Applicant extenuating circumstances

The Sheffield approach to extenuating circumstances

We recognise that students applying to Sheffield may have experienced issues of a personal, social or domestic nature that have affected their studies and their ability to meet our published entry requirements.

In most cases, we'd expect these extenuating circumstances to be accounted for by the student's school, college or previous university, or by exam boards, so that the grades they achieve are still a true reflection of their abilities. Where this isn't possible, our procedure for extenuating circumstances is designed to ensure that students who are capable of benefitting from a Sheffield degree still have the opportunity to do so.

This page explains:

• The circumstances we can and can't consider
• How to let us know if you've been affected by these circumstances
• How we'll review your notification
• The action we'll take
• How we store and share your information

The extenuating circumstances we can and can't consider

What we can consider

We can consider significant adverse circumstances beyond your control that have prevented you from completing qualifications listed in your application, or have impaired your education between submitting your application and sitting your exams so that your results aren't a true reflection of your abilities.

Some examples of these circumstances are set out below. In all cases, the circumstances shouldn't already have been the subject of adjustments to education, assessments or results that have mitigated their negative impact on you.

• Severe acute or severe chronic physical or mental health conditions. If the condition constitutes a disability, we would encourage you also to raise it in your application, to ensure we can provide you with the support you need if and when you register at the University.
• Significant disruption to personal, domestic or family life
• Bereavement of an immediate family member
• Significant disruption to the education provided by your school, college or university
• Exposure, as victim or primary witness, to serious crime or domestic violence
• Delayed diagnosis of a learning disability (for this circumstance, please supply a supporting statement from your school, college or university explaining the impact on your studies and/or results)

What we can't consider

• Circumstances whose impact has already been mitigated by adjustments to your education (for example to support dyslexia), to assessments (for example extra time in exams), or to your marks by an exam board
• Circumstances where you've not notified us using the process detailed further down this page, even if the information is included in your application
• Contextual factors covered by our Access Sheffield policies, which already offer reduced entry requirements for eligible students
• Minor, temporary illnesses or short-term injuries during study or exam periods
• Notifications concerning resits that don't demonstrate how the circumstances impact the resits specifically, rather than the first sitting
• Circumstances affecting performance during interviews (all our courses that interview already offer additional support to interviewees who need it)

Notifying us of extenuating circumstances

What to do

If you've experienced extenuating circumstances that you'd like us to consider under this procedure, you need to complete our dedicated form. We can't consider any circumstances not notified to us through this route, even if they're mentioned in the application. We're also unable to consider forms submitted in a previous year – if you're applying to us again and your circumstances still apply, please complete another form.

Applicant Extenuating Circumstances webform

The form will ask:

• What specific circumstances have you experienced, when did they start, and are they still affecting you?
• How have these circumstances affected your learning or your results in coursework or exams?

In most cases, you then need to attach evidence, which should be provided by a qualified, independent third party or official authority (we can't accept documentation from family, friends or other personal acquaintances). The evidence should support the information provided by you, setting out how your circumstances affected your performance during the relevant study/exam period and/or how they may impact future assessments, and covering the entire timeframe of the circumstances being claimed. The only cases where we don't normally need evidence are where all this information is included in the reference submitted with your application.

Examples of acceptable evidence include:

• A detailed written statement from your school, college, university or academic tutor
• A letter or report from a healthcare professional, counsellor, support worker or social worker
• Official documentation from a solicitor, a court, a tribunal, the police or the fire service

Evidence should be on official letterheaded paper and signed and dated by the issuing authority.

It's your responsibility to complete the form and arrange the evidence yourself, as the applicant. We can't accept forms completed by a third party, such as a family member or a school, and we won't source any evidence ourselves.

When to do it: For circumstances that affected you before you apply

To let us know about circumstances that have affected you before you apply, please complete our form as soon as possible after you submit your application, and no later than two weeks afterwards. We'll use the predicted and/or achieved grades entered in your application to make our decision, so we need to know about circumstances affecting your predictions/achievements before we assess it.

If for any reason you can't meet our two-week deadline, please let us know as soon as possible. We may not be able to re-consider decisions that we made in the absence of extenuating circumstances information.

