Cambridge University

I have emailed admission office and Trinity college admission of whether if they accept GCSE resits without extenuating circumstances but here is what they say:

Thank you for your enquiry.

It would be open to you to apply to the College. Each applicant is considered individually at Trinity, taking all aspects into account, i.e. academic record, including grades or predictions, school/college reference, personal statement, submitted work (where requested), performance in any written assessment, contextual data and performance at interview (if interviewed). Realistic applicants are asked to attend interviews and offers are individually tailored after the interview process is finished.

Admissions Tutors are looking for academic ability and potential, motivation and suitability for the chosen course, commitment and self-discipline.

I hope this is helpful. Further information is available on the College and University websites.

Best wishes,

I felt this email is too generic, so do they allow resits or no?
I emailed the admission office too and they said the same thing.

You are asking for a black/white, yes/no rule - do they accept resits or not. They are telling you that that is not the nature of their process, they consider a range of things. You should be able to infer from that that generally they do not reject people solely because they have GCSE resits. However, it is also pretty clear, by inference, that having to sit GCSEs is not generally compatible with a strong academic record/ability, and therefore might disadvantage a candidate in some circumstances.
From the regular responses from informed members on TSR, the advice is that is almost never an effective use of time to resit GCSEs. They don't weigh that heavily in the assessment process, certainly below anything you've done in the sixth form, and unless there has been some issue like completely missing a GCSE, scraping improvements in grades is seen for what it is, scraping, and therefore the original grade is valid as your 'potential' and the resit grade only useful if the knowledge is what is needed. It's rare for GCSE level knowledge to be needed for a degree programme, where an A level in the same/similar subject doesn't trump it.

Thank you for your reply, im resitting to meet Manchester GCSE requirements so i could have 7 7 to 9s GCSE. However I wanted to have a go for Cambridge, but my application would have shown resits qualification and first attempt so it is really not something that I choose to be disadvantaged

What subject is this for? Are you sure that Manchester accept GCSE requirements where they have them listed as an explicit offer condition? If it's for Medicine, then you may want to optimise for getting into a medical school, rather than any specific one.

I would say go for it and apply to Cambridge, and don't be discouraged by a gcse resit. Trinity may be a little stricter with resits, but if you get a very high score on the admissions test then you may convince them otherwise.

It is for medicine, I have had email Manchester they accept gcse resits with no disadvantages

That's good then, just something to be aware of

Ty for ur suggestion! I’m currently trying rlly hard with Alevel and joining as many useful curricular as possible

Focus on super curricular as that is mainly what Cambridge want to see. Not excessive amount of curricular but something related to your course. Good luck!