How to apply

The process for applying to Cambridge is as follows:

1. Choose your course
2. Check the entry requirements for your course
3. Choose your College or make an open application
4. Check if you need to sit a pre-registration required admissions assessment. If you do, register for it, prepare for it, and take the assessment
5. Complete and submit your UCAS application (usually by the 15th of October)
6. Complete and submit the My Cambridge Application (usually by the 22nd of October)
7. Check with your College if you need to submit any written work or a portfolio. If you do, submit it
8. Wait to hear from your College if you've been selected for interview
9. If you have been selected for interview, check if you need to sit a College admissions assessment. If you do, prepare for it and take the assessment
10. If you have been selected for interview, check the arrangements with your College, prepare for your interview, and attend your interview in December
11. Wait to hear your application decision in January

We have explained some of the steps in more detail below, and you can follow the links to the University or UCAS website to find out more.

All undergraduate applicants to Cambridge are required to complete the My Cambridge Application. This is an extra form that gives us more information about you that we don't get from your UCAS application form.

Once you submit your UCAS application, you'll get an email from the University within 48 hours with instructions and a link to your My Cambridge Application. For most applicants, the deadline to complete the My Cambridge Application will be 6:00 pm UK time on 22 October. This means that the earlier you submit your UCAS application, the more time you will have to complete the My Cambridge Application.

The My Cambridge Application will be personalised to you, so you will only be asked questions relevant to your application. While the form itself is compulsory, it does include an optional element: an optional additional personal statement. Unlike your UCAS personal statement, the optional personal statement is sent only to Cambridge. It is also much shorter than your UCAS personal statement (a maximum of 1,200 characters). While you don't have to fill it in, it can be useful if you would like to:

• explain why you want to study a particular Cambridge course, especially if you are applying to different courses at your other choices
• include extra details about the ways you're exploring your subject interests that you weren't able to fit into your UCAS personal statement

For more information about the My Cambridge Application, take a look at the University website.

Transcripts

If you have taken exams outside the UK, have already studied at University, or took your GCSE exams more than three years ago, you may need to provide a transcript as part of the My Cambridge Application. A transcript is a list of the examinations you have taken, the month and year of each exam, and the grades or scores that you achieved. You can read more about this on the University website.

Please do not worry if you will receive some or all of your results after the application deadline. We will work with predicted grades (given in the reference on your UCAS application) for exams that you have not yet taken. In these cases, we normally make conditional offers in January and you must then achieve the grades in your subsequent exams.

If you are invited to interview and receive your exam results in November or December, we may be able to take your results into account during the selection process. Please email us with your certificate or results statement as an attachment, or a scan of a signed letter from a teacher at your school (this should be on school letter-headed paper). We are also happy to accept a clear screenshot as a temporary measure if you only have access to your results online; however, please provide your certificate or results statement or a letter from your teacher as soon you can afterwards.

For some courses at Cambridge, you will be required to sit an admissions assessment as part of the admissions process. There are two types of admissions assessment:

• Pre-registration required admissions assessments
  These assessments require you to register yourself. They are usually sat on or before the UCAS deadline at a testing centre near where you live. Everyone who is applying for specific courses at Cambridge must sit the required assessment. You can read more about them here.
• College admissions assessments
  These assessments are arranged by the College you apply to or are allocated to. They are usually sat online in the few weeks before your interview. Only applicants who are invited to interview will be invited to sit these assessments. You do not need to do anything to register yourself for these; your College will send you all of the information. You can read more about them here.

It is important that you are aware of any admissions assessments you might need to sit, especially if you need to register yourself. Requirements differ by College and course, so check on the University website for full details.

You might feel that you don't have access to good or accurate advice about applying to Cambridge. Maybe you're the first in your family to apply to university, or you attend a school or college which doesn't provide much information or support for Cambridge applications. Please don't be put off - it is your academic potential that is important, not how much you already know about Cambridge.

If people around you don't know much about university applications or Cambridge specifically, don't worry - we can provide the information you need directly. If you're doing well at school and you want an exciting and challenging university education, then you are exactly the kind of student who should find out more about the opportunities that are available to you! If you would like to speak to a member of our outreach team please contact us here.

The College is keen to support students with a disability, neurodiverse condition, mental health condition or chronic health condition. The University has a centrally situated Accessibility & Disability Resource Centre, a Counselling Service, and ever-increasing resources to enable students with difficulties of all kinds to live and study at Cambridge. If you have any doubts or questions, please contact us here.

Like all of the other Cambridge Colleges, here at King's we welcome applications from students in care or who have previously been in care. We know that researching higher education and thinking about what you want for your future can feel overwhelming, and we also know that for all sorts of reasons, students with excellent academic potential don't always feel confident to make the applications that they should when they have spent time in care.

For general information about the opportunities and support for care-leavers in higher education, the Propel website is a good place to start, and explains a lot of the really important points for care leavers. If you are interested in studying at Cambridge specifically, there are a range of resources on the University website which give you more information about available support for care leavers, Open Days, and application help.

If you are a care-experienced student thinking of applying to King’s, feel free to get in touch with us. We'll do our best to make sure that you have all the information you need, whether it’s about the courses we offer, the application process, or the support we offer our applicants and students. We offer specific support to care-experienced students and care leavers; for example, it is possible to stay in College accommodation year-round, and some bursaries are available. 

King's is a "standard age" College, so most undergraduates are 18 when they start their course, but we also welcome applications from students who will be 21 or over at the start of their undergraduate degree (mature students). The diversity of King's students makes for a very welcoming and supportive environment for mature students, but only you can decide whether you would prefer to apply to a standard age College such as King's or one of the three mature Colleges (Hughes Hall, St Edmund's, or Wolfson).

