described as having a "friendly, unpretentious social atmosphere". It is certainly not as physically daunting as some of the grand and ancient buildings in the city centre. But even here, the surroundings speak of wealth and intimacy with power; the sketches on the walls are by Winston Churchill, the floor is teak and the room is panelled with another glossy tropical hardwood.

The phrase "a good school" comes up repeatedly in the tutors' discussions. It is used most frequently about private and grammar schools, but also some comprehensive schools, and has a double meaning. "A good school" is a high-performing one. It is a school that knows what Cambridge requires, where the school reference is delivered in the terms the university is looking for – the key phrases are ones that emphasise superlative performance compared with their age group: "He [or she] is best in … he is top of …" But when a candidate comes from "a good school" they are also cut less slack. Of one applicant from "a good school", a bemused tutor says: "The thing that didn't sit with me is, his [predicted] A* is in further maths, but he couldn't do his arithmetic."

The Sutton Trust, the charity that aims to promote social mobility through education, blames the unequal outcomes between state and private candidates at university level on the poor exam performance of some schools. That failure at school level becomes painfully apparent in the case of one of the Churchill candidates. She has had "unimaginable teaching difficulties", the tutors hear. She has taken her A-levels at a school that has had a spectacularly high turnover of teachers.

Peering at his laptop when her name is announced, Nick Cutler, an admissions tutor at Churchill, says there are "multiple flags". The flags are used to indicate factors such as poverty, or a school that performs very poorly at GCSE. There are six categories in all – including whether an applicant has spent time in care. There is evidence that a strong candidate from a bad school is likely to perform well when they come to Cambridge. But the academics are concerned that in this case, the school has been so turbulent that she simply lacks essential knowledge. Her examination and interview marks are low.

The rapid pace of Cambridge would "kill her", one of the academics says. Another agrees: "I would really like to give her a place, but for her own sanity, she's much better going to one of the other redbrick, Russell Group universities, and just taking her time."

Partington says: "If we gave her a chance she would do what everybody else would do, and think: 'I'll probably be all right' and she will probably be wrong."



The Bridge of Sighs at St John's College, Cambridge. Photograph: Brian Lawrence/Getty Images

There is a despairing consensus around the table that the university cannot repair the gaps in this candidate's knowledge. A damning line from the school's reference – which lays bare its inability to teach the candidate – is read aloud by a tutor who raises outstretched hands in exasperation.

The candidate's file goes back into the trolley with a clang.

Another candidate from a comprehensive school has four contextual data flags by her name. There is a note too about "teaching difficulties" – a physics teacher who left during the sixth form and a stand-in for chemistry. This is an easier case – her interview scores are high, an eight and a seven out of 10. She has a 92% mark in her chemistry A-level. One of the academics reviews her "flags": "She's got low socio-economic, low-performing GCSE, low Oxbridge – she's nearly got the full set."

Partington says: "Take her."

There is another girl from a comprehensive school who got an eight at interview, but one academic exclaims: "Blooming heck, her GCSE score was terrible."

"The school doesn't know how to write a reference," another comments.

Partington decides to make an offer but to set the hurdle high because of the doubts. "We're going to A* the chemistry," he says firmly.

"I would A* the maths," one of the others suggests. "The other thing I would do is write to her separately, encourage her to do further maths through the Further Maths Network."

The tutors are divided about this – there is a feeling she has already been stretched thin in a "school that's not great". But they decide this will not be an entrance requirement. She just needs a little more fluency in maths to cope at university.

On the table are white china cups of tea and coffee, two barely touched water jugs and a single slightly blackened banana. The academics leaf through coloured spreadsheets with the candidates' names, their exam performance to date, predicted grades, interview scores, contextual flags and ranking – based on exam performance – compared with all of the university's applicants this year.

The pace is swift, despite the meeting lasting five hours. It is occasionally leavened with a touch of humour, or avuncular kindness. One of the academics, looking at a file photo, sighs: "Oh he's young – he looks like one of the Bash Street kids." Another remarks, of a different candidate: "You could conduct a biology study in his hair." Recalling an over-caffeinated and under-dressed teenager, one says: "The T-shirt, oh yes, the T-shirt …"

Although a candidate's ethnicity is generally evident from his or her name and the photograph in their file, there is never any overt discussion of race. This seems surprising when both Oxford  and Cambridge have been accused of being racially as well as socially exclusive.

