PhD in English at University of Cambridge 2026

For what it’s worth I’ve heard they let you know fairly soon once it’s assessed. It also depends on which academic(s)’ table your proposal and app land on.
My guess as it was for my MPhil at Cam is that they’ll do it in batches even though there’s a rolling acceptance illusion.
A second thing is I’ve only heard of informal offers from supervisors so far; nothing official. If anyone actually has a department offer I’d really like to know!

Again please take this with an enormous grain of salt.
I believe I heard that the applications “land” on the desks of one or two reviewing academics/faculty. Who it lands on is determined by your research summary (not research proposal).
So previous batchmates concluded that different assessors have different levels of efficiency. (Long might be good; short might be bad; too many variables; so I choose not to care about the review time).

Again please take this with an enormous grain of salt.
I believe I heard that the applications “land” on the desks of one or two reviewing academics/faculty. Who it lands on is determined by your research summary (not research proposal).
So previous batchmates concluded that different assessors have different levels of efficiency. (Long might be good; short might be bad; too many variables; so I choose not to care about the review time).

do they take interview/nomination decisions solely - based on your academics only ( top level grades )? - or a pre-conversation with your supervisor regarding research proposal helps ?

The general consensus seems to be that they interview the people they think have the best chance at funding first... Probably more about the project and your profile than academics because at the funding shortlist stage everyone's academics are stellar

No news of Frodo?

Hey, has anyone heard anything else yet? I saw that there are four interviews on Gradcafe now.

Still no news following my interview on Friday. I am not sure what the timeline is between a decision and interview, as all courses seem to vary on that.

I’m also stuck on submitted a week after my interview. I know it seems to be the case for everyone but it’s getting frustrating.

Do we know if interviews are given to all candidates?