BACK TO APPLYING

Applying to Universities
HOW THE APPLICATION PROCESS WORKS
Things you'll hear a lot:
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UCAS (pronounced yoo-cas):   universities’ post office
Personal Statement:   look at the size of my tackle
Prospectus:   look at the size of our tackle
Conditional offer:   we’ll show you ours if you show us yours
Unconditional offer:   come back to my place
Rejection:   size matters…
Clearing:   …but not to us
Open day:   checking out the talent
Interviews:   Dad, buy me a suit

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​UCAS APPLICATIONS IN A NUTSHELL

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service manages the application process for most universities and colleges in the UK. But it doesn't have anything to do with deciding who actually goes where. Every May their website lists the universities and courses available. 
 
Student hopefuls register online at UCAS's website and fill in their application there. The online form has spaces for applying for up to five courses, but it’s not the law to use them all. It’s possible to apply to the same course at up to five different universities, five different courses at the same university, or, indeed, five different courses at five different universities. The first option’s usually the best bet, but if you are kinky enough to chose several wildly different courses, you can sleep soundly knowing that each university you apply to won’t get to see what else you applied for.

Your academic qualifications and grades will be probed with the thoroughness of an eager proctologist, and you have your chance to convince universities how committed you are to the course you’ve chosen, how great you’d be at doing it, and what an all-round academic sex-bomb you’d be to have around.

If you're applying through your school or college, they will also add their own thoughts to the form, including their real opinions about their students, plus a list of their predicted grades - all highly secretive stuff that you probably won't see.

If you're applying on your own, you'll be responsible for copying and pasting (by which we don't mean typing your own fictitious or embellished reference) the reference in yourself.

UCAS starts accepting applications on September 1st. For Oxford, Cambridge or medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine or veterinary science, the deadline is October 15th, (see Applying to Oxford or Cambridge), otherwise it’s mid January at the latest. 

Whenever the form’s sent off, UCAS charge a fee (£7 for one choice, £17 for more) to cover their shuffling costs.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I SUBMIT A UCAS APPLICATION?

UCAS sends you an acknowledgement when they receive it, though you can track the progress of your application via the website.
Meanwhile, UCAS is also sending copies of your form to the universities you chose and uploading your details on to an online database, which universities can access. 

Applications received after the mid-January deadline, but before June, are stamped late, and universities don’t have to consider them. Any forms UCAS gets after 1st July are automatically condemned to Clearing.

Some universities do still consider late applications, but generally in the same way a starving man considers eating charcoal. And it tends to be ones who’re not exactly brimming with glowing candidates. After all, universities can only offer the places they’ve got left.

The process for applying to certain Art & Design courses (so-called ‘Route B’) is different; see the bit about Applying for Art & Design Courses, below.

WHAT DO THE UNI'S DO WITH UCAS APPLICATIONS?

They print them them out and make them into a giant nest using their own bodily fluids as an adhesive... but that’s just during the Christmas party hijinks.

After they’ve sobered up, they’ll glance over the applications and write to you with one of the four possible responses:
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  • An unconditional offer: This means they’ll take you no matter what. They were that impressed. Actually, they usually only do this with applicants who’ve already got the grades. Some universities give a conditional offer of ‘EE’ if you get them really wet, which is as good as unconditional – unless things go really cack-shaped with your A Levels.
  • A conditional offer: This means they’ll take you if you meet their conditions. The conditions are usually getting certain grades at A Level or Highers, but occasionally they might offer a place in another year or on another course.
  • A rejection: They don’t want you. They don’t give reasons. Maybe the envelope wasn’t stuffed with enough cash. Maybe they didn’t appreciate the naked Polaroids. You’ll never know.
  • An interview: They want to see the cut of your jib, test your mettle and sniff your nether parts before they finally decide. This is less common than it once was and it tends to be the older universities that still go in for interviews. But it’s a great opportunity to check out the place, take in its vibes and see what the people are like.

sifting through offers and options

UCAS lets you know each university’s decision as it receives them.

