We welcome applicants from the United States who would like to apply for a place here at Christ's College.
We also welcome teachers and guidance counselors at schools in the US to get in touch if you have questions about supporting students from your school who would like to apply to Christ's College.
Here is the information for students taking different qualifications in the United States.
Advanced Placement + SAT/ACT + High School Diploma
Offers for Christ's applicants taking Advanced Placements require a minimum of five Advanced Placement (AP) Scores at grade 5 AND high passing marks on your school qualification (eg the relevant US High School Diploma) AND a high score on the SAT (I) Reasoning Test or ACT.
Please see the further detail on our dedicated pages:
Please note that you must include ALL tests taken and scores achieved (including retakes). We do check information at times, and you may be at a disadvantage if you do not include all of your results.
Some courses require an Admissions Test. The registration dates for these tests are normally in mid-September so please check this carefully in relation to the course you are planning to apply for.
Offers for Mathematics include STEP IIand III exams, which you take in the same summer as your Abitur or IB exams. Further information about STEP and preparation support is available on the Maths page.
International Baccalaureate Diploma
Students taking the International Baccalaureate would need to achieve 42 points overall (including bonus points), with 7,7,6 in Higher Level subjects.
If you are applying for a course that requires Maths at Higher Level in the IB, make sure that you take the Maths: Analysis and Approaches option at Higher Level.
Some courses require an Admissions Test. The registration dates for these tests are normally in mid-September so please check this carefully in relation to the course you are planning to apply for.
Offers for Mathematics include STEP IIand III exams, which you take in the same summer as your Abitur or IB exams. Further information about STEP and preparation support is available on the Maths page.
International A levels
Students taking International A levels will need to achieve at least A*AA or A*A*A, depending on the course applied for.
Some courses require an Admissions Test. The registration dates for these tests are normally in mid-September so please check this carefully in relation to the course you are planning to apply for.
Offers for Mathematics include STEP IIand III exams, which you take in the same summer as your Abitur or IB exams. Further information about STEP and preparation support is available on the Maths page.
School-awarded qualifications
We often receive queries from students taking school-awarded qualifications at schools which do not offer APs/ACT and have instead developed their own curriculum. Unfortunately we cannot accept these qualifications as we can only accept internationally benchmarked qualifications.
You would therefore need to take additional qualifications if you decide to make an application.
English language requirement (if relevant)
If English is not your first language, note that we may include IELTS Academic / TOEFL in offers to candidates whose English seems variable at interview, or in an at-interview admissions assessment; this is more common in essay-based subjects. If you demonstrate very good English Language skills at interview and in any admissions test, we may not need to set you an English Language condition, however. If you are given an English Language condition, the standard requirements are on the university website.
If you already hold such an English language qualification, you should mention it in your UCAS application.
We assess you on academic merit and potential only
Please bear in mind when making your application that we only assess you on your academic merit and potential. We do not require you to be a well rounded individual and to show leadership skills, volunteering etc. Although our students can take part in lots of extra-curricular activities during their time here (see our student profiles and student life section), these are not assessed at all during the admissions process, as we are only interested in your potential to thrive in your academic work.
There are differences in how quickly you specialise between the US and the UK. Applicants to Cambridge choose just one of our courses to apply for (there is no major/minor system), so you'll need to put some thought into which subject you are particularly interested in. We encourage our applicants to develop their academic interests by doing extra reading, problem-solving or whatever is relevant for your subject area. This is not just to impress the academics in the selection process, it is also essential to get enough of a taste of university study in your selected subject that you know you are choosing an area of study that you are genuinely interested in and committed to.
We can reassure you that there is a great deal of flexibility within our courses. Most courses offer a pyramid structure, with broad introductory material at the beginning and opportunity to then specialise later in the course, once you have had chance to see what interests you most. If you are looking for particularly flexible courses, see the Cambridge Natural Sciences course, or Human, Social and Political Sciences.
If your interests change whilst you are at Cambridge, in some cases it is also possible for a student to change courses at the end of a year, and some of the courses include opportunities to "borrow" papers taught by other departments in cases where there is overlap in the material for different courses.
Student profiles
Ana-Maria, Pascual and Max all applied to Cambridge / to Christ's from the USA, so we recommend reading the profiles below, where they've shared their experiences of coming to study at Christ's, including how they've got on with their courses, the application process and living in College.
Even in cases where students aren't from the US, it can be very helpful to read student profiles, so do look up the students who have written about the course you are interested in, and you might like to read accounts by international students in other subjects too - we have a separate page where the profiles are grouped by where the students are from.
There's a Virtual tour which will help you to explore Christ's as well as getting a sense of the university departments and facilities. It's not comprehensive, but you can see quite a lot, including three of our accommodation rooms. See the grounds and facilities section for more information.
For your course research we recommend reading the Christ's subject page (and following links from it to the university pages too). It is essential to read this page before making your application as it also has any subject-specific requirements, advice and resources.
