How do UK Universities Make Offers?

1. Submitting Your Application

Once you have submitted your application to UCAS, they will immediately send it to each of the individual universities you have listed in your application. These universities will not be able to see any of the other university or course choices you have made; only the information that you have included in the application documents themselves.

Where within the university your application is sent depends on the nature of the university set up. Most UK universities will have a centralised admissions process. This means that one central admissions office will receive all of the applications. Some Universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge, or Durham, have a decentralised process, meaning the applications are divided and each sent to a different college.

Both systems see rigorous checking of every single application that is submitted to them; it simply changes slightly the number of applications processed in any one given place. Additionally, within a decentralised process, it can mean that admissions requirements are slightly different from college to college, such as at Cambridge University (but don’t worry, this will have been made clear on the college webpages when applying).

2. Evaluating the Application (Admissions Requirements)

The first stage of evaluation will likely happen within the professional admissions teams of these centralised or decentralised admissions processes. The people evaluating applications in the first instance are usually non-academic members of staff whose expertise lie in determining whether applications meet the minimum admissions requirements of the course to which they have applied. This includes checking factors such as achieved and predicted grades, subject knowledge, and a clear expression of intent in the personal statement.

Occasionally, if an applicant is on the borderline on such a metric, a member of academic staff may be consulted before an application is either further processed or rejected. Be reassured that applications are all looked at by multiple people, and are rarely rejected out of hand.

3. Evaluating the Application (Academic Suitability)

The next stage of an application is to evaluate the academic suitability. Whilst applicants to many UK universities will have their application evaluated by an academic member of staff, this stage is most common at top Universities and those which involve an interview. This is because these universities are particularly interested in how the applicant as an individual is likely to get on with the nature of the course, the teaching methods, and perhaps the tutors themselves.

Academic staff at Oxford and Cambridge review an applicant’s materials before deciding which applicants to shortlist for the interviews, as well as after the interviews once more to ensure that the correct applicants are being offered places. Academic admissions tutors will evaluate not just the personal statement, but also admissions test scores, predicted grades, subjects taken, and any extenuating circumstances the applicant has declared. This is to ensure that all decisions are made with the maximum information possible.

Once all of these steps have been completed, what you receive is an offer in your UCAS dashboard, as well as likely in your email inbox and possibly in physical format on your doorstep as well. The final step will be for you to take stock of the offers you receive, consider each of their terms and how you feel about the universities/courses, and then proceed from there. Check in with our blog in the coming weeks for more advice on responding to offers and planning for the future!