Access, participation and student success
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SOAS actively engages with the contemporary world in our aim to promote global understanding, and we provide resources and knowledge that equip people for a global economy and a multicultural world.
This mission is the central focus for our widening participation strategy and outreach. The means by which we make higher education accessible to a diverse population concerned with – and passionate about – the world we live in.
Learn more in the SOAS Access & Participation Plan 2020 - 2025. You can also access a shorter summary of the SOAS Access and Participation Plan if you prefer.
The 2024-25 fee information as submitted to and published by the Office for Students can be found here.
Widening participation
Our mission in respect of access, participation and student success is to increase the participation of students from a variety of underrepresented backgrounds and to ensure that the transformative nature of a SOAS education can be experienced by all.
We work closely with academic departments and other support services to provide exciting opportunities for you to succeed. These include activities such as peer mentoring, the student social action fund, metacognitive skills workshops and decolonising the curriculum programmes.
Our work also includes increasing access to SOAS for those from areas where the fewest young people progress to university and we robustly evaluate all our initiatives and aim to partner with students as co-creators as much as possible.
Our webpages outline the work that we undertake, opportunities for students, schools, colleges, parents and carers to engage with this work and to find out more.
In the last year we have...
delivered +150 activities
with schools and colleges
engaged with more than 5000
school and college pupils
recruited more than 100
student ambassadors
worked with over 60
SOAS academics
Information for prospective students
Are you currently attending a school or college, and want to engage with SOAS? You can engage with us in different ways
If you are interested in finding out more about university in general and SOAS in particular, we have a range of activities you can participate in.
Masterclasses
Masterclasses are subject based and usually last for half a day. They consist of a topic based lecture and interactive activity, led by a SOAS lecturer. There are also workshops and a Q&A session with Student Ambassadors who are studying the subject.
Summer schools
Most of our summer schools are for students in Year 12, and we also run a languages focussed summer school for students in Year 10.
During each summer school, you will attend lectures and study skills sessions, as well as meeting current SOAS students who will share their experiences of studying that subject at SOAS.
Booking information
You will need to apply for a place for these activities - please see the individual event pages for further information.
We also run projects directly with schools and colleges - if you’d like this to happen with your school or college, please let your teachers know about our Information for Teachers and ask them to contact us.
All the above activities are designed to reduce structural inequalities in access to university - this means that we are particularly keen to provide places to young people who have faced structural barriers. This could be living in an area where few people go to university, having no family background of going to university, or having been in receipt of Free School Meals.
SOAS also runs open days and other methods of engaging which are open to all - for more information on these, please see our Open Days.