UCAS - What we do with your application

What happens next?

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

We process your application.
We send you a welcome letter by post confirming your personal details and choices.
Your chosen universities and colleges can view your application.
The universities and colleges decide whether to make you an offer or not.

1. When we receive your completed application, we begin to process the details. If we have to query anything, we will contact you to find out more information.

2. After processing your application, we will send you a welcome letter that lists your choices. Please check the information carefully and let us know immediately if anything is not correct by contacting our Customer Contact Centre. If your address is in the UK, it can take up to a week to receive the welcome letter. If you live outside the UK, it can take around three weeks to reach you.

You can view your application in Track using your Personal ID and the same username and password you used to apply. Your username is printed on your welcome letter.

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

4. The universities and colleges will consider your application against their own admissions criteria. Each has their own criteria and their own ways of working, so you can expect to hear from them at different times: you may be contacted within a very short period of time or it may be some months before you hear anything. They will decide whether to offer you 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 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 you provided, when they consider your application. This information, which is publicly available, provides them with performance data for the schools and colleges in the UK that you have attended as well as participation in higher education in your area, and allows them to make a holistic assessment of your potential in the context of any barriers you may have encountered.

From the 2012 entry application cycle UCAS has provided this information directly to the universities and colleges that you have 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 Wales ¹
- 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
the percentage of students at the school:
- entitled to educational maintenance allowance in England, Wales, Northern Ireland (note this information will 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 through 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 application. Check individual university and college websites to see how they use the information.

Letters from UCAS

As you go through the application cycle, you will receive standard letters depending on the status of your choices, decisions and replies.

Welcome letter (AS2) - sent to you when we receive your application. You'll also be sent a copy of the Applicant Welcome Guide.
Offer letter (AS3) - sent to you when a university or college makes you an offer.
Unsuccessful letter (AS4) - sent to you when your application to a university or college has been unsuccessful.
Replying to Offers letter (AS6) - sent to you when you have received decisions from all your choices and have received at least one offer. It asks you to reply to your offer(s) by a given date.
Status Check letter (AS9) - sent to confirm that we have recorded your replies correctly.
Confirmation letter (AS12) - sent to you if you firmly accept an unconditional offer, or if your place has been confirmed by your university or college once exam results are published.
New Options letter (AS13) - sent to you with information about other options available if your place has not been confirmed.

If you've provided a verified email address, the AS3, AS4, AS6 and AS9 (except the AS9D) letters will be available online in Track instead of sent in the post.