Accepting your place at uni.
Good, getting the offer’s one of the hard parts. Now you’ve got it, the boot’s on the other foot and it’s your turn to turn the unis down. When you get all your offers – and not before – you’ve got three choices:
You can firmly accept an offer. If there are no conditions and you say yes, then that means that’s where you’re going. The university will start to warm up your seat and you can start to plan your time there. Most of the time, however, there are conditions – usually getting certain grades – and saying yes means you don’t have to think about it until after your exams.
You can also provisionally accept an offer. This is a back-up in case your first offer doesn’t go as planned; sure you’ll get the grades but what if it falls down? There’s no point in provisionally accepting an offer unless it’s got conditions lower than the offer you firmly accept as your provisional choice as it won’t even come into play unless you miss the grades for your first choice.
Your third choice is to turn down the offers. You might choose to say no to some or you might do it automatically by accepting two of them (one firmly and one provisionally). If you turn down the lot – or they all turn you down – you can either take a year out and apply again (more on that ) or see what’s going on UCAS Extra . Be warned about Extra though, there be dragons. Most unis won’t have many left-over spaces and you have to ask yourself, if you really wanted to go there, why didn’t you apply in the first place?
Last updated on: 26 May 2011