UCAS Application Advice
Filling in a UCAS application can be daunting if you’re heading to university for the first time, or completing an application for that all important next step in your studies. In this blog, we’ve collated helpful resources, as well as provided a breakdown of the process to demystify how it all works.
Completing your application
Things you will need to complete your application:
- Your personal details
- Your education qualifications/results
- Your university and course choices
- Your employment history (if applicable)
- Your personal statement (some ideas or a draft are fine for now)
- The application fee (£13 for one course, £24 for multiple courses or late applications)
There are approximately ten steps to the UCAS application from start to finish.
1.) Register your details
You need to register for an account with UCAS in order to complete your application. To do this you will need to enter some personal details and your current or former institution’s buzzword (if applicable). If you’re applying independently, you won’t need a buzzword, instead you will be asked a few extra questions.
2.) Sign in and get started
Once you have your username and password, you can login to add the rest of your personal details including residential status and funding options. If you’d like a parent or guardian to have access to your account, you can arrange it at this stage.
3.) Additional Information
For UK students, UCAS will ask for additional information including ethnicity and care and parental education. These are not mandatory and the answers are only used for UCAS statistics.
4.) Student Finance
For UK and EU students, a student finance section may appear depending on the personal information you have provided. UCAS don’t arrange funding for you, but you can grant UCAS permission to share your details with the funding body you apply to, to help speed up the process for you.
5.) University and Course Choices
This is the point in the application where you list up to five courses that you wish to apply for.
6.) Education History
In this section, you are required to list all your educational qualifications from secondary school onwards, including the ones which are ungraded or ones you’re waiting on results for.
7.) Employment History
If you’ve completed any full or part-time paid jobs, you will need to list them here. Any unpaid work or volunteer work should be included in your personal statement.
8.) Personal Statement
This section is an opportunity for you to outline to the institutions you’re applying to why you want to study your chosen course and why you’d make a good student at the institution.
9.) Review your application
You can save your progress through your application and mark sections complete when ready. Once you’ve marked all sections complete, you will be given a declaration to read and accept.
10.) References, Application Fee and Send
You are now onto the final stages where you need to arrange for an academic reference from someone who knows you educationally, pay for and send the application.
Resources
We hope the step by step process was useful. Full details can be found at UCAS.com. You can also make use of a number of resources, including:
How to request a reference – UCAS
Filling in your application – UCAS
Personal Statement Writing – Coventry University College
UCAS Video Library