You don’t have to decide on any of them, until you’ve heard from the lot. Some places might try to wrangle a decision from you by saying places are filling up fast, but once they’ve made an offer they can’t easily withdraw it, so hold onto your hamsters and wait. You don’t want to say yes to one university and get an offer from your favourite the next day. Besides, it’s an important choice and important choices merit a little mulling time.

By May at the latest each university should have made its decision one way or another. Once the last one has decided, UCAS sends you a summary of the responses from all of your choices.

What to do when the offers roll in
Unconditional offers can be accepted (or rejected) right away, leaving time to relax, concentrate on revision and brag about it over a pint.
Conditional offers are more problematic. You can only hang on to two offers, so you may find yourself having to reject a few. Makes you feel powerful, eh? 

First off, ditch anywhere you’ve decided you don’t like. (Although you should like most of them. Otherwise why did you apply there in the first place?) After that, it’s common practice to keep one realistic, but perhaps slightly hopeful offer and one with lower requirements as a back up. That way, if you don’t get the grades for the higher one, you have a university-shaped safety net to fall back on.

That’s assuming that the places that require the highest grades are the ones you most want to go to. That’s not always true and, if there’s one that floats your canoe more than the others, choose that offer as your ‘firm’ acceptance, regardless of the grades (so long as you think you stand a short-sighted archer’s hope of hitting them).

We say ‘firm acceptance’, because that’s what UCAS calls the first of the two offers you can accept. Your ‘firm acceptance’ means, if they’ve made a conditional offer and you meet those conditions, that’s where home will be come September. 
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You can keep another offer as your back up, or ‘insurance’ offer. If you miss the grades for your first choice, but meet the conditions for the second, then you’ll be going there instead. 
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It’s a bad idea to accept an offer without visiting the place first. That would be like a three-year-long blind date. In the dark. Wearing the wrong shoes. You can look around at a scheduled open day (usually advertised on the universities’ websites), when you go for an interview or simply by rocking up whenever you’ve got the time.

ucas extra

It’s quite possible that none of your choices makes you an offer. Or that you turn down all the offers that they make. For those situations, UCAS have invented a system called UCAS Extra. Basically, it works a bit like Clearing, but you don’t have to wait till you’ve got your grades to use it.

Some time in March, the course list on the UCAS website will start to say whether there are any places left on a course for that year. If there are, you can apply for a vacancy by using UCAS’s online ‘Track’ system (which you can also use to keep up to speed with how the whole application process is going). Or you can apply on paper by getting a UCAS Extra ‘Passport’.

You can apply for one vacancy at a time and the university in question will either make you an offer or reject you. If you turn them down or they turn you down (or if you don’t hear from them within 15 days), you can apply for another vacancy. And so on until either you accept an offer or run out of time in mid July, when Extra ends. If you still haven’t got a place, then you have to wait till you’ve got your results and either take your chances with Clearing or, probably more sensibly, take a year out and apply again for the following year.
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Like Clearing, Extra is designed to fill the gaps universities haven’t been able to fill using regular applications. You may decide it’s like the dump bins in HMV where they try to flog 137 surplus Gareth Gates CDs at 99p for 12. For some people that’s a bargain. Others would rather pay full whack for something they actually want. It’s your call. Either way, for the official low-down from UCAS on Extra, see ucas.com/getting/after/extra.html.

when the exam results come out

Most applicants get at least some kind of offer they’re happy to accept, but, when the exam results are published in August, it’s quite possible that - quite literally - they won’t make the grade.

If you don’t meet the conditions of your offer, the first thing to do, especially if it was a near miss, is to call or e-mail the university pretty sharpish and see if they’ll still take you. They may have places left and might think taking you is better than risking ending up having to take someone who they know nothing about.

However, if they say no, there’s basically two ways to go. Either take a year out and go through the whole process again, or try to find a place through Clearing.

Earlier, we said that if you meet the conditions of any offer you’ve accepted, then it’s a done deal – that’s where you’re going. In fact, that’s not quite true. If, for some reason, when you get your results, you’re no longer happy with your offer, then you can drop out of the whole system, let the university and UCAS know that’s what you’re doing and reapply the following year. You could also try to find a place through Clearing, although, officially, you wouldn’t be eligible. As if that matters.

