General Graduation Information (updated 3/08/2023)
The Student Registry are now limiting Senate-House guest tickets to 2 per graduand. Every guest entering the Senate-House requires a ticket, no matter the age of the individual. Extra tickets may become available, however please use the Senate-House waitlist during registration to ask for any extra tickets. We cannot guarantee that any request for extra tickets will be successful. If you need to request tickets for an accompanying carer for a guest that needs assistance, please email Graduation.
Traveling to a Graduation?
We understand that many of our students or their families must travel to attend a graduation. However, due to space limitations at both the College and the Senate-House, the College is not responsible for any travel plans that you make prior to receiving confirmation of a place at a graduation ceremony or graduation event. We are also not responsible for any guests that you invite over the limit of 2 guests per graduand limit.
We will keep this page updated for graduation information due to any external impacts (covid, Marking and Assessment Boycott, etc.). In the meantime, please see the FAQs below for more information.
Graduation dates for the academic year 2023-2024 can be found here: Graduation 2023- 2024
How do I graduate?
At the University of Cambridge completing your programme does not confer your degree. You must have your degree conferred at a ceremony held at the Senate-House, either in person or in absence. While some ceremonies are popular with certain programmes, here at St Edmund’s, you have the choice of choosing your graduation ceremony date. The choice can be made from your CamSIS account when you register for your graduation. Please be aware that St Edmund’s does not present graduands at all the congregations as some congregations will be in absence only.
I need to graduate In Absence
You can choose to graduate in absence at any of the in person congregations by choosing that option during your CamSIS graduation registration.
If you choose to graduate in absence, your name will appear in the Degree List for your chosen congregation and your certificate and transcript will be mailed to you after the ceremony. Please ensure that your mailing address is up to date on your CamSIS account.
A list of all University of Cambridge congregations can be found here.
Celebrating a degree
For those students that graduated In Absence or in a No-Guest ceremony during the Covid-impacted congregations (March 2020 to April 2022) the option remains to celebrate your degree with guests in a Senate House ceremony. Degree celebrations must be in person as the ceremony will be as close as possible to a normal degree conferral with some light tweaks to the Latin formula.
What to wear? Celebrating graduates will follow the same guidelines as graduands. Please see the ‘What to wear’ links below.
Registration to Celebrate your degree is via a Google form. Please click on the date below that you would like to attend in person for your degree celebration to complete the registration form. We can accept up to 5 celebrants for each of the dates below. Registration numbers are also linked to our graduation cap for a particular date and celebrant registration will be closed if we reach the cap for the ceremony. You can view the cap information here: https://my.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/graduation/graduations-2023-2024/
Certificates and transcripts
In person graduates:
As you leave the Senate-House, you will be handed your degree certificates. The paper copy of your transcript will not be available for several weeks after the ceremony, but once received at the College, it will be posted to you. Please ensure that your mailing address is up to date on your CamSIS account. It would also help to update your External email address and have it marked as your Preferred email if you are no longer a current student.
In absence graduates:
In absence certificates are sent to the College AFTER the ceremony. No certificates are issued prior to a degree ceremony. Once received at the College, the certificate will wait until your transcript is also received. This may take several weeks. Once we have both your certificate and transcript, we will mail these to you. Please ensure that your mailing address is up to date on your CamSIS account. It would also help to update your External email address and have it marked as your Preferred email if you are no longer a current student.
Other important information:
Please note that we will only mail the certificate/transcript to the address that you’ve provided in CamSIS. We will be posting these documents to you via tracked Royal Post on a best effort scenario. If your documents are returned to us due to an address or other postal issue, including damage during transit, you will need to pay for any subsequent posting.
The Tutorial Office will hold a degree certificate or transcript for 6 months and then they are securely destroyed.
All graduates now have access to a free official online certificate issued by the Student Registry to a secure web platform. More information on the online certificate can be found here.
Transcripts for degrees awarded based on assessments modified as a result of COVID-19 will include brief wording explaining that the candidate undertook alternative assessments, and provide a link to a fuller explanation of the nature of the assessment, hosted on the CamData website.
No transcripts are issued for MA degree awards, incorporated degrees or degrees awarded by special regulations.
Replacement copies of degree certificates or transcripts can be ordered through the Student Registry. More information can be found on the University website.