Students apply to UK universities using an online form called UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service). This usually takes place between 01 September and 15 January of the applicant’s third year of high school.
UCAS serves as an intermediary between applicants and the universities. Applicants fill in a form which can be used to apply to five different universities of their choice.
There are four main sections in the UCAS form
1.
Education history and academic qualifications
2.
Personal statement
3.
Reference letter
4.
Personal information section
After completing the form and paying the application fee of £24, you submit your application. That’s it!
Registering with UCAS
You can apply as a school student or as a private candidate.
Most A-Level and IB schools are UCAS registered schools and have a specific UCAS code which you as a school student should use for your application.
Private candidates are students who attend a non UCAS registered high school or do not attend high school.
The difference between non-UCAS and UCAS registered schools is that UCAS schools are automatically given permission in the system to write reference letters. School candidates cannot access the reference section. Private candidates get to manually assign a referrer.
Filling Out The UCAS Form
Once you have set up your UCAS account, you will be directed to the form filing page. There are many sections but don’t worry, you do not have to complete all of them at one go. The drafts for each section can be saved and worked on at a later time. Here are some of the sections that you will encounter in the form:
Personal Details
This section requires you to fill in your name, address, nationality and other personal information.
Education History
This is where you input details about the schools you’ve attended and your grades. Grades obtained from age 14-16 and 16-18 are required. GCSE and A-Level grades are preferred so include these in the form if you have them.
Since most students will not have taken their A-Level or IB exam at the time of their UCAS submission, they will apply with their predicted grades. The predicted grades will not be submitted by the student but by the school teacher who will also submit the reference letter. Therefore, students simply indicate their grades as ‘Pending’ on the UCAS form.
Independent or private applicants who have taken the A-Levels at a non UCAS registered institution cannot have predicted grades and will need to apply with their final grades.
Conditional vs Unconditional Offer
When a student applies with predicted grades, they will receive a conditional offer if their application is successful. This means that the offer is conditional on the student obtaining a minimum set of grades for the A-Level or IB examination.
For example, 1 month after the UCAS submission, a student may receive a conditional offer of A*AA (A-Level) or 38 (IB) from the LSE. Of course, for those who already have A-Level/IB grades at the time of application form submission, they will receive unconditional offers.
Besides the overall grade requirements, there may be specific grade requirements for certain subjects (for example, a student applying to read Economics may be required to achieve an A* in Economics and Mathematics).
University / Course Selection
In this section, applicants get to choose their desired course as well as the universities they’d like to apply to. 5 is the limit. You can apply to 3 or 4 universities if you like. We recommend that out of the 5 choices, 1 or 2 should be safety options. These should be universities with lower entry requirements.
In deciding which university to apply to, there are a range of resources online which rank the universities (one example is “The Complete University Guide”). Bear in mind that university rankings and admissions success rates vary across subjects. This means for instance, that an applicant for Biology may find it more difficult to apply to university A than an applicant for History even though they are applying to the same university.
Certain universities like Oxford and Cambridge will require you to indicate which college within the university you wish to apply to. For more details on how to choose your college, please refer to Chapter 5.4. Note that you cannot apply to both Oxford and Cambridge at the same time.
Personal Statement
This section requires you to upload a personal statement of up to 4000 characters and 47 lines long. The statement will be used for all the universities that you apply to. For more details on writing the personal statement, please refer to Chapter 1.7.
Reference Letter
If you’re applying via your school, the reference section will automatically be filled in with the name of your school. For private candidates, you will be asked to write down your referrer’s (often this will be your subject teacher) email address. UCAS will directly request your referrer to provide a reference letter.
Payment
In order to process your UCAS application, you will be required to pay a fee of £24.
Receiving Admissions Decisions
After you submit your UCAS form, you will either receive news of any offers via email from the university (the offer letter will be attached) or via UCAS. This can happen as quickly as a few days after your UCAS submission.
To check your offers on UCAS, simply login to your UCAS account and navigate to the decision status page. All offers from the 5 universities you applied to will be listed there.
FAQ
Q: What do I write under modules?
A: The modules segment is meant to be filled in by A-Level students only, leave them blank if you are an IB student.
Q: Can we apply to several courses at one university?
A: Yes you can.
Q: The reference section in my application is missing. Is there something wrong?
A: One of the first things you indicate in the UCAS is whether you’re applying as an individual or via your school. If you are applying through your school, you simply indicate the person who will provide the reference for you. When the reference section cannot be found, this is usually a sign that the reference letter has already been submitted to UCAS. So there’s nothing to worry about.
Q: If I am applying to Oxford or Cambridge, do I have to apply to the other 4 schools as well by the 15 October deadline?
A: It is technically possible to apply to the other 4 schools afterwards. In order to do so, you have to first submit your UCAS application with either Oxford or Cambridge indicated on the list of universities that you’re applying to.
After your initial submission, you are allowed to make a few changes to your UCAS form and that includes amending the universities that you want to apply to. However, do note that that certain universities give out offers on a rolling basis (this means as and when UCAS applications are received).
So there are benefits to submitting your UCAS form early even though the deadline for most UK universities is in January. Do note that the application deadline for Medicine courses (including dentistry, veterinary medicine, and veterinary science) is 15 October as well.
Q: Our school did not host the Chemistry AP exam, so I had to go to another school to take the exam. On the UCAS, do I have to put in the name of the school that I went to to take the exam on the list of the schools that I’ve attended?
A: This section is not intended to capture information about where you took the exam. Students just need to indicate the exams that they took while attending a particular school. Let’s assume that you went to B school to take exam Z while you were attending C school. In this scenario, all you need to do on UCAS is to put down the exam “Z” under the school “C”..