Applicant Information

Thank you for applying to the University of Cambridge, and to Gonville & Caius College

This page refers to applications made in October 2023. It provides some instructions for what you need to do now, and what will happen next with your application. Please read all of the information carefully, and contact the Admissions Office (admissions@cai.cam.ac.uk) if you have any questions.

You've submitted your UCAS application - what do you need to do now?

1. Make sure you have completed and submitted the My Cambridge Application. You should have received an automated email about this after completing your UCAS application. The deadline for its submission is 23rd October.

2. You will have received two online forms in your acknowledgement email. The first of these (the AAIF) is compulsory for all applicants, and allows you to tell us about any Covid-related educational disruption. It also asks you to agree to our feedback policy. Make sure to make a note of this policy, as it will not be circulated again. All applicants are required to fill out this form by 23rd October.

3. The second form (the AADF) enables you to send us examples of your written work. You will only need to do this if your subject is on the list under "Submitted Work Guidelines", or if you need to provide us with documentation in support of a request for adjustments/allowances for a disability/neurodiverse condition/long-term illness at any interview to which you may be invited. The deadline for submission of this form is 2nd November.

4. If you think that there may be some ambiguity regarding your Tuition Fee Status, please write to us at admissions@cai.cam.ac.uk.

5. Relax! And wait to find out if you have been invited to interview. We aim to give applicants as much notice as possible and will be sending out invitations by email during November. For subjects without pre-registration required assessments, we will aim to communicate whether or not you have been invited to interview in the week beginning 13th November. For subjects with pre-registration required assessments, we will aim for the week beginning 20th November. For Medicine, we will aim for the week beginning 27th November. The interviews will take place during the period of 4th to 15th December 2023, however there may be some overflow on 30th November and 1st December. Please keep this period free. Further information about interviews is given below.

6. If you were invited to interview, you will receive a decision about your application electronically on 24 January 2024. Please see below for more information.

Submitted Work Guidelines

Applicants for the subjects listed below are required to submit one or two pieces of written work.

If you are applying for Architecture or Design: the only piece of work that you need to submit is the six-page portfolio detailed in the subject webpage. It must be preceded by a coversheet which can be found here.

If you are applying for ASNC, Archaeology, AMES, Classics, Economics, Education, English, History, History & Modern Languages, History & Politics, HSPS, MML, Music, or Theology: you will be required to submit written work which has been prepared and marked as part of your normal course of study. Each piece of written work must be preceded by a coversheet which can be found here.

Being part of your "normal course of study" means that work should be written as part of your school courses, not for extra- or super-curricular activities, programmes, or competitions. Your work must be in English (unless requested otherwise for foreign language study), not re-written or corrected for Cambridge, and should ideally have your teacher’s original markings on it. However, we recognise that in some instances, you might not yet have received feedback on the work you consider to be your best, in which case unmarked work is acceptable. If your work is unmarked, please have a teacher sign or stamp the coversheet so we can ensure you are submitting your own original work that is not corrected for Cambridge.

Please do not send long projects or research papers; essays should not be more than 2000 words in length. If you wish to send an extract of a longer piece, this is acceptable. Clearly mark on the coversheet that it is an extract.

Please check the webpage for your subject for full details of the written work we require.

Please submit your written work through the AADF webform. Please note that your work must be in PDF form. The form also allows for you to provide us with documentation in support of a request for adjustments/allowances for a disability/neurodiverse condition/long-term illness at any interview to which you may be invited. The deadline for submission of this form is 2nd November.

We request written work so that we can get a sense of the kind of work you are doing at present, and we take some account of the essays when we make decisions about admissions. Sometimes we might discuss the essays in an interview, but more usually we would aim to ask questions about other or related areas of study.

Disabilities and Extenuating Circumstances

This form (linked) allows for you to disclose a disability/neurodiverse condition/long-term illness. It also allows you to tell us about any adjustments/allowances you may need at any interview you may be invited to. You must provide us with the completed form, along with specified supporting documentation from an official source, through the AADF webform. The deadline for submission of this form is 2nd November.

If you have experienced any particular disadvantage during your studies which is separate to Covid educational disruption, such as serious ill health or a family bereavement, an Extenuating Circumstances Form (ECF ) can be completed by a teacher/doctor/care worker to provide further details, in confidence. The deadline for this is the 23rd October.

If you wish to discuss any matters relating to disabilities, you can contact the Admissions Office or the Accessibility and Disability Resource Centre.

