UCL student - ask me anything

Extracurriculars aren't anywhere near as important as in the US and most unis don't really mind overly much what you have or haven't done. A couple (Oxford and Cambridge, probably LSE, maybe Imperial and possibly UCL, although I didn't do much I don't think beyond wider reading in my subject area) do like to see so called "supercurriculars", basically extracurricular activities related to the subject being applied to (for languages I'm not too sure really what might apply).

But this can just as well be "wider reading" in your subject area (e.g. reading about literature in the target language, if not reading literature in the target language) since they know not all students have equal opportunity to pursue various "supercurricular" activities and they're very sensitive to not indirectly discriminate against students as a result (since invariably the students least able to pursue a lot of these things are the ones least likely to progress to higher education as well.

As for GPA this probably varies between unis, it might be a factor for more competitive unis and courses (e.g. ones that in the UK put some weight on GCSE grades which provide some sense of progressive achievement). But plenty are happy just to see recent/current achievement and weaker achievement earlier in high school isn't necessarily an absolute barrier. Plus as noted since language degrees in the UK tend to be undersubscribed they probably can't be that choosy in the first place!

Thank you so much for this detailed explanation. It's a comfort to me.

Happy to help!

I have one more question. While working on the UCAS application, there is no place to put a high school GPA in the application. Only scores for AP and SAT can be inserted. Does that mean UK universities don't consider a high school GPA at all?

I have one more question. While working on the UCAS application, there is no place to put a high school GPA in the application. Only scores for AP and SAT can be inserted. Does that mean UK universities don't consider a high school GPA at all?