Five tips to avoid deadline day drama

The deadline for conservatoire music courses is 1 October at 18:00 (UK time). By this date your entire application, including referee details and payment, must be completed and sent to us. Make sure you don’t miss this deadline by following these five tips.

1. Know your logins
We’ll start with the basics, it’s important you know your username and password so you can complete your application. You don’t want to be struggling to login while trying to meet the deadline. If you’ve forgotten your username or password, recover your details online.

2. Give yourself plenty of time to complete the personal statement 
The personal statement may appear daunting but we’ve got plenty of advice to help you along the way. Also, check out our personal statement mind map as it has lots of guidance on how to start, all the way through to completing it.

3. Make sure you have a valid debit or credit card to make a payment
In order to send your application, you must complete the payment section. It may sound obvious but check that the account has enough money in it to cover your application and audition fees and is valid to make payments online.

4. Don’t leave it to the very last minute
You never know what might happen, whether you have last minute internet issues or other technical problems you don’t want to miss the deadline because of it.

5. Keep calm
Above all, it’s important to stay calm and not stress. If you have any questions about your application, check out our website or send us a message on Facebook or Twitter.

Good luck with your application!

Get the views of conservatoire student Charlotte, who has been sharing her experience in her blog.

Top tips for meeting the art & design application deadline

Our next application deadline is just around the corner on 24 March, and it applies to some art and design courses. Here we’ll cover the most common questions we get about this deadline, to make sure you send in your application on time.

How do I check if the course has a 24 March deadline?
You can check which deadline a course follows in our search tool. Once you’ve selected the course you’re interested in, you’ll be taken to a page with a ‘How to apply’ tab. Select this tab and you’ll see which deadline your course has.

What time is the deadline?
The deadline is at 18:00 UK time on 24 March. We must receive your completed application, including a reference, by this time for it to count as on time. Make sure you allow plenty of time before the deadline for your referee to complete a reference.

Also remember, you need to pay the application fee before it can be sent. The fee is £12 for one choice or £23 for more than one choice. Try not to leave payment until the last day – just in case you encounter any problems. If you're having difficulties making a payment then follow these tips to overcome this.

What will happen if I send my application after the deadline? 
Your application will be considered late if it reaches us after 18:00 on 24 March, and the universities and colleges don’t guarantee equal consideration. Although some may still consider you, this would be less likely for more popular courses.

If you’re in this position and you want to check whether you’d be considered after the deadline, then get in touch with the universities to check.

Why can’t I log in to my application?
If you can’t log in to your application, check that you’re trying to log into Apply and not Track. If you’ve forgotten your username or password, try to reset your details using our ‘Forgotten login?’ tool. If you’re still having trouble then give us a call so one of our advisers can help.

Good luck with your application!
If you have any further questions about the 24 March deadline, get in touch with our advisers on Facebook or Twitter.

Replying to offers - your questions answered

We’re approaching the time of year when lots of you will be replying to your offers. For some, this
can be a tough decision and a nerve-wracking experience. We’ll try to put your mind at ease by answering some of the top questions we get asked at this important time of year:

1. I’m in Track but I don’t have an option to reply to my offers. What’s going on?

This is usually because you haven’t had a decision from all of your choices yet. However, if you’re ready to reply and don’t want to wait for the other choices to make a decision, you can choose to cancel them. To do this, click on 'view' for each outstanding choice and then you’ll have the option to 'permanently withdraw from this choice.' Once you’ve done this, the ‘reply to offers’ button will be available in the ‘Your choices’ section of Track.  

If you’ve been offered an interview, you’ll need to decline it first and then cancel the choice before you can reply to your offers. If it's an interview you've already accepted, you'll need to call us so we can help you.

2. What do ‘firm’ and ‘insurance’ mean?

Firm: this is your first choice – the place you most want to go to. If you accept a conditional offer and meet the conditions, you’ll have a confirmed place here.

