First year international student in profile
Medhansh, a first year at Trinity, discusses his experience of the Cambridge Law admissions process as an international student.
There is no one cookie-cutter ‘international student’ application to read law at Cambridge, but the process is definitely different from the one UK applicants face, largely because international applicants need to negotiate more formalities, but the substantive requirements are fairly similar.
The first thing to look out for is if the University recognises the qualification you take as appropriate for making a competitive application : the ‘typical offer’ requirements are made in terms of A level/IB grades, but some national curricula are recognised as appropriate and others are not : see this link to check if yours qualify. I was lucky enough to study four international A levels at school, and also sat 5 Advanced Placement exams, so my qualifications were recognised as equivalent to UK A levels. Once that, and other requirements (English proficiency and so on) are out of the way, the application process can begin in earnest.
Super-curricular exploration is evidence of interest in the law. I demonstrated this by writing a number of essays for competitions, and reading and engaging with a number of books. That last bit — engaging — is important. It was by thinking about each piece of knowledge, each analytical leap, each judgement that I was able to develop my understanding of the law and how it applied to diverse situations. One of the books I read was about great cases in the common law, but insights from it helped me write an essay which was about the role AI ought to play in the legal system. Super-curricular exploration can be any of a number of things : work experience, reading, essay competitions, and online courses. The important thing is to show that you will make a motivated and interested law student, since you think about the law beyond your curriculum. Discussing your super-curricular exploration and how it evinces both ability and interest should make up the lion’s share of your personal statement, although it might be a good idea to discuss (in outline, and as an aside), motivations for studying law in the UK.
Approaching the interview and the CLT as an international student is daunting and there are many ways of dealing with them. There is, however, one piece of advice I would offer categorically, which is to be wary of services touting their ability to guarantee a Cambridge place, especially if they charge exorbitant and extortionate amounts. This is because these companies have no official links to the university and are more likely than not working off of information that is in the public domain anyway. Some of their advice might even be actively harmful.
The interview is the bit of the Cambridge application process most shrouded in mystery, partly because the interviews aren’t standardised experiences. There are excellent, and detailed guides to the interview process online (a mock interview by Trinity College fellows available on YouTube was fairly similar in form, though not in substance to my own), and in books like Letters to a Law Student by Nicholas McBride (incidentally, also the author of a popular textbook of Tort law used by some first years, and a current member of the law faculty). Your being an international does not matter to the law fellows at your college; they’re concerned with competence, not passport. Being an international student could affect how you prepare for interview, in terms of, say, being unable to access certain schemes and programmes, but that isn’t really material. Doing well in the interview is a function of demonstrating analytical acuity and an ability to reason, and thinking about the implications of rules and statements. I would recommend thinking about the possible questions that could be asked about your personal statement, and looking at publicly available interview questions to get a feel for the process. The CLT is really just an essay, and internationals and UK students alike react to it similarly. However, the CLT questions are sometimes related to contemporary affairs in some (slightly abstract) way. Therefore, it might be a good idea to read UK newspapers and magazines of intellectual merit. The BBC has a law section, as do the Guardian and the Times. You should also be engaging with UK and world politics (at least in outline), perhaps by reading a magazine like the Economist.
Throughout the process, including after receiving an offer, it is probably a good idea to spend some time familiarising yourself with British history, politics, economy and society. This is because a lot of the cases and statutes you study in the tripos make a lot more sense once you understand their contexts in space and time. For example, in Tort law, you might look at a case called Alcock v Chief Constable for South Yorkshire Police when discussing psychiatric harm, and the rule laid down makes more sense once you understand the impact of the Hillsborough disaster on the British psyche. Interestingly, a key case in criminal law, Airdale NHS Trust v Bland also arose in the aftermath of that disaster. In constitutional law, the rules on Northern Irish devolution are more understandable once you know the context of the troubles.
As an Indian student (albeit one with international qualifications), my experience in applying was generally positive (the typical pre-interview/offer day nerves aside), and on comparing notes with friends from the UK, it seems that differences are largely based in form (and forms, there is a degree of bureaucracy involved) rather than of substance.
