The offer turns on one day, 6 July 2026, and the visa turns on where you apply from. Everything after that is a dated list you can build early.
Where I was applying from
I left Hong Kong in April 2022 and sat the International Baccalaureate at an international school in Tokyo, August 2022 to May 2026. I finished on 44 out of 45, with a grade 7 in all six subjects and an A on the extended essay, and an SAT of 1550. My offer was Human, Social, and Political Sciences at Peterhouse, Cambridge, a three year BA starting in October 2026.
My case was ordinary residence in Hong Kong, schooling in Japan on a dependent visa, and international fee status in the UK. Each of those changes something later in the year.
Results day decides almost everything
IB results reach students at 12:00 GMT on 6 July 2026. Universities and IB coordinators see them about a day earlier, on 5 July. That one day lead is the warning I would give any IB applicant who has been reading A-level advice: the college does not know your grades weeks ahead, and nothing is being settled quietly in June.
Meet the conditions and the place is confirmed on results day. Fall just short and the college reconsiders, then pools you to another college through the summer pool, which resolves a few days into mid July. There is no separate appeal to write. The August reconsideration pool that opens on 13 August is for UK-domiciled applicants, so on an international fee from Tokyo I was outside it and planned as though it did not exist.
The plan for the other offers was to hold each one and decline it a day before its own deadline, once 6 July had confirmed Cambridge. The reply-by dates sit in each offer letter or portal. Holding an offer costs nothing. Releasing one in June, in a year where results can still move, can cost the year.
The visa question is residence first, paperwork second
The route I used requires that you are ordinarily resident in Hong Kong on the date of application. Four years in Japan reads oddly against that line. The Home Office guidance says the hard disqualifier is permanent or settled status in another country, and a dependent visa is temporary, so it did not apply to me. A caseworker can still ask. The plan was to apply while physically in Hong Kong, with Hong Kong as the permanent home, and to describe the Japan years as a temporary relocation.
Then timing. Standard service is free and the published figure is a decision within 12 weeks of submission. Priority costs around 500 pounds and returns a decision in five working days from outside the UK, and you choose it at submission, because a standard application cannot be upgraded later. The only way round is to withdraw and resubmit, which blocks travel while it is pending. Twelve weeks from a 7 July filing runs to about 29 September, against a college that wanted me in residence by 4 October. That arithmetic is why the filing date was set to the day after results.
The dated steps, and the document each one needed
| Date | Step | What it needed |
|---|---|---|
| 6 July 2026 | IB results released to students at 12:00 GMT | the results statement |
| 7 July 2026 | Visa filing planned for the next day on standard service | passport, confirmed offer |
| Mid July 2026 | A near miss resolves through reconsideration and the summer pool | nothing to file |
| Each offer's reply-by date | Other offers declined, one day before each deadline | the offer letter carrying that date |
| By 1 October 2026 | University registration window closes | visa share code, sent three working days before arrival |
| 30 September to 4 October 2026 | Room licence starts, in college by 4 October | qualification certificates in hard copy |
Full Term runs from 6 October to 4 December 2026.
What the first year actually asks
Part IA is four papers, three of them from the core subjects of politics, international relations, social anthropology and sociology. There is no Part IB in this course, and saying otherwise marks you as someone who never read the course page. Teaching is around eight hours of lectures a week with one or two supervisions, and assessment is mostly by examination, with some coursework.
Track choice comes towards the end of the first year, and you cannot switch between Part IIA and Part IIB tracks unless you move from a joint track into one of the single subjects inside it. The first-year paper set is the only free move you get, which is why I took the whole core.
The one thing I would tell you
Build the calendar before you need it, and write the document beside every date. My year had four gates, each a date with a document attached: results on 6 July, the visa filing set for 7 July because the published decision time ran close to the college's own deadline, registration closing on 1 October, and a room I could not occupy before 30 September. None of it was hard, and all of it was time sensitive, done across time zones in a summer when the school holding your certificates has closed. Write the dates down in March, ask which document each one wants, and results day becomes one day of news instead of the start of a scramble.