Interview Information

Caius is running a hybrid interview model this year. We are completely confident in both modes of assessment, and neither hold any inherent advantage or disadvantage.

Interviews will take place during the period of 4th to 15th December 2023, however there may be some overflow on 30th November and 1st December. The number of interviews that you have will vary by subject. Most applicants will have two interviews; some will have one longer, single interview. Applicants for some subjects will need to sit a short test or do some preparatory reading.

All further information you need will be included in the invitation email. If you have any questions about your interviews after you have received that email, please do get in touch. You will be asked to confirm your attendance at interview via a simple web form; please make sure that you do this by the deadline stated in the invitation email. You will receive the link to the confirmation form in your detailed invitation email with the date(s) and time(s).

Online interviews

You can find our guidance for online interviews here. Please download it and read it carefully.

We invite applicants to take their interviews in the location that is most comfortable for them, be that at home or in school. Interviews will take place via Whereby in almost all instances; if you have applied for Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology or Physical Natural Sciences, your interviews will take place via Zoom.

In-person interviews

In-person interviews will take place in Gonville & Caius College in almost all instances. For information about travel, please click here.

Your invitation to interview will contain further details about who is eligible for accommodation and/or travel reimbursement, and how to claim these.

College Registered Assessments

Applicants for some subjects are required to sit a College registered assessment. You will have been notified if you need to sit a College registered assessment in your interview invitation email.

The timetable for College registered assessments for Gonville & Caius is available here.

After you receive your interview invitation email, we will be enrolling you for the assessment.

If your assessment is scheduled to take place via Moodle, you should expect to receive two automated emails from noreply@mail.assessment.vle.cam.ac.uk. If you do not receive these emails by 20 November it is essential that you notify us, having first checked your junk/spam folders. The first email will contain a link to access Moodle and the second will provide you with your initial login details. We strongly encourage you to log in and familiarise yourself with Moodle well in advance of your assessment; this will allow sufficient time for any initial log in issues you may experience to be resolved. You will be required to log in to Moodle as a ‘Friend’ using the log in details emailed to you. If needed, instructions on how to reset your ‘Friends’ password can be found here. Please note that your assessment paper will not be visible until the exact start time of your assessment. Instructions outlining how to upload your completed response at the end of your assessment can be found here. It is essential that you include your name and UCAS Personal ID number at the top of any document uploaded. We have provided some answers to frequently asked questions about Moodle assessments here; please take a look at these before getting in touch with the Admissions Office.

If your assessment is scheduled to take place via Zoom, we will send you a link to access the session and detailed instructions shortly before the test date. Your test will be invigilated and you will be provided with instructions on how to return the test paper by your invigilator.

Subject-specific information can be found in the following documents. Please download and read them carefully:

For all subjects, you are expected to maintain confidentiality at all times. You must not disclose details of any admissions assessment:

to other applicants
to any commercial organisation
during the admissions process
while you are a student at Cambridge

This includes, but is not limited to, communication indirectly or directly by:

email
websites
chat rooms
texts with other applicants

You or any third party are strictly forbidden to record or photograph any part of the application process. We will cancel your application to Cambridge if you record, photograph or have an unauthorised third party present during your assessment.

Answers will be checked for academic integrity, including plagiarism and the undeclared use of artificial intelligence; this will include where passages have been produced by AI and manually rewritten. Breaches of academic integrity are taken seriously and will invalidate your application.

If you have any questions, please get in contact with the Admissions Office at admissions@cai.cam.ac.uk.

Contact Information

We will communicate with you almost exclusively by email. Please make sure that you check your emails regularly. You may wish to add the Admissions email address (admissions@cai.cam.ac.uk) to your contacts or safe senders list and check your spam or junk folders often. We advise against using an email address provided by your school or college, but if this is the case, make sure that you can still check this easily outside of school hours and in the holidays. If you change your email address, make sure to inform us and update this with UCAS.

Decisions

Once we have considered all of the information available to us, we will decide whether or not to make you an offer. If you have already obtained your qualifications, this could be an academically unconditional offer (although there will still be some practical conditions). If you have not yet completed your qualifications, your offer will be conditional upon your attaining a particular set of results in your examinations.

Admissions decisions are communicated to applicants electronically on 24 January 2024. An overview of this process is given on the University website, including details of the Winter Pool.

Gonville & Caius