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What happens next?

Step 2: Applying

Once we have received a completed application, the following steps occur.

  1. We process the application.
  2. We send the applicant a welcome letter confirming their personal details and choices.
  3. The chosen universities and colleges can view the application online.
  4. The universities and colleges decide whether to make an offer or not.

1. When we receive your son or daughter's completed application, we begin to process the details. If we have to query anything, we will contact them to find out more information.

Studying the screen

2. After processing the application, we will send them a welcome letter that lists their choices. They should check the information carefully and let us know immediately if anything is not correct by contacting our Customer Contact Centre. If your son or daughter hasn't received their letter within 14 days from sending their application to us, they should contact our Customer Contact Centre.

Your son or daughter will then be able to access their application in Track. Track is an online system which allows applicants to view their application, make changes to their personal details, view decisions made by the universities and colleges and reply to any offers received.

3. Once the application is processed, universities and colleges can access it online. They can view the application, but they will not see where else your son or daughter has applied. They will only see any other choices after your son or daughter has replied to their offers. Universities and colleges may contact them to tell them that they are considering their application. Not all of them do this, so don't worry if they don't hear from some of their choices.

4. The universities and colleges will consider your son's or daughter's application against their own admissions criteria. Each has their own criteria and their own ways of working, so your son or daughter can expect to hear from them at different times: they may be contacted within a very short period of time or it may be some months before they hear anything. The university or college will decide whether to offer a place or not and will send their decision to us. Decisions will be displayed in Track as soon as we receive them. More about offers

Information about your son or daughter's school or college:

For a number of years some universities and colleges have been using information called contextual data, as well as the information that an applicant provides, when they consider an application. This information, which is publicly available, provides them with performance data for the schools and colleges in the UK that your son or daughter has attended as well as participation in higher education in their area, and allows them to make a holistic assessment of your son or daughter's potential in the context of any barriers they may have encountered.

From the 2012 entry application cycle UCAS has provided this information directly to the universities and colleges that your son or daughter has applied to. Although it is already publicly available; UCAS has made it available for all universities and colleges in the UCAS scheme.

The information that will be available is:

  • the school performance of students achieving:
    • five A*-C GCSE including English or Welsh and mathematics or equivalent in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
    • five or more SCQF level 4 Scottish Standard grade including English and mathematics or equivalent in Scotland
  • the school performance relating to the:
    • average QCA points for the best eight GCSEs in England and Wales1
    • average points for the best eight Scottish Standard grades or equivalent in Scotland
  • the school performance relating to the:
    • average QCA points per A level entry (or equivalent) in England and Wales1
    • average UCAS Tariff points per Scottish Highers entry in Scotland
  • the school performance relating to the:
    • average QCA points per A level student (or equivalent) in England and Wales1
    • average UCAS Tariff points per Scottish Highers student in Scotland
  • the percentage of students at the school:
    • entitled to free school meals *England, Wales and Northern Ireland
    • registered for free school meals in Scotland

      • *Note: the information for England has been sourced by local authority
  • the percentage of students at the school:
    • entitled to educational maintenance allowance in England, Wales, Northern Ireland (note this information will be not be available for England after the 2010 academic year as this data was no longer collected in England. It will be available for other administrations if still available from them)
    • registered for educational maintenance allowance in Scotland
  • Lives in a low progression to higher education neighbourhood (Polar 2)
 

1 We are unable to provide this information for Northern Ireland.

The information will be linked to the applicant or can be made available as generic data sets. It will initially be available for the 2009 and 2010 academic years.

The universities and colleges may use the information when they consider your son or daughter's application. Check individual university and college websites to see how they use the information.