Rose Lander:

I opened my letter, “We regret to inform you...”. I had received an awkwardly similar rejection letter from Oxford the previous year so I pretty much knew the score. Or so I thought. This letter was slightly different. It delivered the news of an oasis within a tundra of quick diminishing horizons. A mirage? No, the Winter Pool. The Other Place’s pool is less beachy. After interviews you’re held hostage without word of when you can leave. You’re instructed to patiently sit in the JCR staring at a noticeboard waiting until a scrap of paper with your name on it may or may not appear.

Depending on this, you are then either free to return home or you must pick up your things and speed walk to a college on the other side of town to report for interview. Compared to this, Cambridge’s Winter Pool was more like the jacuzzi of a luxury Alpine spa.

Luckily I was pulled from the water by a slightly nerdy but still strangely attractive lifeguard who gently cradled me whilst whispering, “you’re going to be alright.”

Trinity had picked me. Some people would say that I was lucky to be fished out by the Tompkins-Table-Topper and University-Challenge-Winner. I agree, but not because I think Trinity is the best. It’s far from perfect.

Like a racist grandparent, I didn’t choose it but I love it unconditionally. How can a prospectus guarantee you the right college experience anyway? The only reason I preferred Emmanuel in the first place was because it had a pool – kind of ironic, now I think about it. It’s more mysterious to think that your college selected you, rather than the other way around – as if the fates have intervened.

It’s not always rosy. When I told my supervisor that I was helping out during interview week, she innocently asked whether I had a sadistic wish to watch the interviewees suffer as Trinity had made me suffer.

When I reminded her that I did my interview elsewhere and was pooled her reaction was “Ah, of course,” giving me a knowing and sympathetic look that said: “Is that why you were so underconfident and insecure last year?” Great.

On reflection, that still-wet-from-the-pool insecurity can be a desirable quality. Cambridge students have often never failed before and because of this they are too sure of their abilities – hardly an endearing quality. You can’t always get your own way. You’ve got an offer from Cambridge: who cares if you have to go to Girton? Girton is lovely! Getting cast aside by your original choice prepares you for the inevitable failures that will come in the future.

In fact, post-university life is quite a lot like a pool. You will get rejected from internships and grad schemes but you will (hopefully) be fished out eventually.

Emerging stronger, sort of like Ariel on her rock with the waves of opportunity crashing behind you and the winds of triumph billowing in your glorious red hair.

Melissa Smith:

It was around this time last year that, sat in a sleepy cafe on a dusky winter’s morning, I found myself in the pool. It was a strange moment: having spent all the Christmas holidays anxiously awaiting news of my UCAS fate, the email felt anticlimactic, to say the least.

The following day or two went by with the speed of a narcoleptic sloth, until finally the rod of destiny (alias the Murray Edwards admissions tutor) descended upon me and fished me from my ever deepening purgatorial depths.

As a concept, I have nothing against the pool. It allows everyone who is of standard to study in these hallowed halls. Besides, without it, we Hill colleges would have a depopulation crisis more serious than Japan’s.

But it is saddening that I can only name two people who applied to my college directly. On the one hand, it can be comforting to know that we’re all in the same boat: a bond is no doubt formed through the mutual circumstance of our wet arrival. However, is a solidarity formed through the fact that none of us wanted to be here really something to be cherished?

It can be assumed that this lack of interest stems not from our location (which isn’t really very far away, contrary to popular belief), but from our somewhat girl-heavy nature.

In all honesty, this is my only issue with the pooling experience. If single-sex colleges didn’t exist, all us fish would be equal. Ending up somewhere a little far out becomes manageable after a while, at least you’re with your friends, right? College is where most people form their closest friendships – understandably, we’re around each other a lot.

You’ll get the same experience wherever you end up, they say. Yet while this may be the case for someone pooled to Fitz or Girton, for some of us it doesn’t ring true.

By being placed in a single-sex environment it feels like we are essentially denied the full ‘university experience’ that mixed colleges enjoy. The fact is, it’s not the same experience at all. Whilst I have many great male friends around the university, it’s a single mixed friendship group that we often miss out on.

So while it’s all very well saying the fates act on our behalf, until the sexes of our potential fishers are equal, the pool will continue to be a little bit unfair.