Applicant Portal Help: Reference request

You will be required to provide the details of two referees who can provide academic or professional references for you written in English. You must request these references within this section so that they can be provided by the referee via our secure online Referee Portal.

You can submit your application before your referees have provided your references, but your application will not be assessed until these have been received. If you have references outstanding at the point of the course application deadline passing, regardless of whether you have submitted your application or not, your application will be withdrawn.

You must not provide your own details, nor should you use an email address that you have access to. The email addresses that you provide should be an institutional email address.

The information that you provide should be correct as of the time in which you knew your referee. Their email address, however, should be up to date.

You are expected to contact your referee prior to submitting their name as a referee to notify them that you would like them to provide a reference.

If you wish to change your referee prior to them providing a reference, you are also expected to notify them that their reference is no longer needed.

For guidance on which referees to nominate, see the references to support your Cambridge application webpage on the Postgraduate Admissions website.

Managing your referees

Both prior to and after submitting your application, you can edit the email address, change the referee or prompt your referee to respond to your reference request (providing they are yet to provide a reference) by logging into the Applicant Portal and selecting either 'Change email', 'Delete referee' or 'Send reminder', respectively. This can be achieved through either the form itself (in the 'Reference Request' section) or through 'References', which can be found on the homepage of the Applicant Portal.

Before sending a reference request to your referees, it is expected of you to have asked them in person to give them additional time to prepare your reference.

If you change the details of a referee, you should also contact the original referee to notify them that they will no longer need to provide a reference.