This section is specifically about additional support available for schools in: Herefordshire; Worcestershire; Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire; and the London borough of Harrow. If your school is not located in these regions, you can find your link area college here (UK only). Please still see our other sections on support for schools and students though, as they are relevant to all!
As well as being able to make use of the various open-access or UK-wide events and programmes we run, we also work closely with schools in our designated link areas both in person and virtually.
As well as providing oppportunities to visit us here in Cambridge, our team aims to spend a few weeks each year in our link areas visiting schools and colleges to deliver information, advice and guidance sessions.
In some instances, we may coordinate our visit dates or online support with our Oxford counterpart. This normally means we collaborate on the sessions we are offering, and maximise the number of schools we can see between us rather than both attending the same school(s) if in person.
We usually work with students in Year 10 and above, with priority for students in Year 12, but we can discuss sessions for younger students if it is felt it would be beneficial and we have capacity in our schedule. We're also happy to spend time with staff involved with supporting university applications/UCAS (in person or online).
Below we outlined the different kinds of support we provide and how you might interact with us.
Teachers and advisers in our link area schools are strongly encouraged to get in touch with us at any point in the year! This might be in relation to events we are offering, or if you simply have a question to ask us - there's no question too small or silly, as we would much rather you had an answer!
You can write to the Admissions and Outreach Officers Ellie and Kristy at access@christs.cam.ac.uk. Email is generally easier for us in the first instance, but we're happy to arrange a phone call or online call at a mutually convenient time to discuss queries too.
In-School Visits
What kinds of sessions do you offer?
Below is an overview of the sessions we usually offer for groups we are seeing in a single-intervention/talk in their school. These can be adapted to the specific context of your group, for example if they would benefit from something more general about university, or have already received other introductory content prior to our session.
KS4: Aiming High & Opening Doors: An Introduction to University. This session focuses on why people might consider going to university, the kinds of doors university opens to different career options, how different courses lead to different careers, and thinking about how to select their post-16 subjects and qualifications to enable them to make competitive applications to selective universities.
Year 12: Introduction to Cambridge and Competitive Applications. This session covers what Cambridge has to offer, how we differ from other universities, an overview of the application process, and how to prepare during Year 12 for a competitive application (supercurriculars). We also have a Supercurriculars, Courses and Beyond session that looks at exploring interests, courses and how these translate into careers (but not other Cambridge-specific or applying content).
How long are sessions?
A typical session will be about an hour. We tend to cover a lot of ground in a single session! Sessions shorter than 45 minutes are not normally feasible for how we have designed the content in our sessions. We appreciate that taking time from taught classes can be difficult to secure, so we are also happy to take requests for after-school slots too!
How do we arrange a visit to our school?
If you would like to organise a visit to your school, please sign-up to mailing list and look out for emails advertising dates when we will next be in your area - these will be circulated to all school contacts in the relevant area. Alternatively, you can always email us at access@christs.cam.ac.uk.
Upcoming dates: we are currently planning to be in the wider Lincolnshire area between 20-24 January and 10-14 March 2025. Schools in these areas will receive an email from us outling how to submit a request and sessions available.
Visiting with a group
We welcome group visits from schools in our link areas at different stages of the year. From 2025, we will be trialling a Visit Day model which should enable us to accommodate a larger number of school groups through the year. Schools in our link areas will receive priority booking access to these; places will only be given to schools from outside our link areas if there is the space to do so after considering requests from link schools.
School visit dates will normally be within the university term time - we'd like your students to be able to meet some of our undergraduates!
Upcoming visit dates:
KS4 Days: Friday 31 January , Tuesday 4 March 2025
KS5 Days: Friday 17 January, Tuesday 4 February, Monday 10 February, Tuesday 18 March 2025
Future dates for later in the spring and summer, as well as next autumn, will be added in due course.
See the Visit Days page for full details.
What about younger age groups?
At the moment, we don't currently have capacity to offer visits to groups younger than Year 10, so we are prioritising those closer to the point of university applications. If you're visiting as part of a different event within the university and would like a college tour, however, please let us know!
Are there any times we definitely can't visit?
Please note that we don't normally arrange organised visits to the college in the following periods: the second half of November and throughout December as we need to focus on the undergraduate admissions period; and mid-May until late June as our undergraduates will be in their exam period. If you are considering visiting in July, we would strongly recommend making use of the University Open Days.
Please also be aware that our university terms are quite short, so there are periods where we may be less likely to have (as many) student ambassadors. This includes September, July and late March.
However, self-guided tours are still ok!
July Open Days: Overnight Accommodation
During the summer open days, we have a limited number of accommodation rooms for prospective applicants from state schools in our link areas. We will contact staff at link schools who are on our Teachers and Advisers list in the first instance, as this is our most up-to-date and accurate contact record. If you are a school in our link areas, please sign up here!
Rooms are single-occupancy for one night, and priority is for groups travelling with a staff member and those from the furthest distances. To maximise the number of young people able to stay with us, unforuntately we cannot accommodate parents, carers or other supporters. Where there is space, we may consider individual booking requests. Accommodation includes dinner (if here in time) and breakfast. Rooms can normally be accessed after 2pm, and they must depart by 10am the following day.
