Access UCL Scheme

UCL is committed to widening access to higher education and seeks to recruit and retain the brightest students who will thrive in our rigorous teaching and learning environment.

Access UCL is our contextual offer scheme for applicants from groups that are underrepresented at UCL.

Access UCL eligible applicants who are selected for an offer by UCL will receive an offer that is lower than the standard entry requirements for the programme. Any subject specific requirements for programmes will still be included in the contextual offer. For example, if the standard programme requirement includes A levels in Physics and Chemistry, the contextual offer will also require Physics and Chemistry.

Please note that Access UCL is not a guaranteed offer scheme and eligibility for the scheme provides no indication that you will receive an offer from UCL.

School and home postcode eligibility criteria

Applicants may be eligible for the Access UCL Scheme based on their home postcode and attendance at a UK state school. To be eligible, you must be attending or have attended a UK state school for your A Levels, the International Baccalaureate Diploma, Cambridge Pre-U Principal Subjects, Scottish Advanced Highers or the Welsh Baccalaureate and live in an area that has a high level of financial, social or economic deprivation, or low progression to higher education.

Those who meet the school and home postcode criteria will automatically be identified through their UCAS application. You can use the checker below to give an indication of whether your postcode is eligible for Access UCL in the 2024 admissions cycle. You will need your home postcode and the postcode of the school where you are taking or have taken your A levels or equivalent qualifications.

Please bear in mind that the results given are indicative only.

You can find details of the datasets we use to determine eligibility in our Frequently Asked Questions below.

Other eligibility criteria

Applicants who do not live in an eligible home postcode may be eligible for Access UCL if they are care experienced, a young carer or estranged from their family. For an applicant to become eligible through one of these routes, UCL requires satisfactory evidence from a recognised third party.

If you think you may meet the Access UCL eligibility criteria through being care experienced, a young carer or through estrangement, please read the guidance below.

If you are care experienced, you may be eligible for Access UCL.

For Access UCL eligibility purposes, we define someone as care experienced if they have been looked after by a local authority or been in kinship care as a formal agreement with the local authority, for three months in their life. The months do not need to be consecutive.

To be eligible, applicants must meet the following requirements:

  1. Be aged under 25 on their first day at UCL.
  2. Have attended, or be attending, either a UK state school or a UK independent school for A levels, or equivalent qualifications.

If this applies to you, please make sure you tick the 'time in care' box on your UCAS form. We will contact you via email to verify your care experience. Please ensure that you read the submission of evidence section below for details of our verification requirements.

If you are a young carer you may be eligible for Access UCL.

For Access UCL eligibility purposes, we define a young carer as someone whose life is adversely affected by providing substantial care for a parent/guardian that they live with and who has a chronic illness or condition.

To be eligible, applicants must meet the following requirements:

  1. Be aged under 21 on their first day at UCL.
  2. Have attended or be attending a UK state school for A Levels, or equivalent qualifications. 
  3. Caring responsibilities must be substantial and ongoing. 

Please make sure you tick the ‘young carer’ box on your UCAS form. We will contact you via email to verify your young carer status. Please ensure that you read the submission of evidence section below for details of our verification requirements.

If you are estranged from your family, you may be eligible for Access UCL.

For Access UCL eligibility purposes we define an applicant estranged from their family as someone who has no relationship with, or support from, their family.

To be eligible, applicants must meet the following requirements:

  1. Be aged under 25 on their first day at UCL.      
  2. Have attended a UK state school for A Levels, or equivalent qualifications.  
  3. Be permanently estranged from their family with no contact for at least a year.

Please make sure you tick the ‘estranged student’ box on your UCAS form. We will contact you via email to verify your estranged status. Please ensure that you read the submission of evidence section below for details of our verification requirements.

Submission of evidence

Applicants in the 2024 UCAS admissions cycle who have ticked the box in their UCAS application to indicate that they are care experienced, estranged or a young carer will be emailed by UCL with details of how to submit evidence once their application has received an initial assessment.

