Undergraduate FAQs

Lucy Cavendish was founded as a College for mature-age (21 years and over) women in 1965, at a time when mature age female students were underrepresented at the University. The College now accepts students of all ages and genders, with the unique goal of admitting a majority of our students from underrepresented/historically excluded backgrounds. In 2022 we became the first ever Cambridge College to admit over 90% of our UK students from state schools and we have students represented from every region in the UK. 1 in 4 of our students are also the first in their family to attend University. 

Importantly, the College has achieved this without compromising academic standards. Students studying STEM subjects achieved, on average, three A*s at A-level, whilst arts, humanities and social sciences students achieved, on average, 2.5 A*s.

Our definition is based on the latest research into Widening Participation and influenced by national demographic databases and Cambridge's own admissions statistics. There are many social, economic and educational factors which can impact students' access to Higher Education and we have sought take into account as many of these as possible. Our definition includes criteria taken from the University's Access and Participation Plan, such as students who live in areas that have low progression to higher education, or students who live socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. It also includes students who are or have been eligible for Free School Meals or the Post-16 Bursary. However, it also includes more holistic factors, such as whether students would be part of the first generation of their family to go to University, whether they live in an area of the country that is currently underrepresented at Cambridge, or whether they attend a school that has little or no history of sending students to Oxbridge.

Overall, we hope our criteria are as comprehensive as possible and we are keen to emphasise that each application will be assessed individually, so we are able to be flexible where students present with circumstances that we have not yet considered. If you would like to discuss this with us in more detail prior to applying, please contact us at admissions@lucy.cam.ac.uk.

Lucy Cavendish admits undergraduates in all subjects offered by the University of Cambridge, including the Cambridge Graduate Course in Medicine (A101) and Affiliated Medicine (A100). The only subject we do not admit applications for is Music. 

The typical conditional A-Level offer will be A*AA or A*A*A, depending on the course. Other conditions may form part of your offer, such as STEP. Details of subject requirements can be found on our individual course pages. If you have a particular query, please contact a member of the admissions team on admissions@lucy.cam.ac.uk.

You can find out more about the international qualifications the University accepts here. 

No, it is not possible to apply to both Oxford and Cambridge in the same year.

You will find that our courses are quite different. Oxford tends to have more, slightly narrower or more specific courses, whereas Cambridge prefers fewer, broader courses (e.g. Natural Sciences or Human, Social and Political Sciences). Work out which course is right for you and that will tell you which University is right.

Yes! However, applicants should be aware that Medicine students must be 18 by 1st November of their first year of study in order to be eligible to begin their professional training. 

If you are likely to be younger than 17 at the time of entry, please contact admissions@lucy.cam.ac.uk before applying to discuss your situation.

Yes, you can. For some subjects with a vocational dimension, such as Engineering, Modern & Medieval Languages, Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine, it can even be an advantage if you are doing something relevant to the subject during your Gap Year. However, for Mathematics, many Colleges prefer students not to have taken a Gap Year as there is a concern that subject knowledge will weaken over time.  See here for more information (Section 7)  on each College's attitude to a gap year for Mathematics. Lucy Cavendish takes a neutral position, meaning we do not strongly encourage or discourage prospective students from taking one. 

Lucy Cavendish College will consider applicants who decide to apply to the University during a gap year, and who are planning to re-take one or more A-levels. If there are specific circumstances that impacted on your ability to achieve your full academic potential in the previous year(s), then your referee should discuss this in section 2 of their UCAS reference, so that we are able to properly contextualise your prior academic performance. It may also be appropriate to submit an Extenuating Circumstances Form to detail any particularly severe personal or educational disruption you have experienced. 

Please note that if you are sitting a single A-level over one year, we will almost certainly attach an A* to it as part of our offer conditions. 

You are no more, and no less, likely to be admitted if you apply as an open applicant. Open applications are allocated to a College by a computer algorithm. They are then treated exactly the same as all the College's other applicants.

The University caps the number of places that are offered in Architecture, Computer Science, Music, Psychological and Behavioural Sciences and Philosophy. There are also University quotas for Medicine and Veterinary Medicine.

No, Cambridge does not allow transfers onto any degree course. Lucy Cavendish does not usually consider applications from students enrolled on degree courses at other UK universities either, unless there are exceptional circumstances or there is a change of subject (in which case a letter of support from the student's current institution is required).

Please note that applications from students who have failed at or have been excluded from another medical school will not normally be considered for entry to Medicine at Cambridge.

Please feel welcome to contact our Admissions Office at admissions@lucy.cam.ac.uk early in your preparation to discuss the support available from the University and College. The University's Disability Resource Centre website offers guidance about support and how to access it.

