UCAS Journey

What is UCAS ?
UCAS stands for Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. It’s the centralised service
that students use to apply to university. … Think of UCAS as an online dating service:
through it you can select and apply to universities, the universities take your proposal and
decide whether or not to offer you a place.

To get some sense of the size and scale of UCAS, in 2019, the service processed
2.79million applications from 706,435 UK, EU and international students.

UCAS also handles applications to conservatoires, initial teacher training and taught
postgraduate courses.

When should I begin logging onto UCAS ?

The sooner the better !

Realistically, the time to begin is early in your 6 th Form career. You have just been awarded your GCSE results. You have chosen A Levels which are stepping stones to possible careers. Time is on your side as you are not under any pressure at this stage to decide on courses or careers. You are just browsing. Become familiar with how the UCAS site operates, how you apply through the site, how many choices of courses you have etc.,
On the UCAS site, Explore has a wealth of information about career pathways. It’s a great
jumping off point for you to find out more about the type of course you might be interested in.

Delve into whatever catches your fancy – from accounting to zoology. As the saying goes ‘
Before you make up your mind, you need to open it’

Once you have looked at career options, step across to Universities and Colleges. This tab
lists all the universities and colleges linked to UCAS. For each institution there is a list of the courses on offer and the option to explore each course in greater depth.

At this point, you might be punch-drunk on all the information. Keep an online record of your investigations, what you have found interesting and which courses you would like to find out more about. There is no need to make any decisions at this stage. Well, that’s not strictly true. The most important commitment at this stage is to really concentrate on your studies. Top grades means you will have the very widest of choices when it comes to actually selecting the courses and universities you want to go to.