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Undergraduate Study

 

How will my personal information be used?

The personal information that you give us when you register an interest in, or sign up for, or otherwise engage with, pre-undergraduate admissions events/activities/updates will be processed and held by, and may be shared within, the University of Cambridge (including its Departments and Faculties, and also its individual Colleges, each of which is a separate legal entity – hereafter “the University”, “we” or “us”) for the purposes of:

  • organising events/activities, including event selection; 
  • tracking future outcomes of event participants, including applications to the University and other Higher Education Institutions; 
  • monitoring and research including (but not limited to) evaluation of the impact of events/activities (including events not organised by the University); 
  • producing statistics, including event application and participation numbers, and participant outcomes; and 
  • sending you additional information about the University, as well as helpful resources relating to applying to Higher Education, by post and (if you wish) also by email, phone or text message.

We consider the processing of your personal information for the above purposes to be necessary for the performance of tasks we carry out in the public interest (i.e. running events to promote access to Higher Education, informing students of their educational options, increasing educational attainment, and carrying out related evaluation, tracking and research) or necessary for the pursuit of our legitimate interests in attracting applicants to the University. 

If you are asked to provide any sensitive information about yourself, such as your ethnicity, health/disability status, religion, or sexual orientation, the uses we’ll make of that information will be explained to you at the point we collect it from you, and you’ll usually have the option not to provide it. If we do hold this information, we will normally use it for research and monitoring purposes as well as any specific uses you have been told about.

We may run follow-up surveys to ask for your opinions and evaluate events and other activities that you attend or participate in.  While these are very helpful for us, they are optional and, when answering the specific questions, you will sometimes have the option not to supply certain answers if you do not wish to. 

We only send you additional information about the University by electronic means if you wish to receive this.  We may use carefully selected third party service providers to run event bookings, or to contact you by email or text message.

Who will my personal information be shared with?

We may share your personal information with third parties (including your school/college, partner(s) with whom we may have collaborated to organise and/or evaluate this event, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the Department for Education, the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT), any third parties managing HEAT’s database, and HEAT service subscribers and approved researchers) for the same purposes as listed above, and also for storage. Please note that only certain events/initiatives involve sharing your personal information with HEAT and related parties. Further information on HEAT and their privacy policy can be found hereFurther information on linking HESA datasets is available on the HESA website.

The University and third parties may publish aggregated data based on personal information from event applicants and/or participants, including analysis and research utilising these data, but the data will be anonymised and no information which could identify you will be published.

On occasion, the above types of use and sharing may involve the transfer of your personal information outside of the European Economic Area (eg to run an overseas event, or to use a service provider based overseas). These transfers are always carried out with appropriate safeguards in place, such as proper contracts, to ensure the confidentiality and security of your personal information.

How long will my personal information be kept for?

If you attend any particular event/activity, we will only retain certain detailed information that we need for the purposes of event/activity administration for as long as necessary to serve that purpose.  In order to conduct long-term evaluation, tracking and research about access to Higher Education, and in relation to certain events/initiatives only, we will retain some of your key personal information as follows:

  • until the end of the academic year in which you reach the age of 30 (or, if you are a mature student, for 10 years from the point you provide it);
  • if you enter Higher Education within this time, until 15 years after you graduate.

After these periods, any personal information will be removed from our records, but we may continue to retain and process your information in an anonymised form.

Cambridge Admissions Office Booking Policy

Cancellation by attendees: If you are no longer able to attend an event, you can cancel your booking up to 10 calendar days before the event date and for paid events you will be entitled to a full refund of the ticket price. Please note that the 10 calendar days’ notice is not inclusive of the event date. To cancel your place please email caoevents@admin.cam.ac.uk with the following details:

  • Event name and date
  • The name on the booking
  • The email address on the booking

Cancellation by Cambridge Admissions Office: While we make every effort to avoid any changes to our schedule of events, in the unlikely event that we have to cancel an event all booking costs paid to us will be returned in full. However we cannot reimburse the cost of any pre-booked travel, accommodation or other costs so we recommend you consider insurance for this. 

Please note the booking and cancellation policy above only applies to Cambridge Admissions Office events. If you are attending another event delivered by the University of Cambridge, please check with the event organiser for their policy as it may differ.

Further information

For more information about how we handle your personal information, and your rights under data protection legislation, please see https://www.information-compliance.admin.cam.ac.uk/data-protection/general-data.

Last updated January 2021