FAQs and Useful Links

The College holds a series of Open Days each year for potential applicants; booking forms and details can be found here.
You are welcome to look around the College at other times, no appointment is necessary. When you arrive, make yourself known to the Porters in the Porters’ Lodge and explain who you are and why you want to look round. The Porters will be able to point out the key parts of College for you, and give out copies of our Prospectus.
It is possible to arrange individual tours of the College.  If this is something you are thinking about please contact the Admissions Office to see if anybody is available.

Generally students are expected to be over the age of 18 before starting a Cambridge course. The College routinely accepts students who will be 18 by 1 January in their first year, and we are prepared to consider applicants who are younger. In all cases, however, one part of our assessment will be whether we consider that an applicant is mature enough and ready to commence a degree course that involves self-motivated study and living away from home.

If you are over 21 when you start your degree course you are classed as a mature student.

Below are typical offer levels Selwyn would make on some of the most common national examinations. If you are taking an examination not listed below, please contact the Admissions Office for advice.

Qualification	Level Required
A-Level	A*AA for arts and social sciences and Veterinary Medicine. A*A*A for economics and for sciences courses (excluding PBS)
International Baccalaureate	Typical offer would be 40-42 points overall (including bonus points), with 7,7,6, in Higher Level subjects.
Scottish Advanced Highers	Typical offer would be three A grades at Advanced Higher.? If you are not able to take three Advanced Highers, please contact us for further advice.
Cambridge Pre-U	We welcome applications from students who are either studying towards the full Cambridge Pre-U Diploma or certain subjects within the qualification alongside A-Levels.? Conditional offers will be set on an individual basis but are likely to be in the region of D2, D2, D3.
European Baccalaureate	At least 90% overall with 9.0 in specified subjects related to the proposed course of study.
French Baccalaureate	.Mention Tres Bien. overall with 16 or 17 in specified subjects related to the proposed course of study.

All candidates applying for Mathematics or Computer Sciences with Mathematics will be asked to sit Sixth Term Examination Papers (STEP).

In all cases, the offer is tailored to the candidates particular circumstances.

The College welcomes applications from candidates who are considering taking a gap between School and University, and who have a sensible and structured plan for the year.

For those taking AS modular exams, we find that the marks obtained in these exams are a good indicator (better than GCSE) of future performance.? In such cases, we are likely not to pay a great deal of attention to GCSE grades.

You might like to know, however, that most candidates have 8 A or A* grades at GCSE, with the majority of these at A*.

Please note that the Cambridge Colleges will only, as a matter of principle, consider applications from students enrolled in a degree course at other UK universities in very exceptional circumstances.

Any application to move to Cambridge would need strong support from your Course Director or other academic tutor at your current university. A reference or letter of recommendation from that person to the Cambridge College would be required, and only then can a Cambridge College consider an application. All such applications are still subject to the same academic assessment as any other application to the University.

Selwyn College participates in the University’s Erasmus Exchange Programme, and exchange schemes with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Ecole Centrale Paris, and the National University of Singapore (NUS). Apart from these schemes, we do
not take any other visiting students.

It is not possible for a student to transfer to Cambridge to pursue only part of a degree course. All students must start in the first year of our three or four-year
undergraduate programmes.