Why would you want to turn down a perfectly good offer though? Well, for one, you might have done better than you expected. You might be holding a firmly accepted offer of BBC from somewhere that only gets you slightly excited, but then when you find yourself with a swanky pants AAB, you might think you’re in a position to trade up.
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Alternatively, you might have missed your first choice, but decide you can do better than your back up.
Whatever the reason, at any point, you can withdraw from the system at any point and face the same two choices: take a year out and reapply or throw your lot in with Clearing.

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?

APPLYING AFTER YOU HAVE LEFT SCHOOL

You don't have to be at school or college to apply to uni. You don't even have to have been anywhere near an educational institution for a while.

Anyone can apply directly through UCAS, but, depending on their relationship with their old school, it's probably easier to do it through them. 

Apart from anything else, there's a part of the UCAS application which is a reference which you’re not allowed to fill in for yourself. Usually schools do this bit and universities tend to put some trust in what they say because, after all, they've usually known their students for a while and they know their academic record and potential.

So, if practical, it's probably best to get them to write your reference. You'll only have to find someone else to do it otherwise and that may not be easy. If you do find someone, they may not be sufficiently well informed about you or what unis are looking for to provide the perfect reference. And even if they are, there's still a possibility that unis might wonder why you didn't get your school to write your reference. It might be unfair for them to think like that, but why even give them the chance if it can be avoided?

Also most schools will be happy to check your application for you. This may involve reading it through and pointing out errors, advising on style or content and generally helping. Or it may be just checking that you've answered relevantly in all the appropriate boxes. Either way, it's worth getting that help. 

Most will also help you out with registering with UCAS and they'll give you a 'buzzword', a code word that goes on your application that means UCAS knows you're attached to that school (even if your not actually a student there). 

To get the ball rolling, just get back in touch with your school and tell them you want to apply. The head of careers would be a good place to start or, failing that, the headteacher's secretary usually knows who does what, even when no one else does.

But what if you left a few years ago? Or a few decades? Or if when you left school, both of you were delighted you never had to see each other again?

The best place to turn is your local careers organisations. As the arrangements vary from place to place, the best organisation may be your local Aim Higher office, your local education authority (LEA) or your local council's education department (which is probably the same as the LEA). They may also be willing to provide a reference and help with your application. They'll probably also have a buzzword for you.

For mature students, it may have been a while since you were at school, but often there’s somewhere where you’ve done some other course more recently – perhaps even in preparation for going back to studying. If so, that might be an alternative. They might be prepared to provide your reference and do everything else that old schools would otherwise do. However, it's possible they may not be registered with UCAS yet, in which case they won't have a buzzword.

There's absolutely no rule against applying directly without a buzzword. Instead of going through the school or anyone else, you could, say, get a reference from one of your old teachers  – especially if there's one you got on with particularly well. Officially, it's no biggie not to have a buzzword, but you can't help thinking they wouldn't exist if they didn't add at least some buzz.

​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.

​FUQs (Frequently Unasked Questions)

What colour pen should I use to fill in my UCAS form?
You don't. The application is an online form - and if you're trying to fill in your form by writing on your computer monitor, you're probably not ready for university yet.

What does it cost to apply?
At the moment, it’s £17 per application or just £7 if you apply to only one place.

Who do I make my cheque payable to?
Push. Alright, not really. Make it out to either ‘UCAS Applications Account’ or whoever else your school tells you - if they’re planning to gather everyone’s applications and send them all together, with one giant cheque. Your school will make it clear which method they are using. If you're applying independently, you'll need to pay with plastic on the UCAS website.

What should I be doing right now?
For reminders about what you should be doing at any given time, follow our regular updates for deadline reminders and latest tips on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

How do I tell UCAS and the universities that I want to take a year out?
On your form, for each of your choices that you want to defer (ie. put off going for a year), tick the box in the 'defer' column.

Can I use my UCAS form to apply for Art & Design courses as well as other courses?
Yup. See the the bit about Art & Design courses.

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