Insurance: this is the choice you’d want if you didn't meet the conditions of your firm choice. If this is a conditional offer, you’d need to meet the conditions for your place to be confirmed.

3. Can I reply to more than two offers?

You can accept a maximum of two choices – one firm and one insurance. You can only have an insurance choice if your firm choice is a conditional offer. If you accept an unconditional offer as your firm choice then the place is guaranteed, so you cannot have an insurance choice.

4. Do you have to reply to all your offers at the same time?

Yes, you have to reply to all your offers at the same time. But that doesn’t mean you need to rush to make a decision as soon as you’re in a position to reply. As long as you reply before the deadline date then your replies will be recorded. That said, it’s not a good idea to wait until the last minute on your reply deadline day – so do give yourself enough time to reply carefully. 

5. I've made a mistake with my replies. Can I change them?

You may change your replies once within seven days of initially making them. To do this, give us a quick call with your Personal ID and one of your advisers will be able to help.

6. When do I need to reply?

Once you’ve had decisions back from all your choices, you’ll be given a date in Track by which you need to reply. This handy little table will also give you an idea of when you need to reply…

Last decision by	Your reply date is
31 March 2015	6 May 2015
7 May 2015	4 June 2015
4 June 2015	25 June 2015
16 July 2015	23 July 2015

As soon as you’ve replied it’s worth double-checking the information in Track to make sure everything is as you intended. If you notice anything that doesn’t seem quite right after you’ve replied then give us a call as soon as possible so we can look into it for you.

Our step-by-step video guide also shows you how to reply to your offers in Track. 

If you have any other questions about replying, get in touch with our advisers on Facebook or Twitter.

Better late than never? Making an application after the 15 January deadline

Karen Pichlmann, Head of Admissions at Bournemouth University, explains why there are deadlines in the first place, what making a late application means and the options you'll have open to you:

Karen Pichlmann

Did you decide today that you want to go to uni only to find the deadline has passed?  That’s OK, you can still go.  And the choice is either to wait until next year (putting the deadlines in your diary now) or see what’s available to late applicants.  Deadline doesn’t mean dead-end. 

Deadlines

UCAS application deadlines are there for a reason, from your perspective it means your university application is out of the way before you get down to the all-important revision.  Deadlines also mean universities can manage the selection process – time for interviewing, portfolio presentations, selection days etc.  Universities deal with vast numbers of applications, and in order to give each one the consideration it deserves, we need time.  Plus it works the other way too, universities have to let you know their decisions by certain deadlines.

Many schools and colleges really encourage their students to meet the deadlines (some students may say ‘nagging’!) and the vast majority of applicants do.  For some prospective students, they just aren’t ready by the deadlines for a variety of reasons.  The decision to go to university may come later in the year, once they are further through their A levels or BTEC for instance.  Students who aren’t in a school or college may not be aware that deadlines exist – understandable when they seem so early compared to when university starts.  Indeed, some students at university currently may have a change of heart and need to change course.

Missed the deadline?

So now we know why the deadlines are there, the next logical question is “are there deadlines for late applications?” Yes of course!  See UCAS’ important dates section.  You can apply now and until 30 June as a late applicant.  After this time, you will go into Clearing.  Five months sounds like a long time, but I’d urge you not to delay as some courses may close over the coming months.

Equal consideration

Before you proceed, I need to tell you about ‘equal academic consideration’.  Essentially it does what it says on the tin, and guarantees each applicant equal consideration as long as they apply by the deadline.  Applying after the deadline, means a university doesn’t have to employ this rule and can reject you even if you meet the entry criteria.  Most universities will let UCAS know that their courses are full and cannot accept any more applications.  Some may only be looking for a few select applicants.  Others know that good applicants sometimes miss deadlines, and give equal consideration.  I’d put Bournemouth in all three categories – some of our courses are full, some will have a small number of offers to make and some will consider late applicants more widely.

