Dear Dick

I have noticed that the Linguistics Olympiad is being mentioned more and more in the applications we get to Cambridge, and also the All Ireland feeder. We - as in the Admissions and Senior Tutors and also the Tutorial interviewers of the Colleges I direct studies for (Churchill, Corpus Christi, Downing, Magdalene, St John's, St Edmund's and Lucy Cavendish) and I, and also, more generally, those in our Dept who are very directly concerned with Admissions - certainly view this in a very positive light. Tutorial interviewers, who are never linguists, like to ask questions about applicants' experience of the Olympiad, and specifically refer to it in their summary of good points following these interviews. My own experience is that students who have done the Olympiad are extremely good at the data analysis we require at interview, and that they have at their disposal analytic strategies and/or memory of puzzles they have previously encountered that help them to pick productive routes towards addressing the interview data sets. As someone who teaches undergraduates from first year, I also know that those who have Olympiad experience tend to flourish on our more formally oriented papers in particular. 

Regarding visibility enhancement: I think there's no question that the Olympiad does this. I do quite a bit of outreach work, and head teachers and language teachers alike have quite often noted - either independently because they already knew about it, or as a follow-up to my mentioning its existence - that having an Olympiad alongside "more traditional" Olympiad subjects is significant as far as they're concerned; and, in some cases, I know individual students, who stumbled across the Olympiad, have brought its existence to the attention of teachers. Also, we (as in Cambridge) are hoping to host the 2016 Olympiad, and it's starting to look as if there might be more than one college that's keen to do the hosting - precisely because it will raise the college's profile in relation to this subject. (Personally, I am hopefully that one of "my" colleges will prove successful in this enterprise!)

I hope that's of some use! 

Thanks very much for all the hugely varied and tireless work that you do for Linguistics and language teaching in the school context. I hope you also feel that your numerous initiatives are proving successful.

All the very best for Christmas and also the New Year,

Theresa