Questions about late forms / documents? Please see the current questions page rather than emailing us.
If there are extenuating circumstances other than Covid-19 disruption that have caused significant educational or home life disruption or disadvantage, it may be appropriate to have an Extenuating Circumstances Form submitted.
The Extenuating Circumstances Form is designed to ensure that we have the information we require to accurately assess applicants who have experienced particular personal or educational disadvantage.
It helps Admissions Tutors by providing:
- context against which they can judge the academic record of an applicant
- information useful in assessing an applicant’s performance at interview
It is important to provide an Extenuating Circumstances Form, even if your circumstances have already been mentioned in your UCAS reference.
Examples of Extenuating Circumstances
The Cambridge Admissions website page has a list of examples of Extenuating Circumstances.
Who should complete the form?
The online form should normally be completed by a teacher/tutor at your school/college. If that is not possible, other people who can complete the form are:
- your doctor
- a care worker
As an applicant, you can't complete an online Extenuating Circumstances Form yourself.
The form and upload tool
If you are completing an Extenuating Form for a Christ's College applicant, please click here to download the Extenuating Circumstances Form, complete and save it as a Word or pdf. document making sure that the applicant's name is in the file name, and then upload it using this upload tool.
Please note that we cannot accept Extenuating Circumstances Forms sent by email.
Covid-19 Educational Experience
Please do not use this form for pandemic-related educational disruption, which should instead be declared by the applicant on the Additional Applicant Information Form (AAIF) in Stage 3 of the application process. Many thanks!
If you miss the 23 October deadline
We advise you to ensure that the person completing your online Extenuating Circumstances Form meets our 23 October deadline to ensure that the form is part of your application from the beginning and can be considered when deciding which applicants are invited for interview.
The centrally produced Extenuating Circumstances Form will stop working as soon as the deadline has passed, however after that time, referees will be able to access an Extenuating Circumstances Form on this page. We do continue to accept Extenuating Circumstances Forms sent after 23 October, however please bear in mind that we can only consider information that is part of your application at the time it is read. Extenuating Circumstances information received later in the application process will be considered as part of post-interview decision-making for students selected for interview, and should be submitted at the earliest opportunity.
If you have a disability, Specific Learning Difficulty or long-term il
lness
There is another form to complete if you have a disability, Specific Learning Difficulty or long-term illness. Please see the information about the adjustments form (deadline also 23 October), which is needed from all students with a disability, Specific Learning Difficulty or long-term illness, whether or not you require adjustments.
- Where appropriate, it is possible to complete both an Extenuating Circumstances Form and a disability, Specific Learning Difficulty and long-term illness form as they do different things - the ECF form is optional and tells us about any impact on your education to be taken into account when looking at your overall application, the disability, Specific Learning Difficulty or long-term illness form is required and gives us practical information and things we need to know in order to organise interviews and exercises appropriately.
- We will only look at the Specific Learning Difficulty and long-term illness form and document when we are organising adjustments, so please ensure that the information needed is on that form, whether or not you are also having an Extenuating Circumstances Form submitted.
Stage 2: 23 Oct deadlines / Current applicants page / Subject information
