Entry requirements
96 UCAS Tariff points from a minimum of 2 A Levels (or equivalent), including Grade C in Art, Design or Media subject.
UCAS Tariff Points accepted.
GCSE/National 4/National 5
3 GCSEs at grade C, or grade 4, or above, including English.
UCAS Tariff
UCAS Tariff points from a minimum of 2 A Levels (or equivalent), including Grade C in Art, Design or Media subject.
You may also need to…
Attend an interview
Present a portfolio
About this course
Explore and experiment with photographic practices by studying our BA (Hons) Photography degree at Cambridge School of Art.
Learn to create images that tell compelling stories, whether your dream is to be a fashion or fine art photographer or a photojournalist.
As a photography student at ARU you’ll explore many areas of photographic practice including digital and analogue image-making, experimental crossovers, multimedia, self-publishing and exhibition.
Take full advantage of all our analogue and digital facilities, including colour and black-and-white darkrooms; continuous, daylight and flash studios; a digital post-production and printing suite; specialist camera equipment including DSLRs, large format cameras, lenses, light meters and lighting kits that you can borrow for your work. You’ll also have access to the full Adobe Creative suite; Apple iMacs; wide-format printers and scanners; vintage printmaking presses and a letterpress machine.
Our team of technical officers will be on hand to offer training and support on all our art facilities - not just the ones for your course - and you can also borrow specialist camera equipment through our dedicated loan service.
All your work will be supported by academic staff working at the forefront of photographic research and innovation and have years of professional experience. You will be taught through individual tutorial and studio sessions, as well as in group lectures and workshops, with regular career development events throughout your study. Recent guest speakers have included Tom Hunter, Jane Hilton, Tim Flach, Hannah Starkey, Carole Evans, Alastair Levy, Mike Crawford and Lillian Wilkie.
That’s just a few of the reasons our course scored 93% for ‘overall satisfaction’ in the National Student Survey 2019.
Through continuous experimentation, you’ll be encouraged to refine your photographic style and voice.
Critical and contextual studies will connect your own research and writing to your practice and will guide you to specialist resources in our campus library. Explore hundreds of photographers’ monographs and access technical and contextual texts, as well as other online resources, to underpin and expand your practice.
You can expand your skillset, with additional technical workshops including printmaking, 3D work and writing workshops. You can choose to take part in photography field trips too, and experience photographing different locations such as Venice and Prague.
While studying your BA (Hons) Photography with us, you’ll learn to adopt a professional approach to your work, covering aspects of career management such as rights issues, project management and self-promotion through social media.
Our degree course will help you prepare for work in the photographic, creative and media industries, or for self-employment as a photographer or artist. You can choose to take up formal or informal work placements that will help you establish your own professional network, including opportunities such as working for magazines, galleries and photographers. Our campus employment bureau can also help you find photographic jobs that fit around your studies.
We work with employers to make sure you graduate with the knowledge, skills and abilities they need. They help us review what we teach and how we teach it - and they offer hands-on, practical opportunities to learn through work-based projects, internships or placements.
Around ARU you can also take advantage of many opportunities to use and promote your skills, such as working with staff and students to photograph their events.
Modules
Year one, core modules
Photographic Practice and Context 1
Photography: Post Production Workflow
Photographic Practice and Context 2
Photography: Multimedia Practice
Year one, optional modules
Introduction to Photographic Studio Practice
English for Study 1
Year two, core modules
Professional Approaches to Photography
Photography: Professional Development
Photographic Sequences
Debates and Practices
Year two, optional modules
Identities
Contemporary Film and Video
Writing for Images
Business for the Creative Arts
Site-specific Work
Printmaking: Photographic Processes
Contemporary Digital Approaches
Anglia Language Programme
Year three, core modules
Specialised Experimentation and Practice in Photography
Research Project
Major Project
Assessment methods
You’ll demonstrate your learning through both written and practical (portfolio) work.
Tuition fees
Select where you currently live to see what you'll pay:
The Uni
Cambridge Campus
Cambridge School of Art
What students say
We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.
How do students rate their degree experience?
The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Cinematics and photography
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Cinematics and photography
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
Creative arts and design
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£14k
£19k
£20k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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This is what the university has told Ucas about the criteria they expect applicants to satisfy; some may be compulsory, others may be preferable.
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This is what the university has told Ucas about the course. Use it to get a quick idea about what makes it unique compared to similar courses, elsewhere.
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Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF):
We've received this information from the Department for Education, via Ucas. This is how the university as a whole has been rated for its quality of teaching: gold silver or bronze. Note, not all universities have taken part in the TEF.
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This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).
This is the percentage of final-year students at this university who were "definitely" or "mostly" satisfied with their course. We've analysed this figure against other universities so you can see whether this is high, medium or low.
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This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).
You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.
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Post-six month graduation stats:
This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.
It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.
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Graduate field commentary:
The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show
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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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