When to do it: For circumstances that affected you after we made you an offer

You can also let us know, by completing our form, about circumstances that affect you between submitting your application and taking your exams.

If you've already submitted a form and we've applied a mitigation, you don't need to complete another form. If you've already submitted a form and we haven't been able to apply a mitigation, we'll have let you know this. If your circumstances haven't changed please don't complete another form because our decision will remain the same. If your circumstances have changed, you can let us know by completing a new form.

Once we've made you an offer, we can only consider circumstances that have affected assessments completed or due to be completed after you applied. Please make sure your applicant statement and third-party evidence are clear about the impact your circumstances have had over the revision and/or exam period. Remember that if the circumstances occurred during the window for exam board consideration we would normally expect you to use this mechanism for mitigation, rather than our procedure.

The deadline for submitting completed forms is the earlier of:

• 8 July 2027

Or:

• two weeks before your results are published

We're unable to consider any circumstances notified to us after our deadline, or after we've returned an unsuccessful decision on your application or made you a Changed Course offer.

How we review your notification

When we receive your notification through our form we'll send you an email acknowledging its receipt.

Your notification will then be reviewed by specially trained staff, who are familiar with the sorts of extenuating circumstances students experience and how these circumstances affect students' performance in their qualifications. While we don't consider any extenuating circumstances not notified to us through our form, even if these are mentioned in the application, our staff may also refer to information included in your application when they review your notification.

Our aim will be to establish what meeting the level normally reflected in our published entry requirements looks like for you given your experiences, so that the admissions process remains fair for everyone.

When we’ve completed our review, we'll email you again with our decision, confirming whether or not your circumstances meet our criteria and, if they do, what action we'll take in response.

The action we take

If you're still completing your qualifications and we're satisfied that, as a result of your circumstances, your grades won't accurately reflect your abilities and your potential, we'll adjust your offer conditions to take this into account. This will normally be by one A Level grade or equivalent. For example, if our normal offer conditions are AAB, we might set you conditions of ABB. For relevant courses, your notification will also inform our decision about whether to invite you to attend an interview.

If you've completed your qualifications and you haven’t met our entry requirements, or if your circumstances have prevented you from completing one or more of your qualifications, but we're nevertheless satisfied that you’re suitably prepared for your degree course, we might make you an Unconditional offer.

We're not able to make more significant adjustments to our entry requirements because once students are missing these by several grades, we can no longer be confident of what they would have achieved in undisrupted circumstances, and therefore that they'll be ready for the challenge of studying with us. We also still need students to be sufficiently prepared by their previous qualifications for success on their degree course.

In addition, there are certain minimum standards we need all our new students to meet, to ensure they're prepared for their studies with us. We're not able to make adjustments in the following situations:

• Where you're not taking an acceptable qualification
• Where you're not taking a subject required for your degree course
• Where you don't meet the University's English language requirements (these are mandatory for all applicants regardless of circumstances)
• Where you don't meet GCSE/Level 2 requirements for your chosen degree course (depending on the course we may be able to accept lower grades in required GCSE subjects)
• For applicants to Medicine and Dentistry, where you don't meet UCAT requirements, although if UCAT have authorised a resit because of your circumstances we will accept the resit results

Please also note that information supplied via this procedure won't be used in support of applications for scholarships or other financial support.

Storing and sharing your information

We understand that extenuating circumstances tend to be personal and sensitive matters, so we'll save your form separately from your application and treat the information in it in line with our procedures for special category data as defined under data protection legislation. All that will appear on your application is our decision and any adjustments we make for you.

We'll only share your notification with staff that need to see it and other staff won't be able to access it. At the application stage, the staff we share it with will normally only be our specialist reviewers, but we may also need to seek an opinion from the Admissions Tutor/Selector for the course you've applied for, or their nominee. If we accept you under our extenuating circumstances procedure and you go on to register at the University as a student, we'll also share your details with our Disability and Dyslexia Support Service or Student Experience, Diversity and Inclusion team, as appropriate.

Contact us

If you have any questions about our applicant extenuating circumstances procedure, please contact the Admissions Service's Applicant Support Team:

admissions@sheffield.ac.uk