Applicants who have not declared estrangement, care experience or young caring responsibilities on their UCAS application form, but who think they may meet one of these criteria, must ensure they contact UCL at wp.accessucl@ucl.ac.uk no later than two weeks after the UCAS equal consideration deadline for their programme of study, should they wish to be considered for Access UCL on these grounds. The equal consideration deadline falls on 16 October 2023 for Medicine applicants and 31 January 2024 for all other UCL applicants. 

If you have questions about the evidence that may be required, please email us at wp.accessucl@ucl.ac.uk

Applicants requiring verification of their young carer, estranged or care experienced status who are applying to UCL programmes open beyond the equal consideration deadline, should email wp.accessucl@ucl.ac.uk no later than two weeks after submitting their UCAS application. 

Please note that unfortunately we are unable to consider circumstances not listed on this page for Access UCL eligibility, and UCL encourages students to explore the mitigating circumstances policies of their relevant examination boards instead. 

Access UCL FAQs

A: To be eligible for Access UCL, applicants need to be studying at a UK state school (or at a UK independent school if they are care experienced) for their A levels (or equivalent qualifications).

If an applicant is eligible for the Access UCL scheme and receives an offer, this will be at a lower level than the standard offer for applicants studying A Levels, the International Baccalaureate Diploma, Cambridge Pre-U Principal Subjects, Scottish Advanced Highers or the Welsh Baccalaureate.

A: No. There are two instances in which UCL may not contact an applicant to verify this status:

  1. Those who are automatically identified as eligible through their home postcode and school will not be contacted for verification of their young carer, care experienced or estranged status.
  2. Where it is determined prior to verification being requested that an applicant has achieved or is predicted to achieve results which would not meet the minimum entry requirement for a contextual offer for the programme, a verification request will not be sent.Please note that the request for verification and the initial assessment of an application may take place in either order and therefore receiving a request for verification does not indicate that an applicant may be qualified for entry and does not indicate the likelihood of an applicant receiving an offer.

A: Mature students are assessed against the same Access UCL eligibility criteria as all other applicants. Please note that if you have achieved an undergraduate degree or are in the final year of an undergraduate degree, you will not be eligible for Access UCL.

A: Being a forced migrant does not, in itself, meet the Access UCL eligibility criteria. However, UCL do not restrict Access UCL eligibility based on fee or immigration status, therefore a forced migrant who meets the eligibility criteria will be considered eligible in the usual way.

A. Please update your address via the UCAS hub and email the Access UCL Team at wp.accessucl@ucl.ac.uk to confirm your new address. The Access UCL Team will then contact your school to confirm your new address and reassess your eligibility for the scheme. All notification of changes of address must be received by UCL by 30 June in the year of application. 

A: We use the Index of Multiple of Deprivation and Acorn data to identify levels of financial, social or economic deprivation. We use POLAR classification to look at how likely young people are to participate in Higher Education across the UK. These are defined by your home postcode. The datasets UCL is using to assess applications received in the 2024/25 admissions cycle are:

  • Polar 4: Office for National Statistics (ONS) postcode directory from November 2022 and Office for Students (OfS) POLAR4 data from 2020. (Quintile 1 eligible for scheme).
  • Acorn: Acorn values from 2022 dataset (Groups L, M, O, P, Q eligible for scheme).  © 1979 – 2023 CACI Limited
  • IMD: ONS postcode directory from November 2022 and England: 2019 dataset; Northern Ireland: 2017 dataset; Scotland: 2020 dataset; Wales: 2019 dataset. (Decile 1 or 2 eligible for scheme).

If you have not found the answer to your question, then please get in touch with the Access UCL Team at wp.accessucl@ucl.ac.uk.  

UCL Study Prep

UCL Study Prep introduces topics such as academic reading and writing, referencing and plagiarism, and life at university. You can watch videos of UCL students and academics giving advice and guidance about starting out at university.

This module is completely optional and will not affect your contextual offer. Please visit the UCL Study Prep page for further information and to access UCL Study Prep.


Got questions? Get in touch.

Contact us to talk about any questions you have about the Access UCL scheme, or your eligibility.