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Being made an offer

Offers of admission are only made once the application has been approved by all three of the following:

  • the department (including at least two academic members of staff)
  • the relevant Degree Committee
  • the Postgraduate Admissions Office (on behalf of the General Boards Education Committee)

If a recommendation for your admission to a course or research place has been approved by these bodies, you will receive a conditional offer of admission by email. You will also be able to view and print a certificate of the conditional offer of admission via your Self-Service account. The certificate is the only document that constitutes an offer of admission. No other correspondence (eg from a College, department, supervisor or faculty) constitutes a formal offer of admission to the University.

If you have made more than one application you may receive more than one conditional offer.

Terms of Admission

If you accept your conditional offer, you agree to the University’s postgraduate Terms of Admission. The Terms of Admission are important as they set out your contractual relationship with the University, and your College, from then until you cease to be a postgraduate student. The Terms cover things such as your obligation to pay fees, when changes to your course might be made, intellectual property rights in your work, and student discipline.

We advise you to read the Terms of Admission carefully before you accept your offer. Note that the document is updated annually and make sure that you are looking at the version that applies to your own year of entry.

The Terms of Admission require you to tell us about any relevant, unspent criminal convictions at the same time that you accept your offer. More information on this can be found here.

Conditions

Confirmation of your conditional offer depends upon you meeting the conditions that are set out in the certificate (and which can also be seen via your Self-Service account.) Full information on how to understand and meet your offer conditions is provided in A guide to your offer and its conditions. It is important that you read the relevant sections carefully.

Processing documents to meet offer conditions

The documentation needed to meet your offer conditions needs to be uploaded via the Self-Service Account.

You should ensure your documents meet the criteria outlined in  A guide to your offer and its conditions and in the self-service portal.

You should upload your original, final transcript to the Self-Service portal. Certified copies of transcripts must be sent electronically only if your previous institution has, or can use, a recognised secure electronic transcript system (eg Digitary or HEAR/GradIntel). You will need to contact your institution to enquire whether they offer this facility. These systems work by generating a web address for your electronic transcript on a trusted website, or a secure access token, which either you or your institution can notify us of, by sending a message via the system to bgstranscripts@admin.cam.ac.uk.

We cannot accept transcripts that are attached to emails sent directly to us.

Please note that it takes time to review all documents received, both via the Self-Service portal and electronically, but it generally takes no more than two weeks after the document has been sent for them to be reviewed. Unfortunately, due to the volume of documents received by the Postgraduate Admissions Office each day, we are unable to confirm receipt of documents until they have been fully processed.

Once they are fully processed you will see that your offer conditions have been met on your Self-Service portal.

Accepting your offer

A deadline for accepting your offer will be stated on your offer certificate. You will need to accept your offer by the deadline or it will be withdrawn. Please note that this deadline is different from the deadline to meet all of your offer conditions. You can accept or decline your offer via your Self-Service Account. Further information on this can be found in section 3.3 of A guide to your offer and its conditions.

College Membership

It will be a condition of your offer that you accept membership from one of the Colleges of the University. All those receiving conditional offers from the University will in due course receive such membership. You do not need to arrange this yourself, and you should not contact any of the Colleges directly to arrange your own membership. For more information on College membership visit the Colleges section of the website.

Funding decisions

If you are made an offer you may also be considered for funding. Please check the Application and Funding Deadlines page for further information on when you can expect to hear if you have been awarded funding. Decisions on funding are not made in the Postgraduate Admissions Office, and you may need to check with the sponsor directly. Not all funding competitions will notify unsuccessful applicants, so if you do not hear by July you should assume you haven’t been successful in securing funding.

Term dates and calendars

Please check the Term dates and calendars page for information on the academic year.