Entry requirements

Academic requirements

You must meet all of these conditions:

• You are currently enrolled in a higher education institution and studying towards a bachelor's degree.
• You have completed at least one year of study at university level at the time of your application, which should be evidenced on your transcript. If you're studying towards a 4-year bachelor's degree, we strongly recommend that you have completed at least 2 years of study.
• You have a strong ‘B’ average or 3.0 out of 4.0 Grade Point Average (GPA). We have a grade conversion in place for all our partner universities who do not grade on a 4.0 GPA system. If you are unsure of the conversion in place for your home university, please contact the Centre for Study Abroad Inbound team for further information.

Mitigating circumstances

If your grades are slightly below the academic requirement due to personal or exceptional circumstances, we may still be able to consider your application. To complete your application, you will need to provide two additional documents:

• An academic reference written by a faculty member at your home university
• A personal statement written by your explaining the circumstances that affected your academic performance

Please note that each application is assessed individually, and we cannot guarantee acceptance onto the programme if you do not meet the academic requirements.

English language requirements

The English language requirements for our Study Abroad programmes are detailed below.

Study Abroad (General pathway) and Study Abroad (Subject pathway)

Students applying to either the General or Subject pathway programmes, must meet one of the following conditions:

• English is your native language.
• You can provide one of the certificates listed on our language profile. You will need to check that you have achieved your qualification within the valid timeframe. If you are studying at one of our partner universities, applying to study at Bristol for one semester and intend to submit a Letter of Attestation, you can submit a completed copy of Bristol’s English Language Letter of Attestation (Office document, 62kB) . Please note that we can only accept the Bristol template linked above. We cannot accept individual letters submitted by your home university.
• English is the language you are taught and assessed in at your home university. If you think this applies to you, please contact cfsa-inbound@bristol.ac.uk in advance of the application deadline to confirm if an exemption is already in place.

For students joining our Study Abroad Programme for a full academic year on a Student visa, we can only accept English language qualifications that are written in English. If your qualification is not in English, you must provide a professional or certified translation. This translation must include the contact details of the translator or translation company.

STABEL (Study Abroad with English Language) programme

A full list of accepted English language tests can be found on Profile H for pre-sessional students. Please be sure to note any differences between requirements for the in-person and online courses and the 6-week and 10-week courses. 

Please note that for the STABEL programme, we can only accept one of the tests listed in the table linked above. If you are applying for an in-person course, your test must conform to UKVI Secure English Language Test (SELT) standards. For further information about SELTs, please read the latest UKVI guidance.