You didn’t think getting a degree would be all fun and games, did you? I guess it was hard to anticipate that opening your laptop would result in a burst of unfinished essays, deadlines, coursework, lectures and seminars all screaming at you. ​

It’s June, which is a horrifying thought – the longest day of the year is less than a week away! But other than existential angst, June also means that Universities are opening for applications. And they want applications. Your application. 
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There’s over 150 Higher Education Institutes in the UK and they offer around 100,000 courses. The choice is absolutely staggering and it’s very easy to get overwhelmed when choosing a uni. 

The resources that exist to help you choose are often just as bad – league tables with dozens of categories; you might in interested in knowing a university’s research quality but what does a research quality of 3.34 mean? 

The 18th May is when you’re able to register and start your application to begin your undergraduate degree in 2022 ready to submit it from September 2021.

Now while the actual date you’d be starting seems like a lifetime away - If you could call 16 months a lifetime (and a quick internet search tells me that only some rodents can). It is never too early to start taking a look at two things.

​What you want to study and where you want to study it.

The two things are equally as important in your decision-making process so let’s take a look at each and what kind of questions you should be asking yourself as you begin to put together your UCAS application for next year.

The purpose of this article is to try and present learning in a new light – to show that learning can be a powerful and enjoyable tool for life. I’m not talking about any specific area of learning – this isn’t an argument that you should become an expert on the mating cycles of sea-slugs. 

​This may well seem like a strange concept – you might ask “why on earth would I want to love learning?” Learning is, after all, school and university, endless classes, exams and stress.  Isn’t it? 

No. 

University admissions are something that the majority of us would agree should be a straightforward and fair process but it isn’t always clear (and is a topic up for debate) on how fair that process is currently.
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What should be considered in a university application? Well the most obvious is the grades of the applicant, a clear indication of academic ability, but is that all admissions should be judged on? After all, everyone has their own barriers to face in life. At Push we love talking about building resilience from your setbacks and using these as a positive element to your self development. The argument is that these barriers are something that should be considered by universities during admissions. 

A report by the Nuffield foundation found that, selective universities are increasingly taking into account  socioeconomic and educational contexts in which applicants achieved their grades but Vikki Boliver of Durham university argues that universities must be even bolder in their admissions process to ensure that students from disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds are able to access higher education.

So one thing that 2021 has brought with it is the UKs actual, no gracing period, exit from the European Union. Regardless of how you feel about the situation, it's happened and now we have to get used to all of the changes that has come along with that.

One of those changes is that the UK will no longer be able to take part in the Erasmus+ scheme. Something that allowed students to go study abroad in Europe with no tuition fees and also receive a grant for their living costs. 

A recent BBC study found that the least likely group to go to university is currently white males from low-income families. Only 26% of students from low-income backgrounds have gone on to higher education this year, only half of them were white British males.

October 15th is the deadline for applications to Oxford, Cambridge, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science courses. This is not a seriously-ill-line or near-death-line, it is a deadline. 

If you miss it, you'll have to wait a year to apply again. If you’re thinking about applying to these courses I’m sure you’re already done most of the legwork for your application. If you're not ready yet, then switch off your phone, dust off your laptop and let your mum know she’s on coffee duty for the next 24 hours solid

You'd be forgiven for thinking that with around a year to go until your first application deadline looms, you've got time to perfect your Beyonce dance routine. While this is a perfectly legitimate leisure activity and will look fierce when you whip it out at parties, choosing a uni is much easier if you take the time to do it right

If you’re thinking of going to uni in September 2021 but you haven’t thought about which unis you're going to apply to yet: You’d better level up and get going.

You’ve got until mid-January to complete your application for most courses, but Oxbridge, medicine and veterinary courses have deadlines that are less than a month away (October 15th).

Is it time to start thinking about which university you might want to go to?

Well fear no more!

Over the past few months we’ve had a go at making a handy map for you that outlines as many universities in the UK that we could throw our hat at.

Click here to have a look at the list of universities on offer with links to their location, websites and a little of our honest Push info too.

If you’re part of a university or college that isn’t on the map and would like to be included. Please email at [email protected] and we can get it added to the map.

