Applying from South Africa

Please be aware that you would not be able to make a competitive application with the National Senior Certificate (NSC) alone - it will be important to undertake further study if you wish to apply to Cambridge. We recommend one of the options below: 

You could take International A levels. You will need to achieve at least A*AA or A*A*A, depending on the course applied for. See our page for International A levels, and the required grades for each course are set out in the 'offers' section of the relevant subject page. 

You could take the International Baccalaureate Diploma - see the list of IB World schools in South Africa. You 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. See our page for IB students.

You could apply with a combination of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) and five USA Advanced Placement Tests. In this case you would need to achieve BOTH an overall grade of 7 in relevant subjects of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) AND achieve 5's in five USA Advanced Placement Tests. Although we can't admit you with SAT/ACT alone, most successful applicants applying with a combination of South African and USA qualifications also achieve the required level in ACT/SAT. Please see our pages on Advanced Placement Tests and SAT/ACT for further information. 

Some students who want to apply for an Arts and Humanities course at Cambridge first of all take a foundation course at a UK university or study for a year on a suitable course at university.

Whichever qualifications you apply with, please also note....

Some of the Cambridge 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 II and III exams, which you normally take in the same summer as your National Senior Certificate / A level / IB exams. Further information about STEP and preparation support is available on the Maths page.
 

A high level of English is needed to study at Cambridge. Alongside your academic ability and potential, we will look for evidence of your English language competence when selecting students for interview. Please read our page on English language requirements (including the lists in the interview selection section) in full. 

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 our international students in other subjects too - we have a separate page where the profiles are grouped by where the students are from.

The application deadline is 15 October, however it is very, very important to check whether your course has a required test that you need to book, as you will need to check the deadline for this. Admissions Tests normally have a registration deadline in mid-September, some time before the application deadline. See the application process section below.

We recommend that you apply as soon as possible once UCAS opens for applications in September. Your course may require registration in September for an admissions test (depending on the subject) and then the UCAS application deadline for all courses is 15 October. Application is for entry the following October (or for deferred entry the year after). 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, as there are a number of parts to the application procedure which may take time to organise and complete:

1. If you have a test that requires registration (needed for some of the courses), you will need to make sure you are registered for this by the relevant deadline. Details 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 South Africa.
2. There is more than one application form. You first make a UCAS application and then you complete an additional form called My Cambridge Application.
3. You will need a referee who can provide a reference and predicted grades for any exams that you have not yet taken.
4. You will also need to arrange for your school to provide a transcript, which you upload as part of My Cambridge Application. 

Do also explore our additional support pages for international applicants, and note that on 20 September Christ's publishes the current applicants section, which will support you (in detail!) through the next steps once you have submitted a valid application and chosen Christ's College in your UCAS application.

Please have a look at our finance section for details of the costs and financial support available. In addition to the university-wide awards from the Cambridge, Commonwealth, European and International Trusts, you'll see on our page on international financial support.that at Christ's we have Christ's College International Awards, GTF BIG Talent Scholarships and Christ's Awards.

The Christ's College International Awards awards are worth £10,000 a year and may be accompanied by a full or partial waiver of the College Fee.

More information is available on our page on international financial support.

There's a Cambridge University Virtual tour which will help you to explore Christ's College as well as getting a sense of the university departments and facilities. It's not comprehensive, but you can see quite a lot, including 360 degree views of parts of the grounds and three of our accommodation rooms. See the grounds and facilities section for more information. 

Do explore the undergraduate admissions section, and the international students section plus the relevant subject page in particular. If you read through some of the student profiles and the student life section, you'll also pick up lots of detail about College life.

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.