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From navigating the application process to adapting to new learning environments, students from the Republic share their experience of studying in Britain and Northern Ireland
From navigating the application process to adapting to new learning environments, students from the Republic share their experience of studying in Britain and Northern Ireland St Andrews University: 'The quality of life in Scotland is much better,' says Simon Lynch from Co Donegal, who studies computer science there“We know there are students who are very much capable, able and passionate enough about subjects, that they would thrive and do well in an environment like Oxbridge, but find that there isn’t maybe the representation or accessibility, and there’s a lot of myths about getting into Oxbridge,” she says.
Founded in 2022 by Paddy Hickey, an Irish graduate of law at the University of Cambridge, the organisation offers advice about each step of the Ucas process. WorldSkills Ireland 2026 guide: Planning your visit and what to expectThe Ucas application process is “a very different system to the CAO”, notes Donnchadh O’Mahony, guidance counsellor and founder of “For example, in the CAO, you could apply for up to 20 courses, whereas through Ucas, you can only apply for five.
In fact, if you’re applying for medicine, you’re only allowed to apply for four medicine courses. ” He says applicants cannot apply to both the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in the same undergraduate application cycle. Deadlines differ from the CAO too.
“You generally have two deadlines,” he notes. There is an October deadline for applying to Oxford, Cambridge and most medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses, and a January deadline for most other undergraduate courses. The application process also consists of answering three personal-statement questions and, depending on the course you apply for, possibly a test or interview.
Applicants will also have to provide an academic reference, which O’Mahoney recommends obtaining from the teacher of a subject related to the course you’re applying for.
“So if you’re applying for engineering, it might be better coming from a physics or maths teacher,” he says. Successful applicants will receive a conditional or an unconditional offer, depending on whether they have their Leaving Certificate results. A conditional offer means the UK university will give you a place on a course if your Leaving Certificate results end up meeting their specific grade requirements.
An unconditional offer may be given if you have your Leaving Certificate results already, or have PLC results. Under the Common Travel Area , students from the Republic are entitled to “home-fee” status in the UK, provided they meet the relevant residency requirements. This means they are not charged the higher international student fees.
For the 2026/27 academic year, the maximum standard undergraduate tuition fee for eligible students from the Republic is £9,790 in England, Wales and Scotland. In Northern Ireland, the maximum fee for students from the Republic is £4,985 per year.
“You don’t start paying that back until after you graduate and you’re earning a certain amount of money,” he says. Students who qualify for the Susi maintenance grant can use it in UK universities, but cannot get their tuition fees paid for by Susi. For those considering making the move, the experience of studying in the UK can offer something beyond the academic, according to those who have made the move themselves.
Hewson, who is from Co Leitrim and is going into her second year of law at the University of Cambridge, says the style of learning at Cambridge can be “incredibly intense”. However, she has found “such a good community and such a good network at Cambridge. You’re all kind of in it together. ” She feels the community is “probably the most undersold aspect” of studying in Britain.
“I think you can really underestimate how willing people are to find people and make friends. There’s a lot of people over there who go in with no one, so it’s really easy, I think, to make friends in Cambridge. ” That same sense of community was found by Barra Duffy from Co Louth, who has just completed a degree in occupational therapy at Cardiff University in Wales.
“There were a lot of Irish in my course, and other healthcare courses”, he notes. “There’s Gaelic football teams, there’s Irish societies in basically every university that you come across. So you’re never actually too far away from other Irish people. ”, a funding scheme for eligible students taking specific healthcare courses that covers tuition fees on the agreement that students will work in Wales for a specific period of time after graduating.
When asked if he would recommend Cardiff University to other Irish students, he said he has “genuinely loved it since the day I got here”. He says finding accommodation “was so easy – literally no stress at all”, with lower rents than in the Republic. For Simon Lynch from Co Donegal, who studies computer science at the University of St Andrews, “the quality of life in Scotland is much better”.
“I get the bus for free. There’s a bus every eight minutes from St Andrews to Dundee, and then every hour from St Andrews to Edinburgh airport, so it’s just fantastic,” he says. Anyone under 22 in Scotland can travel on buses for free. Before completing his Leaving Certificate, Lynch received a conditional offer for the course at St Andrews, which required him to achieve 580 points, with a H1 in maths.
“So even if I got 613 points but I didn’t have the H1 in maths, I wouldn’t have gotten in,” he says. He feels that if you’re looking for a university of “high enough academic standing”, it would be worth considering the move to the UK. He notes he “wouldn’t go to somewhere that you could get in the Republic of Ireland”, given the costs associated with moving away.
Of course, applying to the Ucas system doesn’t necessarily mean leaving the island. Ryan McGeoghegan, also from Co Donegal, is going into his final year of studying quantity surveying at Ulster University.
He says choosing to go to university in Belfast wasn’t usual among his secondary school peers as “it might be a bit cheaper for families to send their children closer to home”, but he has seen an increase in students from the South coming to the city in recent years. McGeoghegan wanted to “go somewhere different, where I didn’t know many people, and have the opportunity to meet other people”.
He says going to Ulster University was one of the best decisions he has made. This year, he will be the chairman of the university’s GAA club, noting the club has “three GAA pitches on the go at the minute”, with around 120 players last year. While some students in Britain find a strong Irish community, others say the experience can allow you to step outside familiar circles.
Ellen Smith from Dublin, who is going into her final year studying history at the University of Oxford, says there are not many Irish students in her year group.
“I don’t know that many, and my friends who are Irish are from the North. There’s not that many from the Republic that I’ve run into. I know probably three or four. I think it’s easier with the A-levels, and it’s more advertised to them as well,” she says.
She applied for universities in Britain because she wanted to leave Ireland, feeling people “tend to move to college in the same group that they were in in secondary school, and I kind of just wanted a bit of a change”. She applied for history courses at University of Oxford, King’s College London, the University of Edinburgh, Bristol University and Durham University.
Regarding accommodation, she says: “We’re very lucky in Oxford, because it’s a collegiate system, so it’s divided into 30-40 smaller colleges. Within my college, they provide accommodation for all three years of your course, so I never had to find external accommodation.
” She has had a “positive experience” studying in Britain so far, saying it “forces you to step outside your comfort zone a bit”, and allows you to “see your home with new eyes, and kind of appreciate it more”. First job interview: Expert tips on everything from your outfit to ‘the dreaded question’‘Everything was bled out’: Publican says he can’t pay cleaner after losing nearly €200,000Iceland summons US ambassador after Trump posts map showing island under American flagMan in court charged over serious assault in Co MeathTaoiseach says gardaí prepared for Trump visit in wake of reported drone sighting
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