Recruitment for our flagship widening participation scheme, Reach for Excellence (RfE), has now opened for the 2025/26 academic year. Since its inception in 2007, RfE has built a successful track record in supporting and stretching students who have the potential to gain a place at a research-intensive university, but who may not have considered it, or who may perceive barriers to entry. We recruit participants in Year 12 and provide wide-ranging support alongside their studies in Year 12 and Year 13, which will help to strengthen their attainment and prepare them for making decisions about university, whether they wish to apply to the University of Leeds or elsewhere.

Successful RfE applicants are invited to engage with a varied programme of subject-specific academic tasters, personal development workshops, and intensive research and study skills sessions. We also offer a variety of enrichment experiences, and our broad range of advice and guidance sessions will leave students feeling more confident when navigating their university choices and UCAS applications, and more informed about student finance and their post-graduate career options. Events primarily take place at the University of Leeds campus during school holiday periods, in order to minimise curricular disruption while encouraging independent study habits. RfE students will also be invited to apply for our residential summer school held at the University of Leeds in August 2026.

N.B. As well as detailing them below and overleaf, we have also emailed details of our application process to individual teachers for whom we have communications consent. If you have received emails like this from us in previous years, but did not receive the email this year, this is because we do not currently have your consent on our online form. In order to continue receiving our emails in future, please fill out the following online form, making sure to select “Educational Engagement (Education Outreach Aspiration raising programme, Admissions updates, Contextual Outreach (Access to Leeds/ TTP/ Reach for Excellence) schemes)” when asked which areas of outreach you are interested in.

https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/leeds/eeteacherconsent

How to apply

The deadline for all applications is 23:59 on Thursday 13th November 2025. All applications must be submitted online and supporting references will be requested from a teacher or tutor at the school. Further information about references can be found in the guidance notes, which are available along with the application form on our website: https://contextualoutreach.leeds.ac.uk/rfe/rfeapply/

Entry to Reach for Excellence is competitive. We strongly encourage all applicants to read the guidance notes thoroughly and to pay particular attention to the Supporting Statements portion of the application form. Places will be allocated to students based on information provided in their application.

We would be delighted to send a member of the team to speak to your students about RfE in an assembly or lunchtime meeting. Please contact us on reachforexcellence@leeds.ac.uk to arrange a session, or to discuss the scheme further. You can also find promotional materials and a copy of our recruitment video on our dedicated Teacher & Advisors portal: https://contextualoutreach.leeds.ac.uk/rfe/rfe-teacher-advisor-portal/

Yours Sincerely, The Contextual Outreach Team

reachforexcellence@leeds.ac.uk

https://contextualoutreach.leeds.ac.uk/

Reach for excellence leaflet