Advising families in Los Angeles · New York · London · Hong Kong · Singapore
For families applying from abroad
Your child is competing in the harder half of the pool, and most of what decides the outcome is settled years before they apply. Sixty minutes with an adviser gives you the curriculum decision, the subject combination, a realistic course list and every date that matters, in writing.
£450 on booking. It comes off either package in full if you carry on. No obligation. The written plan's yours whatever you decide.
Watch this before your child picks their subjects
Video slot reserved
3 minutes.
Working with us
By the end of the call you will have
One decision, made properly, inside a week.
We run the whole application with you. Start to offer.
From this decision to the university offer. However many years that takes.
Paid in full. Your £450 comes off either package if you continue. We don't do refunds and we don't need to. You keep the plan either way.
What the brochures leave out
UK admissions has been rebuilt in the last three years. Tests were abolished, new ones replaced them, and the personal statement stopped being an essay. Advice written before 2026 is now actively wrong.
The overseas success rate at Cambridge in the 2025 cycle, against 19.6% for home applicants. 8,300 international applications produced 890 places. Oxford admitted 3,302 from 23,329 applications overall.
Cambridge and Oxford published admissions statistics, 2025 cycle
Admissions test booking for 2027 entry closes on 28 September 2026, seventeen days before the 15 October UCAS deadline. A family that waits for the UCAS date has already missed the test that the application depends on.
esat-tmua.ac.uk deadlines
The personal statement is no longer an essay. Since 2026 entry it is three structured questions inside a 4,000 character limit, with a 350 character minimum on each. Every template written before that is obsolete.
ucas.com personal statement guidance
The number of its own historic admissions tests Oxford still runs. The MAT, PAT, HAT, ELAT, MLAT and TSA are gone for 2027 entry, replaced by ESAT, TMUA, TARA, UCAT and LNAT. The BMAT was discontinued after October 2023.
ox.ac.uk admissions tests, esat-tmua.ac.uk
Add the deadlines almost nobody outside the system knows: Cambridge wants a second application of its own by 22 October, and Oxford wants written work by 10 November, for about twenty of its courses. Miss either and the application is over before the interview.
Two minutes to tell us about your child. We read every one ourselves, and we only take on families we can genuinely help.
60 minutes on video, at a time that works in your timezone. We go through the curriculum, the subjects and the courses on the table properly. Both parents welcome. Bring your child too if they want to be there.
Five working days. In writing, with every date on it. Then a second call once you've read it and talked it over at home.
Credentials
Our team has placed over 200 students at top institutions. We built and sold UK Education Guide, and we've placed students at Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews and across a broad range of British independent schools.
The portal behind this page compares 30 UK universities alongside pathway and foundation routes, with real rankings and entry data. The call is that research applied to one specific student.
We are independent, and everything you tell us stays between us.
Before you ask
Neither is better, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling one of them. They are different. The IB is six subjects plus an extended essay, theory of knowledge and CAS, and it forces every student to continue maths and a language to eighteen. A levels are typically three subjects with no compulsory core, which rewards depth and lets a student drop maths at sixteen and close Economics at LSE without realising. A student strong across the board who wants options open often does better on the IB. A student with two or three real strengths and a clear direction usually does better on A levels. That judgement is most of what the call is for.
No university states a preference, and every competitive course publishes its requirements in both. What differs is how demanding the two look. UCL maps A*A*A to 40 points with 20 across three Higher Levels. Oxford PPE asks 39 including core with 766 at HL for the same AAA. Cambridge Natural Sciences asks A*A*A or 41 to 42 points with 776. The IB requirement is often a notch harder than the published equivalence suggests.
It changes the detail, not the method. We work with families on the IB, on A levels, on the American system and on national curricula. A large part of the value is knowing how UK admissions actually reads each of those, and where an international profile is being undersold.
Year 9 to Year 11 is the best time, because the curriculum and subject decisions are still fully open. Year 12 is still very useful, because the course list, the admissions tests and the year ahead are all in play. Once an offer is firmed there is little left for us to add and we will say so.
Because a free call is a sales call. Ours is the advice, and charging for it means we can tell you the plan your child is on is wrong without worrying about whether that costs us the sale.
No. Offers are made by universities against published and unpublished criteria, and the international success rate at Cambridge was 10.7% last cycle. What we do is make sure your child applies for the right courses, with the right subjects, at the right time, prepared for the right test, with a list that has genuine fallbacks on it.
Tell us where your child is now. We read every one and reply within one working day with times, or with an honest note if we are not the right people to help.
Or send us the details below and we'll come back to you.
Every figure on this page is published by the institution named
Fees, deadlines and admissions statistics are those published for the current cycle at the time of writing and change each year. We confirm every date against the institution before you act on it.
If the live decision is which UK boarding or independent school to apply to, the schools call is the one you want.
See that page