Cambridge Scraps State School Admission Targets Amid Allegations of Discrimination

The University of Cambridge has decided to drop its admission target for undergraduate students from state schools, local media reports say.

However, the university said it will still consider which schools applicants attended, during its admission process. However, it will no longer keep a target for the number of applicants from state and private schools, Erudera.com reports.

The decision, which was made during an online open meeting held on March 4, follows accusations of the university discriminating against students from private schools and a decline in study offers from prestigious independent institutions.

At the meeting, university representatives said that there aren't any plans to have a formal target against the school type that will be included in the university’s future Access and Participation Plan (APP).

The university now wants to focus on the new access plan and proceed with it for the 2025/26 and 2028/29 academic years. The Daily Telegraph reports that nearly 73 percent of new enrollments in Cambridge in the 2022/23 academic year came from state schools.

“We will continue to take into account an applicant’s schooling, particularly if they come from a school which has not seen many applications to Cambridge,” a Cambridge University representative told the Daily Telegraph. “Other socio-economic factors will also be considered in the application process to indicate disadvantage of opportunity, as occurs at present.”

The claims that Cambridge had discriminated against students from state schools were denied by Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentic who told the same source that there is more competition to secure a place now because more applicants from state schools have been encouraged to apply.

Established in 1209, Cambridge is the fourth-oldest university in the world. As of the 2020/21 academic year, the number of enrolled students totals 24,270, of which 12,940 are undergraduate students and 11,330 are postgraduates.

According to the latest data available on the university’s website, as of May 2022, the university had more than 315,000 living alumni who have moved to different locations such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Canada, Australia, China, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Italy and Switzerland.

The University of Cambridge maintained its state school admission target for five academic years in a bid to raise the proportion of state-educated undergraduates from 63.4 percent to 69.1 percent.

In 2022/23, 72.9 percent of new students at Cambridge were from state schools, while 27.1 percent were from independent schools. This proportion in Oxford stood at 68.1 percent and the university has not introduced a state school target yet.