Applying for art and design courses (Route B)
To complicate matters further, quite a few Art & Design courses have a different applications procedure too. This is known as ‘Route B’ and is intended to give applicants doing a Foundation Studies courses a chance to build up a portfolio of artwork and choose their specialisation before getting down and dirty with UCAS.
Route B courses are listed on the UCAS website. You cannot apply for these through Route A (the normal UCAS route), unless they list both routes as options.
You can still choose up to five courses on your UCAS form, but no more than three of them can be Route B. If you fancy tossing in a few Route A courses, don’t put any Route B’s down on the form – just cross the box on the first page that asks if you want to apply for Route B’s later on and UCAS will send you one later.
If Route B is the only one for you, list up to three choices in the order they appear in the UCAS handbook and make sure your form gets to UCAS between January 1st and March 24th.Then, on a separate interview preference form, available from schools, colleges and careers centres, list the same choices, this time in order of how much they appeal to you.
Your forms (along with samples of your work) are then passed to the universities in your order of preference. It may be likely that you’ll be asked to attend an interview. Each university then makes one of two decisions.
An offer which you accept or decline.
No offer, in which case your paperwork moves on down the list to the next institution.
If your papers reach the bottom of the list without any of them making an offer, then you can try UCAS Extra or, when the results come out, Clearing.
Interviews for first choice universities are in February, second in April and third in May.
Last updated on: 13 November 2008