Work experience: cancelled. Taster days: cancelled. University open days, you guessed it... cancelled.

Sinking into the sofa, many have felt like the whole of higher education is getting cancelled. Six months into lockdown, however, you start to realise that the world is actually at the tip of your fingers. 

We are the generation of technology. The generation of endless screening.  Even though work experience for many is cancelled, when a global pandemic forces us indoors, we’ve never felt more at home.

When distance learning is necessary, many students and teachers consider it a challenge. In reality, it can be a very useful tool which can provide students from all over the world with the chance to learn. Whether they don’t have access to education otherwise or a worldwide pandemic has taken place, distance learning can become a great alternative for everyone.
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In order to make it effective, though, teachers are not the only ones that need to find ways to keep it interesting. Students should also find ways to make distance learning more interesting in order to get something from it. Here are some tips to help you achieve just that.

A group of leading educational access charities and not-for profit organisations is calling for the government to take action to ensure that young people from less advantaged backgrounds do not face additional barriers in accessing further study, training and employment opportunities, following the allocation of A-level grades this year. 

We recognise that the circumstances surrounding this year’s A-levels made any ideal outcome impossible, but it is clear that – in a significant number of cases – individual students have been left with their future plans in disarray. What’s more concerning is that many of these students are from the least advantaged backgrounds. These are the young people who already face the biggest barriers in accessing higher education; barriers that have been compounded during lockdown. Every hour, we are encountering more young people whose plans for university, apprenticeships or jobs have been seriously affected because they were statistical exceptions.

We note that Ofqual's Technical Report details that the A/A* attainment gap between FSM and non-FSM students increased from 6.1% in 2019 to 7.1% in 2020, reversing progress made the prior year. Furthermore, independent schools saw a 4.7 percentage point increase in A/A* grades compared to just 0.3pp at Sixth Form/FE/Tertiary colleges.

As coalitions, working collaboratively to tackle educational inequality, our priority is to focus on how we, and the government, can best support young people. We call upon the government to ensure that no student, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, has their opportunity of work, training or study compromised by being graded unfairly by an algorithm.

We urge the government to do this by:

• Replacing calculated grades with centre assessment grades (CAGs) for all students where it doesn't result in a decrease in grade awarded. This removes the bias that currently favours those in small subject cohorts, who already receive an unadjusted CAG. If calculated grades are not replaced with CAGs, we recommend publishing CAGs alongside the grades awarded. To allow universities and employers to better interpret the grades awarded, a flag should show if their awarded grade was based on a CAG (due to small cohort size) or calculated grade. 
• Waiving appeal fees and developing a fast-track appeals process, so that young people can get a quick and smooth resolution to their grade concerns. This includes making sure that appeals can be made easily by those who no longer have the support of an assessment centre.
• Providing young people who choose to take autumn examinations with access to the academic support needed to succeed. Protecting young people from financial challenges during this time, by ensuring that they can access full social security benefits, at least until the exam results are published. 
• Removing the university student number cap, which is a structural barrier to less-advantaged applicants, and has hindered the flexibility of higher education institutions in recent days. Government should support the use of contextualised admissions processes which have played a vital role in fair treatment of the most impacted students. 

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Signatories
Nathan Samson, CEO, The Access Project, [email protected]
Anne-Marie Canning MBE, CEO, The Brilliant Club, [email protected]
Laura Gray, CEO, Brightside, [email protected]
Sam Holmes, CEO, Causeway Education, [email protected]
Maria Neophytou, Interim CEO, Impetus-PEF, [email protected]
Rachel Carr OBE, CEO, IntoUniversity, [email protected]
Johnny Rich, CEO, Push, [email protected]
John Craven, CEO, upReach, [email protected]
Rae Tooth, CEO, Villiers Park Education Trust, [email protected].
 
Sam Butters and Gina Cicerone, Co-CEOs, Fair Education Alliance, [email protected].

On social media: #coalitionforfairness

The deadlines have passed for your decisions on your university offers so I hope you managed to get your research sorted and were confident and comfortable in your final decision.
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Of course, this particular year, the decision was even bigger than usual. The pandemic has meant that we aren’t completely sure what form university will take in September and so it may feel like there’s a bigger risk of committing to an undergraduate degree.