Applicants to the College who have declared a disability at UCAS  will be contacted with a Disability, Specific Learning Difficulty and Long-Term Illness form, which allows us to plan any adjustments that may be required to our admissions process. Please note, however, that any adjustments required for pre-registration required tests must be arranged with the relevant test board, rather than the College to which you apply. You are strongly advised to register early and apply for any adjustments/modifications before the relevant deadlines. 

Achievement in the Sixth Term Examination Papers (STEP) normally forms part of a conditional offer to read Mathematics at Cambridge. The examinations are administered by the Admissions Testing Service and are taken in late June. 

You can find out more information about STEP here.

No particular weight is attached to any one piece of information; rather, all candidates are assessed individually and holistically using all available information. Contrary to what you may have heard, interviews are not 'the most important part' of the application.

We are committed to ensuring that we offer admission to students of the highest intellectual potential, irrespective of social, racial, religious or financial considerations. To achieve this, every applicant is considered individually in an holistic assessment using all the information available to us. Please see here for a full breakdown of our use of contextual data.

If anything has happened which caused you significant educational or personal disruption, then your referee can details in section two of their UCAS reference. It may also be appropriate for particularly serious circumstances to be disclosed in an extenuating circumstances form. Further information about this form can be found here.

We aim to interview all applicants with a realistic chance of an offer - generally, those who are on track to meet the typical conditional offers in the required subjects. Around 75% of UK Cambridge applicants are interviewed each year. You can find out more about what to expect during your Cambridge interview here. 

The typical conditional A Level offer is A*AA (arts, humanities, social sciences, PBS and Veterinary Medicine) or A*A*A (Sciences, Mathematics and Economics), depending on the course. For IB students, typically offers range from 41-42 points overall, with 7,7,6 at Higher Level. Other conditions may form part of your offer, such as the STEP mathematics examinations, which are used in offers for Mathematics. Students taking other qualifications can find more information here, and international students can look up the University's entry requirements for their own national qualification systems here.

Details of subject requirements can be found on our individual course pages. If you have a particular query, please contact a member of our Admissions Office at admissions@lucy.cam.ac.uk. As a former mature College, Lucy Cavendish is very used to supporting applicants with less traditional educational backgrounds, so please do get in touch. We welcome applications for arts, humanities and social science courses from students studying the Access to Higher Education diploma. Students interested in studying a Foundation Year at another institution before applying should get in touch to discuss their proposed course.

We consider post-16 qualifications to be the most helpful way of assessing a student’s academic potential, so we do not have a minimum GCSE requirement. We view GCSEs as a performance indicator, but always within the overall context of the school/college they were taken in. Essentially, each applicant's school's year specific average GCSE score goes towards assessing whether the applicant has performed well relative to their year group in their school. There is therefore no fixed minimum GCSE requirement as shool GCSE scores vary from school to school and year to year.

On average, successful applicants will have achieved mainly 7s, 8s and 9s at GCSE. The more 8s or 9s, the better, but it is certainly not the case that students need to get straight 9s in order to make a competitive application! We view applications holistically, and we recognise that academic potential evolves over time.

We will look at all qualifications you have done when reviewing you application, so please note that you must enter AS grades on your UCAS form if you have sat AS exams (as opposed to internal school mock exams at the end of Year 12). Generally, if you have done well in them, they will be a strength to your application, and they will be less of a strength if you have not done so well. However, since so few applicants now have AS grades, we can no longer use them to compare applicants more generally.

Remember that our offers are typically made on the basis of your A Levels (or equivalent), not AS-Levels or other subsidiary exams.

Usually, three A-Levels is sufficient for a competitive application to us, and you may find it a better option for managing workload and allowing yourself to go into sufficient depth in all your subjects. This is certainly true for all arts, humanities and social science subjects.

Competitive applicants for physical science subjects, however, often have Further Mathematics as their fourth A-Level. In particular, applicants for Physical Natural Sciences would have the broadest choice of options available to them in the first year if they have taken Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Further Mathematics. We also find that Maths, Further Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry is particularly good preparation for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. 

Other subjects that benefit from the inclusion of Further Mathematics at A-Level are Engineering and Economics, although this can be as part of three A-levels. Further Mathematics A-Level is also compulsory for Mathematics and Computer Science. 

Please note that four A-Levels is not necessary for applications for Medicine or Veterinary Medicine.  For Medicine, most colleges required students to be taking Chemistry and two other Science/Maths subjects (excluding Psychology) and for Veterinary Medicine all Colleges require students to be taking Chemistry and at least one other Science/Maths subject (excluding Psychology). The most competitive combination of A-levels for both these subjects is typically Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. 

Applicants to Psychological and Behavioural Sciences must offer one of Mathematics or Biology as part of three A-levels, or equivalent. 

