Contextual offers

Details of what our contextual offers involve, who's eligible, the application and support available.

UWE Bristol is committed to ensuring all students are able to fulfil their potential. We strive to make our UWE community welcoming, caring and supportive. We support students from all backgrounds and look to understand applicant's individual circumstances when making an offer of a place to study.

We use information from your UCAS application to consider your background and experiences as an individual and the impact these may have had on you and your qualifications. Using this information, we look to provide a contextual offer.

For any questions about contextual offers, please email the Admissions team at admissions@uwe.ac.uk.

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About a contextual offer

UWE Bristol’s contextual offer is a tariff reduction of 16 tariff points for all undergraduate degree courses and 8 tariff points for all foundation year courses below the standard entry tariff. This is applicable to home applicants only.

Further tariff information is available on our course pages.

Who's eligible for a contextual offer

We will use the multiple equality measure (MEM). It brings together information on several equality dimensions for which large differences in the probability of progression into higher education exist.

These dimensions include:

  • Sex
  • Ethnic group
  • Where you live (using the Participation of Local Areas (POLAR4) and Indices of multiple deprivation (IMD) classifications)
  • School type 
  • Income background (as measured by whether a person was in receipt of free school meals (FSM) at age 15, a means-tested benefit while at school)
  • Income deprivation affecting children index (IDACI).

Applying for a contextual offer

Apply in the usual way through UCAS and we will be in touch if we are able to provide you with a contextual offer.

Access to UWE Bristol support programme

All contextual offer holders will be invited to join our Access to UWE Bristol support programme, which aims to support students through the transition from school or college to university life. You will have access to our: 

  • Access to UWE Bristol summer school – take part in our summer school activity and experience student life here at UWE Bristol.
  • preparing for higher education talks – these are delivered by the Widening Access team at offer holder days.
  • mailing list – you will receive helpful updates and resources via email.

For more information about the programme of support for contextual offer holders, please email the Widening Access team at widening.access@uwe.ac.uk.