We hope that you will feel free to email the Christ's Admissions Office: admissions@christs.cam.ac.uk with any questions. We'll be pleased to hear from you!
If you would like to visit Cambridge, you are welcome to Visit Christ's (and there are a number of options for this on the page). We also have events (including online events) through the year, so don't worry if you can't travel. We recommend reading this website, and it would be particularly helpful to sign up for our international webinar.
Applying
Application deadline
The application deadline is 15 October 2026.
It is very, very important to check whether your course has a test that requires registration, as you will need to check the registration deadline for this. Depending on your subject you may need to register by mid-September. See the application process section below.
The application process takes a year - you can see an overview of the timings on our how to apply page.
Most UK students apply at the beginning of their final school year, however it is worth considering the timing carefully if you are applying to both UK and US universities.
If you apply before taking your AP and SAT/ACT exams (i.e. if you apply in Sept/early October of your final school year and take your AP exams in the following summer) any offer you are given in January would normally be a conditional offer, and we would wait until we receive your results in the summer to confirm your place. This may be problematic for your choices as your US universities will require you to respond to their offers by May.
If you want to consider both US and UK options, it may therefore be wise to apply after you have taken your AP and SAT/ACT exams. In this case, any offer we make in January would normally be academically unconditional, meaning that you can choose freely between US universities and Cambridge, UK by the May deadline for US universities.
For more information about the timing of application and the difference between applying before or after AP & SAT/ACT exams, please see when to apply.
And note that if you are applying for Mathematics, this information also applies to the timing of your STEP Mathematics exams.
Applying: Test Registration
Once you know which course you are applying for, it's essential to check whether applicants for the course need to register for an admissions test by mid-September. This depends on the course.
We encourage all applicants to read the information about applying on the relevant subject page, as well as the how to apply page well in advance of September.
Details of the tests are updated on the Admissions Tests page by July each year for students applying the following October. You will be able to search for the test centres in the USA if this is relevant for your course.
Applying: UCAS Application
You apply to universities in the UK by making a UCAS application (you can apply to more than one university on the same form).
UCAS opens for applications in September, and then the application deadline for all courses is 15 October. Application is for entry the following October (or for deferred entry the year after). We recommend that you apply as soon as possible once UCAS opens for applications.
When you are completing your UCAS application, you will be asked to provide a Personal Statement. This is different from the US College Essay because we are only interested in your academic interests (we don't assess other activities such as participation in sports, music, leadership skills etc.).
You will also need a UCAS referee who provides both a reference (a recommendation) and, if relevant, predicted grades for any exams you have not yet taken / got results for (e.g. any AP's you will sit in the summer). These go on the UCAS application itself.
Important things to note:
> we don't accept additional recommendations. If you want more than one person to contribute to your reference, they should liaise with the UCAS referee, who can include comments e.g. 'Sophie's History teacher says.....' > US Schools are often not used to providing predicted grades, but these are a requirement if there are exams you have not yet sat, so do explain this to your referee
Applying: MyCApp and Transcript
There is more than one application form. After you have made your UCAS application, you will receive log-in details by email for an additional form called My Cambridge Application.
Most students from the USA will need to upload a transcript as part of the My Cambridge Application. This is another element of our process that US schools are not used to - you will need to ask for an unofficial transcript which they can give to you to upload when asked to in the MyCApp (we are happy for it to be unofficial but we want you to upload it).
If the school wants to email the official version to us (admissions@christs.cam.ac.uk), that is fine, but please also upload the unofficial version as part of your MyCApp so that it is attached to your application - this is important.
Applying: Online interviews
You will see if you read through our how to apply page, that we have interviews as part of our admissions process. We interview the majority of applicants, though not every applicant is selected for interview. Please see the information about interviews in the Christ's International Applicant Support section.
Christ's applicants who are selected for interview are interviewed online in all cases - the arrangements are the same for both UK and international applicants. You can have your interviews either at home (most applicants do this) or at school (if easier or if you have a better internet connection at school).
Obviously there is a time difference between the USA and the UK. If you are selected for interview, your interviews will be scheduled after 06:00 local time, so they will not be in the middle of the night but they are likely to be very early in the day. If you want to check the local time in Cambridge, UK, this is a useful website. Our clocks run on British Summer Time (BST) March to late Oct, and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) from late Oct to March.
It is worth bearing in mind, for example, that a Cambridge interview is not a straightforward academic “examination” of what you know: it is a way of finding out how you handle and apply new information, and whether you would thrive within the supervision (tutorial) system. See the interviews page for the detail.
How can I prepare more for the application process?
Once you're thinking about the detail of the process, we recommend that you read:
Do read these details carefully, as it's important to understand what you will be assessed on and what we are looking for.
It will help if you prepare the following in advance: > Arrange who will write your UCAS reference and provide predicted grades for any exams you've not yet taken. > Have a photo of yourself saved on your computer ready to upload > Get a copy of your unofficial transcript and save it as a pdf file on your computer ready to upload when asked