Geoff Parks, director of admissions at Cambridge, says later: "Race doesn't come up in its own right. It's inseparable from socio-economic factors. Cambridge admits a proportion of BME [ethnic minority] students that is above the proportion of the teenage population, [but] with 'low-participation' neighbourhoods we feel we're not meeting a relatively low target. Many people who are first-generation British might also be living in low-participation neighbourhoods."

At times, the procedure seems brusque; a life-changing decision made in a second. In fact, it is the end point of a long, intensive process of evaluating candidates. Most of those who apply are interviewed. And the interviews are designed to probe their knowledge deeply. For natural sciences, the interview has a practical bent, with candidates tackling problems under the gaze of the tutor. Confidence is appreciated. Of one candidate, a boy from an academy school in Norfolk, a tutor says: "He managed to strike a balance between not being fazed by what's going on, and not being cocky either. The sort of person …"

Someone else finishes: "You'd like to teach."

Great emphasis is placed on exam performance, and the academics are keen to drill down into performance in individual modules. One notes approvingly of a candidate who has "done some hard units". There is far less interest than is popularly thought in extra-curricular activity. An academic remarks with bafflement that a candidate has "got his violin grades on there".

It is not just poor teaching – or a lack of teaching – that can wreck a candidate's chances. Their combination of subjects is also crucial. There is consternation about a candidate who is applying to read natural sciences without having either maths or biology; he is taking physics and chemistry but his third A-level is an arts subject. The lack of maths rules him out for the study of physics. The absence of biology means he will struggle to be accepted as a biologist.

The school is a "really ropey" one. One of the academics, a man in a grey fleece, comments: "I feel sorry for him, but I don't think we can fix the problem."

Academics considering applicants from the winter pool in Clough Hall, Newnham College. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

The consensus is that they will "stick him in the pool". The "winter pool" is a third option – neither a straightforward offer nor an outright rejection. It means the application is forwarded for consideration by other colleges. Strong candidates who are at risk of being squeezed out because they have applied to an over-subscribed college also get a second chance this way.

The pool takes place in early January, around three weeks after the college decision meetings. Admissions tutors from all the Cambridge colleges gather in two rooms at Newnham College, and examine the pooled candidates' folders again.

The main room in which the pool takes place is Clough Hall, an elegant banqueting room with a minstrels' gallery and a ceiling decorated with plaster mouldings of flowers and heraldic beasts. There is very little conversation. Tutors go through bundles of files making lists of candidates they would like to pull out for their college. Anglepoise lamps spill yellow light on to the desks. Outside, it is overcast.

Andy Bell, admissions tutor at Gonville and Caius College, has spotted three potential candidates for places in an arts subject at his college. One of the files that has caught his eye is a boy whose educational background is not that of a "straightforward, standard Cambridge applicant".

He is applying from a "perfectly decent" sixth-form college, but before that he had attended a poor comprehensive school. Bell notes: "His GCSE performance is really quite strong, getting a lot of A*s at GCSE.

This is someone who's been working far above the level of his cohort from an early age." Outside school, he has displayed an interest in the subject he is applying for – it is such a small course that naming it risks identifying him – through work experience at a university in London, and extensive reading. "This is somebody who's worked really hard for a number of years, who's really serious about making something of his academic ability," Bell says.

Seated at a table by one of the tall, arched windows, James Keeler, the admissions tutor at Selwyn College, has perhaps the most dreaded job – reviewing candidates for medicine, a course so competitive that excellent applicants are routinely turned down.

Keeler opens the folder of a candidate who is applying after taking his A-levels. The school reference describes him as a "strong applicant" and underlines the adjective. This is borne out by his results – he has four A*s.

For medicine, the tutors look for both a strong aptitude for science and the beginnings of a bedside manner. This candidate has divided his interviewers. While the clinicians thought highly of him, there is a question mark over his scientific ability. Keeler seems inclined to attach greater weight to his exam performance than the interview. "The interview is just part of the picture – his four A*s is the summation of many years of work," he says.

He carries on leafing through the folder, looking for evidence of what the candidate is doing now. "Looking at the personal statement for medicine, it's important that they have a range of activities and, particularly, that they have done a serious level of volunteering – handing out teas in a hospice, working with disabled children. Something where they have to take on a caring role and think about why doctors can't cure everybody.

"He's been on a gap year," Keeler notes.

"If he's been sitting on a beach for a year, I'll put him in the bin ..."

He turns a page of the folder and reads the candidate's statement: "He's been volunteering with St John Ambulance. And also training to be a special constable – that's something I've never seen before. He's clearly doing something worthwhile. He's currently volunteering at a care home." The admissions tutor smiles. "That's a tick for me."