Undergraduate fee status assessments at the University of Cambridge are carried out by either the central University or by your College. The outcome will be confirmed if you are offered a place on the course. All assessment decisions are governed by UK Government regulations, which means that the outcome will be the same regardless of whether your College or the University assess your fee status.
Most assessments will be based on the information provided in your application to Cambridge. If your fee status is uncertain, the University fees staff or the College will reach out to request additional information and supporting documents. This should not be taken as an indicator that you will be offered an interview or a place on the course.
Applicants at all Colleges, except the following, have their fee status assessed by the central University:
- Christ’s College
- Gonville & Caius College
- Lucy Cavendish College
- St Edmund's College*
- St John's College.
*Applicants for Graduate Medicine are assessed by the College.
Applicants to these Colleges will be contacted by the University's fee status staff if their assessment is unclear. All other enquiries should be directed to the College admissions team.
Documents required for a fee status assessment
If you have been contacted by your College or the central University regarding your fee status, you must email the following documents:
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A completed Fee Status Assessment Questionnaire
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Evidence of your nationality or nationalities
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Evidence of your UK immigration status (unless you are a British or Irish citizen)
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Evidence of your country/countries of 'ordinary residence' throughout the three years leading up to the course start date, selected from the 'Acceptable documents' list below.
Not all British citizens are eligible for Home fees. If you have been contacted, you will need to provide all of the documents mentioned above, see the FAQs below for more information.
Acceptable documents
All documents MUST be submitted in PDF format and be 2.5 MB or under. Submitting documents in other formats will significantly delay your assessment.
- Nationality: Passport or national ID card.
- UK immigration status (if not a British or Irish citizen): copy of your Biometric Residence Permit (front and back), immigration status share code, or visa entry page(s) in your current and old passport(s).
- Ordinary residence (three different documents from the list below covering the full period 1 September 2022 - 1 September 2025.
Ordinary residence documents
Documents addressed to your parent or spouse must be accompanied by a copy of your full birth, adoption or marriage certificate showing their names as evidence of your relationship.
- Bank statements showing in-person transactions during each of the three school summer holidays leading up to your planned course start date. These should be issued by the primary bank account used by you, or your family member, for in-person spending. Account balance and transaction amounts can be redacted. Statements containing few in-person transactions and / or mainly direct debits or standing orders will not be accepted as they do not sufficiently prove the account holder's residence during the specified time period.
- Travel tickets (e.g. flight booking / Eurostar tickets) showing all journeys in and out of the country you've lived in since 1 August 2022.
- Employment contract(s) (in full) that were in use from 1 August 2022 onwards. This includes any contract extension letters, or employer letters confirming an overseas posting. Salary or allowance figures can be redacted.
- Utility bills for your home address for August 2022 and August 2024, including the pages that show actual usage. If you changed your address during this period, please provide a utility bill from August 2023 as well.
- Council tax bills covering the periods August 2022 and August 2024.
- Tenancy agreement(s) from 1 August 2022 onwards. We only need to see the pages confirming property address, tenants’ names and length of tenancy. If you submit this document, please include a bank statement from August 2022 and a utility bill from August 2024.
- UK driving licence (including provisional licences).
Applicant FAQs
These FAQs refer to applicants and offer holders whose fee status assessment is undertaken by the central University.
The University takes its record management keeping responsibilities seriously and its Information and Compliance Office ensures that the institution complies with its legal responsibilities in this area. For further information on how the University obtains, retains and deletes applicant data and documents, please see the Statement published by the University's Information and Compliance Office.
Firstly, please check that the email is genuine; all correspondence from the fee status staff will have been sent from feestatusandpolicy@admin.cam.ac.uk.
All applicants who have been contacted by the fees staff will need to send in the following documents:
- a complete Fee Status Assessment Questionnaire;
- appropriate evidence from the list of ordinary residence documents (see above).
Send your documents by email to feestatusandpolicy@admin.cam.ac.uk. The subject field of your email should follow this format:
UCAS Personal ID Surname College Name Course Name. For example: 0123456789 Bloggs Fitzwilliam Computer Science
All documents MUST be submitted in PDF file format with a maximum individual file size of 2.5 MB.
The fees staff can only advise on, or respond to questions related to, your fee status. All other queries need to be directed to your College admissions team.
Fee status is determined by a combination of three factors: nationality, immigration status, and country or countries of ordinary residence. British citizens who have lived or been educated in another country will need to provide further information to allow the fees staff to determine their country of ordinary residence during the three years leading up to their course start date. In some cases this will result in the student being assessed as Overseas.
Your College / the University may also contact you if you are a British citizen who was born outside the UK and subsequently moved here, as we will want to understand why you are now resident in the UK. Many of the different Home fee categories are only available to applicants who have not been living in the UK wholly or mainly for the purposes of education.
We will only ask you to submit additional documents if we cannot make a fully informed and accurate assessment without them. Please note that Student Finance may also ask you to submit these documents if you apply for a tuition and / or maintenance loan.
The fees staff will let your College know the outcome of your fee status assessment. Open applications will be allocated to a College, and the applicant's fee status will then be assessed by that College or by the University as appropriate (see tables at the top of the page).
If your fee status is assessed by the University, your College will be copied into all correspondence. Your College will receive updates on your fee status assessment, and can access all documents you have submitted.
Applicants for the Standard Course in Medicine (A100) should refer to the tables at the top of the page to check whether their fee status will be assessed by their College or by the central University. Graduate Course in Medicine (A101) applicants at St Edmund's College and Lucy Cavendish College will have their fee status assessed by their College.
All applicants to Medicine (UCAS course code A100) have their fee status assessed early on in the application process, as the UK government imposes an annual cap on the number of 'Overseas' Medicine students. Being contacted about your fee status does not mean that you will be offered a place - it simply shows that more information was required in order to make an assessment.
This depends on the complexity of your situation! For more complex assessments, it will depend on the time it takes for the student to get their supporting documents together. Providing all the required documents when requested will ensure a faster assessment.
Firstly, don't worry! The number of applications and offers made each year means that the University cannot always confirm fee status by the time that an offer is made. However, your fee status will be confirmed as part of the offer whenever possible.
The fees staff prioritise assessments for any applicant whose fee status was still unclear at offer stage, to ensure that the offer holder has sufficient time to make a decision before their College's and UCAS's reply deadlines. Longer delays in making an assessment beyond that date are normally due to external factors, such as a change in immigration status.
Firstly, please refer to the Is my fee status correct page and UKCISA's guidance document. if you still believe that your fee status is incorrect, you can request a fee status reassessment from the office who carried out your original assessment. Please refer to the tables at the top of the page for confirmation of who to contact.
If the University carried out your assessment, you will need to contact the fees staff at feestatusandpolicy@admin.cam.ac.uk. Applicants to Colleges who carry out their own assessments will need to contact their College admissions team. In either case, please send a completed Fee Status Assessment Questionnaire and supporting documents to the appropriate office.