Thank you for choosing to apply to United World Colleges. We are excited to have you as an applicant, and wish you every success. 

This section contains important information regarding the application process. Please read it carefully. If you have any questions, please contact selections@uwcgb.org and we will do our best to answer them as quickly as we can.

Please allow 3-4 hours in total to complete this application. You can save the application at any time and come back to it later.

SELECTIONS PROCESS OVERVIEW

You are applying to study at one of 18 United World Colleges for two years, which will see you gain an International Baccalaureate Diploma. This is equivalent to an A-Level in the UK. 

This is the first of two stages of the selections process. You will be asked to answer a number of questions about yourself, write three short essays, and provide us with references from your teacher and activity leader. These will then be assessed by us, and a number of candidates will be shortlisted. 

The application form, as well as all references, must be in English. We will not accept applications written in Welsh or any other language. We will also not accept any references that are not in English. 

If you are shortlisted, you will be invited to the second stage of selections, which will involve you attending a personal assessment in January 2023. The assessment will consist of a series of activities and tasks for you to complete and will take place either online, or in person at UWC Atlantic in Wales. At that point in time you will also be asked to choose a list of colleges you wish to be considered for. The UWC National Committee of Great Britain will then allocate the successful applicants to colleges in January - February 2023. Students will then attend their UWCs from September 2023 (or January 2024 in the case of Waterford Kamhlaba UWC of Southern Africa).

UWC SELECTION CRITERIA

Each of our schools and colleges has its own distinct character and identity, influenced by their host country, the specific setting, cultural context and their community. What makes each one of them a UWC is a deliberately diverse student body, with students coming from all over the world, bringing with them very different backgrounds to learn and live together - and their joined mission to make education a force for peace and sustainability. 

Each year, we look for applicants to join our schools, who bring the following:

• Intellectual curiosity and motivation: a genuine urge to learn about the world around oneself. The ability to recognise the details and grasp the breadth of issues (such as  global and local concerns) involved in any given topic and to analyse them thoroughly 
• Active commitment: the ability to develop and the readiness to reflect, question and confront one’s own values, to measure one’s behaviour within family and community against one’s own values, and to act on one’s own beliefs accordingly and responsibly 
• Social competence: the ability and readiness to make contact with other people, to interact respectfully with them, to work together with them in a team and to achieve solutions; the ability to express oneself adequately in different situations and to different people
• Resilience, personal responsibility and integrity: the ability to look after oneself physically and emotionally during the challenging and transformational  experience that a UWC education offers; the personal motivation to adhere to UWC’s common moral and ethical principles, a sense of humility and an ability to listen and value another person’s opinion and experience 
• Motivation for UWC: passion, ability and serious incentive to contribute to and actively promote UWC’s values

FINANCIAL REQUIREMENTS

Your and your family’s financial situation will not affect the selections process. We do have some financial aid available, however, this will only cover a portion of the school fees. In most cases, we will not be able to cover the costs of transport to/from your college, or any other related expenditure (e.g. health insurance, laptop). 

AGE REQUIREMENTS

• Applicants must be at least 16 years of age by 1 September 2023.
• Applicants must be at most 17 years of age by 1 September 2023.
• Some colleges may consider slightly older students. The decision to admit older students is at their sole discretion.

PARENTAL CONSENT

We will need one of your parents or guardians to fill out the parental consent form which forms part of this application.

APPLICATION FEE

The late application fee for applying to United World Colleges through the UWC National Committee of Great Britain for 2023 entry is £180. The National Committee is a charity, and your application fee will go towards processing your application, and towards running the assessment. This means the fee is non-refundable even if your application is not successful. Please contact us at selections@uwcgb.org if you feel this fee would prevent you from applying to UWC.

DEADLINE

The deadline for submitting your application is the 18th December 2022 at 11:59PM GMT. We will only assess your application if by that point:

• You have filled out all sections of the application;
• Your parents/guardians have sent us their consent form;
• You have paid the £180 application fee;
• You have clicked ‘Submit’ at the end of the application and have received a confirmation email from us.

We acknowledge that your teachers and activity leaders are busy people, and we will therefore accept and process applications without a completed academic or activity reference. However, we will need your referees to submit these by 6th January 2023. We will send out reminders to them on a regular basis until they have sent them in. We may also ask you to prompt your referees if they don’t respond to our reminders.