UCAS - Approve applications and references

How to approve applications and references

Once an application has been completed by the applicant and sent to your centre, it can be approved. Approving an application means that you confirm that the applicant has provided all necessary information, eg all their qualifications, and that the application is ready for universities and colleges to consider. Once the reference has been written and attached to the application, this can also be approved.

Both sections need to be approved before the application can be sent to us to process. Check the Applications and References sections in Apply to see which require approval.

Please note that if an application shows all sections as complete, but the overall application status is 'in progress', the applicant may have forgotten to send it to you.

Referring to a book You do not have to wait until an application is complete before you can view it. If you prefer, you can check applications that are in progress. If an applicant has supplied a valid email address on their application, you can notify them by email through Apply of any mistakes - click on the envelope symbol that will be displayed in the References section. You can also email applicants listed in a group in the Applications - All section.

Once an application has been sent to you to be approved, the system prevents applicants making further changes at this stage. We recommend that you pay particular attention to checking through the qualifications and the choices.

If you find any errors after an applicant has completed the application, you can return it to them provided it has not been sent to us. At this point you can add a note to their application explaining why you are returning it - this will be displayed on the welcome page when they next log in to Apply. The applicant needs to send the application back to you once they have rectified the errors.

Once you are satisfied that everything is correct, you can approve completed applications. If their application has been approved but not sent to us and an error is then found, you should 'unapprove' the record (see the drop-down list of actions) before returning it to the applicant.

When an application and its reference have been approved, the application will be listed in the Send to UCAS section in Apply. You can then send the full application to us to process. Once it has been sent to us, it cannot be returned.

Residential category
We have had some feedback from universities and colleges that applicants are using the category Settled in the UK when they should be using UK Citizen or EU National. In general, most students at schools in the UK will be UK Citizen or EU National.

Please can you check that applicants have used the correct category before you send them to UCAS. Any that have been sent to UCAS with the wrong category can be changed if the applicant contacts the Customer Contact Centre.