For some mature students, there are some practical details which may affect your choice of College. Generally, as the mature Colleges only consider mature applications and can operate with a little more flexibility in some areas which may be difficult for applicants who are not at school.

You can read more about applying as a mature student on the University website.

How we assess mature students

At King's, we are looking for academic potential and motivation in all cases. We assess each application individually, so mature applicants should not be concerned that their profile will be different from that of our standard age applicants. Entry is very competitive, but if you are a high-achieving and motivated applicant, you are welcome to apply. We set written assessments and interview the majority of our applicants which helps us to assess potential and compare applicants fairly, even against very different educational backgrounds.

Educational background

We will need evidence of your current performance and assurance that if you have taken a break from education, you will be able to deal with a heavy and challenging academic workload. If you can, a good option is to pursue the same qualifications taken by school leavers (A Levels, IB, etc.) and achieve the standard entrance requirements.

If taking these qualifications is not possible or appropriate in your case, we may occasionally consider alternative qualifications, such as foundation courses. However, this option is only suitable for a very limited number of subjects. Please contact us if you would like further guidance on this.

We will need you to provide full details of the courses you have taken and the grades achieved and/or predicted when you apply.

When choosing a course, we advise you to think carefully about the subject requirements for your proposed course and to consider what the Cambridge course will involve and the skills you need to develop. If your course will involve weekly essays, for example, it is important that you choose a pre-Cambridge course that will give you adequate practice and training in essay research and writing. It is also important to ensure that your workload will be sufficient to prepare you for the demands of a Cambridge course.

How to apply

The application process for mature students is much the same as other undergraduates, although we appreciate that for some mature students who are starting a one-year course in September, meeting the October application deadline can be difficult. To mitigate this, the three mature colleges have a second application deadline for some courses. You can read more about this here.

You will also need to provide a referee as part of your UCAS application, which would usually be a teacher or tutor at your school or college who is familiar with your current academic work. If you are not currently studying, your referee may be a current or former employer, but they must be able to comment on your academic application and potential.

Mature students will be expected to undertake all the same admissions assessments as standard-aged students and submit written work (where relevant). 

Mature students from outside of the UK are advised to check current visa regulations, especially if you are thinking of bringing dependents with you to the UK.

Already have a degree?

If you already have an undergraduate degree, you can either apply to take a full undergraduate course or apply to King's as an affiliated student. Affiliated students take the course in a year less than usual, usually taking the last two years of an undergraduate course.

King's does not accept affiliated applicants for Education, Land Economy, Medicine or Veterinary Medicine. There are some courses that do not have an affiliated option.

Successful candidates usually have a good honours degree (normally a first) from a recommended university or a Grade Point Average (GPA) of at least 3.75. Affiliated applicants must also meet any subject-specific examination requirements for their chosen course at Cambridge. It is not possible to become an affiliated student if you already hold a degree awarded by the University of Cambridge.

Tuition fees for Home fee status students taking a second undergraduate degree may be different to the standard Home fee, and affiliated students will not as standard be able to access governmental loans to cover the cost of tuition fees or maintenance costs. As well as tuition fees, all affiliated students pay College fees directly to King's.

Affiliated applicants follow the general process and timetable for all undergraduate applicants, however a few details are different. When applying, all affiliated candidates should include:

• an official transcript of your academic record
• a summary of your university course, including details of the syllabus, which units you covered, how much teaching you received, a description of the mark scheme, etc.
• two academic references (the reference on the UCAS form and one additional reference uploaded to the applicant document upload form after the application deadline)

We will send you information about how to submit these documents after you apply. Please write your full name, UCAS number, the course you are applying for, and 'affiliated applicant' clearly on the documents you send.

For more information about affiliated students, please see the University website.

We are happy to consider applications from students who have been schooled at home for all or part of their schooling. We have listed some important points for home-educated applicants below, but please get in touch if you have any questions.

Taking A Levels or equivalent qualifications

It can be tempting for some home-educated students to take exams early, particularly in their strongest subjects. However, please bear in mind the following:

• We will need to see evidence that students have a workload equivalent to three full A Level subjects in their final year, even if they have already passed one or more A Levels in a previous year. This is because we like to have an indication that a student would be able to manage the high workload of a Cambridge degree. If you have taken your A Levels in more than one sitting, please take a look at the Admissions FAQs page or contact us for further advice and guidance on how to make a competitive application to King’s.
• It depends on the full context of an application whether we would count qualifications completed early as part of a conditional offer. Please contact us for further advice and guidance.
• If you are applying for a sciences course at Cambridge, bear in mind that your science qualifications should include the practical elements. If this is not possible, please contact us for further advice and guidance.
• Most of our students are at least 18 years old when they begin their first term of study at King's. Whilst we accept applications from applicants who are younger than 18, when assessing whether or not to make an offer, your intellectual maturity would form part of our assessment of whether you would thrive on the course. There may also be certain restrictions on what you can do in College if you are under 18. For this reason, many students who will be under 18 on entry decide to defer a year (or take a gap year). This is not mandatory, however, so if you would prefer to apply for direct entry, your age would not disqualify you.

Your UCAS application and reference

When you apply through UCAS, you will need a teacher or equivalent to provide a reference. Your UCAS referee will need to write in detail about your academic work and potential for the course you are applying for, as well as providing predicted grades for any exams that you have yet to take. The referee cannot be related to you. You can read more guidance on the UCAS website.

We also require predicted grades for all exams not yet undertaken. Please ensure you are prepared to have someone provide these as part of your application.