We do need to know that you would stand a good chance of meeting the terms of your offer, if you were made one, so competitive applicants will usually be predicted to meet or exceed the standard requirements. However, there may be circumstances that explain why you are not currently predicted to meet these requirements that we need to take into account, so don't write yourself off. Remember that we assess each application individually and holistically, taking all factors into account.

If you feel there are significant factors preventing you from being predicted our standard entry requirements, you may wish to flag this up in your UCAS application within the teacher reference, or even through an Extenuating Circumstances Form.

We are committed to ensuring that we offer admission to students of the highest intellectual potential, irrespective of social, racial, religious or financial considerations. To achieve this, every applicant is considered individually in a holistic assessment using all the information available to us.

We use contextual data such as postcode information, school/college data and certain individual circumstances (for example care experience and Free Schools Meals eligibility) as part of the overall information used to help us decide who to make offers to. This data is not, however, usually used to make lower offers to certain candidates. At Lucy Cavendish, our aim to is work with our offer holders to meet their full academic potential, rather than to lower entry requirements. We therefore offer free academic tuition to our offer holders from widening participation backgrounds with the aim of supporting them to meet our offer. 

For 2025 entry (or deferred 2026 entry), Lucy Cavendish will be interviewing all shortlisted applicants virtually, with interviews usually taking place in December. Though your interview will be online, the aims and content will still be the same as in person interviews. You can read more about Lucy Cavendish's online interviews here and you can read the University's information on interviews here, which includes information about interview format across the different Colleges. 

Firstly, please consult the undergraduate study page in order to check whether your course has a pre-registration required assessment or a College Admissions assessment.

In order to make a valid application, you must be registered in advance for pre-registration required assessments. You can read more about these assessments here.

Only applicants shortlisted for interview are required to sit College registered assessments. You do not need to register for them in advance, and the College to which you have applied will contact you with full details, typically around the time you are invited for interview. You can find more information about these assessments here.

For applicants applying to Lucy Cavendish, the following courses use a College Admissions Assessment:

College Admissions Assessments will be coordinated centrally, meaning you may not sit your assessment on the same day as your interview. Please do not worry if this is the case; it will not affect our decision making in any way. You will also sit the admissions assessment remotely, either at home or in your school/college. 

The Winter Pool is the mechanism through which applicants are redistributed between Colleges. It is designed to ensure that high-performing applicants who cannot be offered a place due to the competition at their original choice of College have the chance of being offered places at other Colleges. Colleges would rather admit a strong applicant from the pool than a weaker applicant who applied directly to them. Roughly one in four Cambridge students ends up at a different College to the one that they applied as a result of being 'pooled' and selected by another College. This is no bad thing! It ensures that your chance of getting a place at the University is the same, regardless of which College you apply to.

Being placed in the Winter Pool depends on the quality of an application, including performance at interview and in any admissions assessment. More information about the Winter Pool can be found on the University’s website here.

Applicants are typically contacted in November/early December be told whether they will be continued to interview or not. After this, final decisions are usually communicated to applicants in mid-January.

Admissions decisions taken by Cambridge Colleges are not normally reviewed unless it appears after investigation that a serious procedural error has occurred, as detailed on the University website.

Your place is only guaranteed if you meet all the conditions of your offer by 31st August. Missed offers are handled on a case-by-case basis. Offer Holders who have narrowly missed the terms of their offer may have their applications made available for consideration by other Colleges in the summer pool, which takes place every year after A-level results day in August. If this is the case for you, then you will notified by your College and keep updated with the final outcome of your application. You can read more about this process here. 

UK domiciled applicants who were interviewed but not offered a place can can put themselves forward for reconsideration in August, provided they have met the minimum offer level in their subject, and that their subject has places remaining. Applicants must also meet certain Widening Participation Criteria in order to be eligible. Full information is available here.

Applicants will be notified in their decision letter in January if we believe they meet the widening participation criteria for reconsideration in August. Lucy Cavendish College strongly encourages all eligible applicants who have been unsuccessful in their initial application to consider the August Reconsideration Pool if they meet or exceed the University's minimum entry requirements for their subject.

Mature students are students over the age of 21 years on 1st October in the year of entry.  Affiliated students are those who already hold a Bachelor’s degree and are pursuing a second undergraduate degree.

We have a long tradition of supporting mature students and we have experience assessing a variety of post-16 qualifications. 

 We will also consider other qualifications including:

• HE Access Diplomas - the Access to Humanities & Social Sciences Diploma provides good grounding for many arts and humanities courses. We would expect a Distinction in all relevant modules. For more subject specific guidance, see the University's entry requirements page. Access to HE courses are not considered suitable for Science/Mathematics courses, as well as Economics. Please note that the University is still considering their position for Psychological and Behavioural Sciences for 2025 entry.
• Certificates of Higher Education - such as those offered by the Open University. Our standard entry requirement for an applicant with an CertHE qualification is a distinction in all areas.

