Make no mistake, UCAS is a system in many ways incomparably better than the systems used across the pond. As an international student from Canada, I was surprised that I had to pay a mere £25 to apply to four universities in the United Kingdom. Back home: a grand total of £300 for four. And in the US? I was expected to pay £250 for six. Luckily, I didn’t end up applying to that many universities, so the bill was much lower, but it does give you an idea of how utterly absurd applying to university can be compared with your brethren in North America.

However, in other ways UCAS falls short. Indeed, unlike the Canadian and American systems, the application process is really only worth about £25 – no more difficult than filling out a particularly long NHS form. The personal statement, a rote list of academic accomplishments peppered with intriguing reasons why your subject is simply the best, is one of the driest pieces of writing anyone is likely to read (I really feel for my Admissions Tutor).

This differs with the situation back home, where I needed to (in about this order) list at least five different extracurricular activities in which I participated, provide an essay about something that changed me (often one insipid essay title chosen from a list of five even more insipid ones), answer a few additional questions about someone I would like to meet or something I would like to do in the future, and then, finally, give a transcript. In short, the universities insisted on evaluating me as a well-rounded individual – not, as one classmate put it, a brain in a lecture hall.

Herein lies one of the most fundamental problems with the Oxbridge selection system – it remains very wary of trying to examine you as an individual, an individual right for the university. For example, while the admissions tutors do use the interview process to figure out if a student has the kind of mind that they are looking for, what about the other qualities that would make a student flourish here? Just as important as a solid mind is time management, engagement, well-roundedness and an interest in more than just one’s subject. We are – surprise, surprise – more than brains in supervisions, and the university application system should recognise this. Instead, there are students whom I have met who simply do not have the life skills to cope with university, in a place that does not seem to care at all. To remedy this, Cambridge should at least consider highly the other qualities the applicants possess, adjudicated in the form of a personal essay or at least in a list and description of extra-curricular activities.

The important corollary of this is not that it will weed out those who have made best use of their Sixth Form to study in the day, party at night, sleep in between and contribute very little to their communities, but it will also allow Oxbridge and other rigorous universities in the United Kingdom to better assess their applicants and assess them on ‘their’ level. For example, public schools in the UK have an inbuilt advantage in the ability to offer small class sizes and in-house interview preparation. In a university application system where grades and an academic interview are everything, all that Oxbridge can do is judge Eton students, for example, against the attainment of other Eton students and pick the best. But what if Oxbridge could learn about the life histories of their applicants? Suddenly, the old Harrovian looks much less attractive than the inner city kid who plays in the band, cares for an ailing mother at home and happens to get A*AA. Similarly, the kid that got into Eton with a scholarship looks much more impressive than the child from an affluent neighbourhood who goes to a well-off state school.

In short, it is not enough to judge applicants simply by the UMS scores beside their name, nor by an interview that lasts for (at most) half an hour. Oxbridge is not admitting a university of robots, and the application system should recognise this. The results of a different approach are borne out by Harvard, where ethnicities are represented roughly in proportion to their percentage in the wider American population, in recognition of the diverse and radically different circumstances in which applicants find themselves. Tellingly, BME students make up only a third of the percentage they ought to in proportion to national percentages. Importantly, Harvard and other Ivy League universities find it essential to assist students who need extra help in the first few months, so that people from all walks of life can access their potential in their hallowed halls.

Most importantly, however, the North American system, while still demanding exceptional grades at rigorous institutions (as someone with friends at Ivy League institutions, I can tell you they work just as hard, if not harder, than us), also expects achievement in other areas of life, recognising the diverse talents that students have developed. As Cambridge is somewhere that is supposed to be our home for three years, it would be nice if it could do the same.