I'm Harry Godfrey, co-founder of The Degree Gap, a GCSE and A level tutoring company in the UK. Before that, I spent two years helping students from around the world get into top UK universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, UCL and King's. I studied economics at LSE, and I've helped many students win places on economics courses at the UK's leading universities. Today we run a team of over 100 tutors whose job is to make sure students get the right information at the right time, so they can make good decisions about subjects and universities.
In this piece, I want to set out how a student in Kenya can apply to a top UK university, how I would structure their roadmap, and how they can go into the process with confidence.
The honest starting point
Kenya's national qualification on its own usually isn't enough to get directly onto a UK undergraduate degree. Most universities expect A levels, the IB, or a foundation year first. That leaves three main routes:
1. Take A levels or the IB at an international school in Kenya.
2. Complete the Kenyan curriculum, then a one-year UK international foundation programme.
3. Complete the Kenyan curriculum, then an extra year of study before applying.
None of these is wrong. What matters is knowing which one you're on early enough to plan around it.
Choose subjects that keep doors open
The best subject choice is one that keeps your options open
Economics is a good example. Plenty of students drop maths, and that quietly limits where they can apply. They often end up applying for economics and management, or economics and another subject, instead of pure economics, because pure economics at somewhere like LSE requires maths and ideally further maths. If economics is even a possibility, it's worth looking at what A level maths involves and making sure your child is on a track that gets them there.
The same logic applies elsewhere. For medicine, you need chemistry, and preferably biology. For engineering, you need maths and physics, and further maths is a real advantage.
I'm not asking parents to start planning a university application the day their child is born. I'm asking for a rough structure and an early conversation with the school about the pathway ahead. If the school is too stretched to give that individual guidance, find someone who can. The real problem I see is parents and students getting to this point too late. They've chosen
subjects that don't line up with what the student wants to study, because nobody told them. That's a big part of why we set up The Degree Gap. This information shouldn't be something only a lucky few have.
Build an academic profile from Grade 10
UK universities care about academic interest far more than general extracurriculars. US universities put more weight on personality and character. UK universities focus on your subject. In practice, that means leadership of a club matters much less than wider reading, essay competitions, independent projects and prizes linked to the course. For competitive courses like economics at LSE, you need to build that evidence early.
Every year, students come to me two months before the deadline wanting to apply to LSE, UCL or King's, and they simply haven't done the groundwork. Once a student has done the reading and can tell me what they found, I can help them turn it into a strong personal statement. What I can't do is invent that reading and thinking for them.
The basics of applying
You can apply to up to five courses through UCAS. If you receive offers, you choose a firm choice (your first preference) and an insurance choice. Your insurance usually asks for lower grades than your firm, so you have a backup if your results fall short.
The single most important thing you can do is get your predicted grades as high as possible. This matters more than the personal statement. Universities use predicted grades to judge whether a student can keep up with the course at LSE, Cambridge or Oxford.
I work with many students who are putting huge effort into their personal statement while their predicted grades are below what the university asks for. They're enthusiastic, and I understand why, but if the predictions aren't there, they're very unlikely to get a place. At a heavily oversubscribed university like Oxford, the exceptions are rare.
The new personal statement
The personal statement has changed from one essay to three questions: why do you want to study this subject, how has your education prepared you, and what have you done outside the classroom. The students I've worked with this year have put particular emphasis on that last question, because there's often a lot to say there.
The principle is the same as before: show, don't tell. Don't tell me you're enthusiastic and confident. Show me through the books you've read, the lectures you've attended and the ways you've gone beyond the syllabus. That does both jobs at once.
For a subject like economics, the strongest applications I see combine real knowledge with balanced judgement. They give opinions and weigh them up, rather than summarising books. Essay competitions are a big bonus, especially if you're shortlisted. It differs by subject, but for the social sciences, that's what stands out: plenty of knowledge, clear thinking and strong predicted grades.
I could write many more pages on this, but I'll stop here. Remember that the UCAS deadline for Oxford, Cambridge and most medicine courses is in mid-October, a full three months before the main January deadline. And remember that a UK application is an academic one, not a personality test like many US applications.
I wish every student reading this the best of luck. If you'd like support with UK university applications, you're very welcome to get in touch with us at The Degree Gap.
The writer is the Co-founder of The Degree Gap
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