Getting into university: decision time
After they’ve submitted their UCAS personal statement and the rest of their application, many people who are trying to get into university (or into another higher education institution) are unsure as to exactly what will happen next and what they have to do. The short answer is ‘not a lot’ – at least, in the sense that the application form is out of your hands and although you can probably track its progress, the next step is up to UCAS and things ought to move forward of their own accord.
A university or college’s response to an application is usually called a ‘decision’, and it may or may not include the offer of a place at the institution in question. Simply put, the university’s admissions people (and various others) look at your UCAS application form and decide whether they’re prepared to admit you to a course or not.
The university or college may get back to you via regular post or via email, but here’s one hot tip: the university admissions process goes on every year and everyone knows it does, with the result that prospective students are sometimes singled out as targets by spammers and scammers of various unsavoury types. So UCAS advises that if you do get correspondence directly from a university or college, you shouldn’t consider the information official until UCAS themselves have sent you their own correspondence confirming the on-the-record version of any or all decisions that institutions have made (and the offers that they are making).
Although UCAS sends out the only official notification of university and college decisions, they don’t really handle that side of things in any more depth, and they won’t substantially liaise with a university on your behalf. So if you’ve got a question for a particular higher education institution, or there’s anything else you want to raise with them, you should contact that institution directly. They’ll also be the best source for information about their own deadlines.
Have a look at the article on University Admissions and Offers for a bit more information about different types of university and college offers.
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