In 2025, we will be offering accommodation on the nights of Wednesday 9th July and Thursday 10th July 2025 (i.e. each of the nights prior to the open days of 10th and 11th July 2025).
HE, Careers, and UCAS Fairs
UCAS Discovery Fairs
Where we have capacity, a representative from Christ's will join our central team colleagues at the UCAS Discovery Fairs in Lincoln and Worcester each year. Please do encourage your students to come and speak with us, and if you're accompanying a group it's always really lovely for us to put a face to a name or reestablish a contact!
Sometimes this does clash with some of our annual residential programmes though (especially if in March)!
School-organised HE/Careers Fairs
We receive several requests each year to attend school HE and careers fairs. However, please note that because of constraints on our time, we are not usually able to attend routine HE and Careers Fairs, though please continue to let us know if you would like us to consider your event. Please be aware that we will normally only accept these requests if we happen to already be in the area and have space in our schedule to do so. Where possible, it is also preferable is we are able to do a targeted smaller-group session for students in KS4 or above.
West Midlands: Herefordshire and Worcestershire
West Midlands Webinar Series
This is a collaborative online series between colleges at Oxford and Cambridge for all state-educated Year 12 students in the West Midlands (including Herefordshire and Worcestershire). This is an excellent way to introduce any students to competitive universities and Oxbridge and takes places in October each year. There are no restrictions to the number of participants from any one school.
In 2024, the series included the following sessions: What can Oxbridge Offer? | Oxbridge Applications & Preparation | The Student Perspective
HE+ Project: Worcester Consortium
HE+ is a collaborative project between the University of Cambridge and its Colleges, working together with groups of state schools and colleges in 19 regions of the UK. It has been running for over 10 years, and in 2021-22 worked with over 4000 Year 12 students from over 170 schools participating in the project.
Christ's College supports the HE+ consortium based in our Link Area of Worcestershire, with Worcester Sixth Form College as the Hub School and working with schools from across the county. To find out more about HE+, please see the programme page here. For queries about HE+ Worcester, please get in touch with Ellie at access@christs.cam.ac.uk in the first instance.
Not in Worcestershire? In addition to the regional programme, HE+ also provides opportunities for all students to explore their subject beyond the curriculum through the HE+ website. Here you will find a range of subject enrichment materials produced by Cambridge postgraduates and academics at the cutting edge of research in their field, including guided activities, questions to think about and suggestions for further reading.
East Midlands: Lincolnshire incl. North and North East Lincs
Oxbridge Collaborative Webinars: Y13 Applicants
Each November we collaborate with our colleague at Lincoln College, Oxford to provide interview, advice and guidance webinars for Oxbridge applicants. Applicants do not need to know if they will be invited to interview in order to attend.
Tackling nerves head on, we'll provide insight into the interview process, how to prepare, and will go through some sample interview questions and the kinds of thinking and response that can help students to do well at interview. We will also be joined by some current students in relevant subjects at Oxford and Cambridge to give their perspectives on the process.
Typically, there are separate sessions for each of the Arts, Social Sciences, STEM, and Medical Sciences in late afternoons through the same week. Students need to complete a form individually in order to receive the joining details (they cover all sessions, so if they're applying for joint honours courses they can attend the most relevant session/s to them).
Students applying on a gap year are also welcome. Further information is available here.
Other University Events for Schools
There are lots of other opportunities organised by other parts of the university that you may wish to look into, particularly for subject-specific opportunities or those for younger students.
Cambridge Festival: School Days (KS2 and KS3)
The Cambridge Festival is a mix of online and in-person events covering all aspects of the world-leading research happening at Cambridge across all disciplines. As part of this, there are two dedicated school days, which are free to attend, and there are also some travel bursaries available.
For details on the school days, click here. To see more about the Festival in general, click here. The 2025 festival runs from 19 March to 4 April.
Cambridge Physics Experience (Y7-12)
The Department of Physics offers several one-day programmes for students between Year 7-12 at the Cavendish Laboratory. These are popular and early booking is advisable. The department also offers bursaries to schools in order to attend their events.
Faculty of Divinity
Divinity teaches the degree of Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge and each year offers taster and study day opportunities. They also have a great set of resources for teachers - check everything out here.
Faculty of Classics
The Faculty has a dedicated outreach officer who would love to hear from you! Whether it's a subject taster talk in school, an in-person study day or if you'd like to learn more about offering Classical Civilisation at your school, see all their information here.
Is there anything you don't offer?
There are a few things we aren't able to support with - we simply don't have the capacity!
This includes: reviewing personal statements; mock interviews; general UCAS sessions; student finance talks. We also don't typically attend school HE/Career fairs (see section above).
However, we provide online, open-access opportunities for both personal statements and student finance as part of our regular webinar series. Please direct students to take advantage of these - they're not (entirely) specific to Cambridge, though may make some references where appropriate or as examples.