Unfortunately, Access to Science courses are not usually considered by the University to be suitable preparation on their own for science degrees and Economics. For more information, please contact our Admissions Office (admissions@lucy.cam.ac.uk).

It may be useful to know that Lucy Cavendish has accepted students of all ages and genders since October 2021. This would mean your application would be assessed alongside candidates offering multiple A*s at A-level. We do not have a set number of mature versus non-mature places available, and we simply look to admit the most competitive candidates who have applied to us. As a result, applicants offering more non-standard qualifications typically takenby mature students may be viewed more competitively by the Colleges for solely mature students (Wolfson, St Edmund’s and Hughes Hall). You may therefore wish to contact the three Colleges for applicants solely of mature age to discuss your applications. Of course, our admissions team would still be very happy to continue advising you in your application.

Typically, we suggest it is best to take just one kind of qualification (whichever is considered strongest or most academically relevant) and focus on meeting meeting our minimum offer level, rather than doing less well in a portfolio of qualifications such as a A-levels, certificates, diplomas etc. 

Typically, we are not able to consider such applications at Lucy Cavendish, but you would be welcome to contact one of the three mature colleges (Wolfson, St Edmunds and Hughes Hall) to ask for their advice in this matter.

Lucy Cavendish's minimum entry requirements for affiliate entry Medicine are a 2.1 undergraduate degree result in any discipline (although in practice most successful applicants have done a science related degree), as well as passes in A-level Chemistry (or equivalent) plus at least two of the following A-level subjects:

• Mathematics
• Biology or Human Biology
• Physics
• Further Mathematics

Please note that you must have undertaken the practical element of A-level Chemistry, as it demonstrates competence to work in a laboratory environment. 

Most competitive applicants to Lucy Cavendish have A-levels similar to that of the standard entry requirement (as detailed here), as well as high scores in the admissions assessment, currently the UCAT. 

It may also be useful to note that the University caps places for international Medicine; currently there are only 22 places available for those with overseas fee status. Consequently, applying for international affiliate Medicine is a particularly competitive process. 

Our minimum entry requirements for affiliate Veterinary Medicine are a 2.1 undergraduate degree result in any discipline (although in practice most successful applicants have done a science related degree), as well as at least passes in A-level Chemistry (or equivalent) plus at least one of Biology, Mathematics or Physics.

Most competitive applicants to Lucy Cavendish have A-levels similar to that of the standard entry requirement (as detailed here), as well as competitive scores in the admissions assessment, the ESAT. The following pages may be useful for an overview of the application process:

https://www.vet.cam.ac.uk/study/vet/howtoapply   

https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/why-cambridge/support/mature-students/second-undergraduate-degrees

Cambridge University has its own pages devoted to fees and funding for undergraduate students. Information on funding for mature students can be found on the gov.uk website and you can check if you are eligible for funding here. There are also additional grants and bursaries for adult learners which may include an Advanced Learner Loan. Further information on possible sources of funding for students aged 19+ can also be found on the Money Saving Expert website.

Affiliate Medicine and Veterinary Medicine students are not eligible for a tuition fee loan from Student Finance, but can take out a Student Finance maintenance loan and receive Cambridge Bursary funding. 

Information about A-Level equivalents for international applicants can be read on the Cambridge website here. We except students from a wide variety of qualifications. If you have any questions not answered on the Cambridge website, do not hesitate to get in touch. 

It is essential that your English language skills are at high enough level for you to undertake an intensive and challenging academic course that is taught and examined in English. You may be asked to achieve a specific English language qualification as part of your offer condition. You will likely not need to prove your knowledge of English if you’ve completed a qualification equivalent to a UK degree in a predominately English-speaking university or if you are currently attending an English speaking secondary school.  Please contact us if you would like to discuss whether you would be required to take an English language qualification.

The application process, including all relevant deadlines, is standard for both UK and overseas-based applicants. You can find out more about our application process here. 

All applicants to Lucy Cavendish, whether based in the UK or overseas, will be interviewed remotely. You can find out more interview arrangements across the University more generally here. 

The level of tuition fees for students with overseas fee status varies depending on the course you are studying. All international/overseas fee status students will normally have to pay College fees in addition to University tuition fees. The College fee covers the cost to the College of providing a range of educational, domestic and pastoral services and support. You can find further information here

To find out more about tuition fee status, please see here.

At the University of Cambridge we offer some joint honours courses, however these are not the same as majors and minors. Generally, at Cambridge you study a single subject, or a couple of associated subjects, in great detail: covering the subject area very broadly in the initial years and then specialising in the later years. This means that you go into much more detail in a subject than you would in a Liberal Arts style degree course.  As a result, our courses are particularly suitable for students who wish to go into an associated career, or further study, straight after their undergraduate degree.