Discover UCL: exploring university life as a deaf or hard of hearing student

As applications open for Discover UCL 2026, we’re looking back at the 2025 edition of this specialist summer school run in conjunction with the UCL Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL). 

Discover UCL is a three day non-residential summer school for prospective students, showcasing the support on offer for deaf and hard of hearing students at UCL and providing information, advice, and guidance on the university admissions process and how to access additional funding as a disabled student. Sessions are provided by a combination of UCL staff, academics, and current students as well as careers focused sessions. 

Highlights from the programme included inspiring talks from two deaf DCAL staff members sharing their personal journeys through higher education and how this shaped their future careers. Participants also heard from current students including the Disabled Students’ Officer from the UCL Students’ Union covering support available at the SU and the wider university. 

The programme balanced informative sessions with opportunities to build friendships and teamwork. A particular favourite was the ultimate icebreaker challenge involving making a tower out of spaghetti sticks, tape, and marshmallows. 

“The career mapping session was great as it allowed me to clearly see my goals down on paper and really think of ways how I can take that next step to prepare.” - Discover UCL participant 

Support was embedded throughout the programme to ensure all participants could fully engage. This included a dedicated team of British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters and human captioners. 

“I really enjoyed learning more about the proficiency of BSL because it’s definitely something that I want to learn.” - Discover UCL participant 

The feedback from participants was extremely positive. Before the programme, just 8% of participants felt confident in their knowledge about what it’s like to be a university student or the disability services available. By the end of the programme, this had risen to 100% of participants. 

Similarly, confidence in managing finances at university rose from 25% to 100% and, most significantly, understanding of how to access the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA), the area which participants were least confident about, increased from 8% to 77%. 

One participant noted, “I enjoyed learning more about the DSA as that was the main aspect I wanted to learn from today. It was also reassuring to find out about the number of resources that are available for me!”

Jalal Pour, the Discover UCL programme lead, said: 

“Discover is one of my favourite programmes to work on and this year was no different. We had our largest cohort of participants since the pandemic, and it was amazing to see how quickly they bonded and all became friends with each other. A particular highlight for me this year was seeing the cohort frantically work together on the final day to build the tallest free-standing structure possible using just spaghetti sticks, a few marshmallows and cello tape. I think there were definitely some budding engineers within the group!”

Applications are now open for 2026 and will close on Tuesday 16 June. Now entering its twelfth year, we are excited to welcome the next cohort to this programme. This a great opportunity for participants to ask all the questions they’ve ever wanted to ask about university, funding, admissions, and anything in between as well as a great chance to meet new friends and get a taste of university life.  

Interested in applying for Discover UCL 2026?

Apply for Discover UCL 2026

Application deadline: Tuesday 16 June