What will be available?

The short answer is not everything. 

Example: you’re suddenly consumed with a burning desire to study, say, English.  You love literature, the classics, to write and to read widely.  You start to research what’s available and discover that the number of available English literature courses is limited.  Looking more closely, you can see English language, English and Politics, English and Communications courses available for example.  Reading the detail of these courses will tell you if they will be suitable for your goals and interests.

Therefore, you may have to be more flexible and think of alternative pathways if you apply now.  Universities offer help and advice on your options. At Bournemouth we have a dedicated future students team to answer your questions and so do other universities. 

Finding out what’s available

Research is the key to applying to university, whenever you do it.

University websites should tell you if they are accepting late applications. Bournemouth has it clearly on each course listing as does the UCAS course search. 

How to apply

There’s no different process for applying now.  You register to use UCAS Apply and away you go.  I can’t emphasise enough the need to complete the application in full, including your references.   Whilst we are happy to consider late applications, we want to consider good ones.  UCAS provide lots of advice on completing your application.

I hope this has given you the confidence to get started on your application, knowing that it’s not too late to start university this year.  Remember to get in touch with the universities you’re interested in.  Good luck!

3 reasons why your application might miss the 15 January deadline... and how to avoid them!

It’s never nice to see someone miss the 15 January deadline. We know how much work you've put into your application, how much frustration there can sometimes be with it and the hopes you have pinned on it.

Missing the deadline means your university choices no longer have an obligation to consider your application. Some can choose to consider you after 15 January but it’s entirely at their discretion. However, for those courses and universities where competition is high it’s unlikely that the application will be considered.

Here’s the good news though: you’re reading this blog now and not after 15 January! In most cases for applications which miss the deadline, you can pinpoint the reason for it to something that happened (or didn’t happen!) during the Christmas break and early-January.

So let’s get it all out in the open. Here are the three main things that cause issues in those vital last couple of weeks before the big day:

1. You assume your school/college have sent your application to UCAS. And they haven’t.

Your tutors and advisers will put a lot of work into coordinating all your UCAS applications, advising you on what to be putting into it, what to be leaving out, writing references, checking the applications for mistakes and then getting them sent off. It’s no easy job but it’s one they carry out with great diligence on top of their usual workload.

However, everyone’s human and sometimes mistakes can be made and an application might not get sent off. These mistakes are relatively rare but that’s no consolation to those it happens to. Thankfully it’s very quick and easy to check if it’s been sent. So take 30 seconds to log onto Apply and look at the Welcome page. If your school have sent the application to UCAS, it’ll look like this (click on image to enlarge):

If they’re still writing the reference, it’ll look like this:

If the reference has been written but the application hasn’t been approved by your school, then it’d look like this:

All fairly straightforward really. So, if your Welcome page doesn't say the magic words 'Your application has been sent to UCAS and will be processed shortly' you need to get in touch with your school and ask them when this will be sent. If they've already given you a date for when they’ll do this then there’s no need to chase them, just keep an eye on it. However, if they've given you the impression that the application has already been sent to UCAS, then get in touch with them and have the situation clarified.

2. Your referee hasn't finished their reference.

Every year there will always be some people (both independent and school/college applicants) in a mad panic that their reference hasn't been finished (or started) and that they've got no way of getting in touch with the referee. Without the reference, the application can’t be sent off.

So, if you've exhausted all possibilities of getting in touch with your referee and there’s no way they’re going to be able to complete it by the deadline, here’s what you can do:

i) Get someone else to write the reference

They way you do this will differ depending on whether you’re applying through a school or applying independently. 

If you’re applying through a school, already sent it to them and have no way of contacting a tutor then you’d need to register a new application and complete that one instead. However, if you've not yet sent the application to your school, you can call us and an adviser will change it to an independent application thereby allowing you to request someone else to write the reference.

If you’re applying independently and you've not clicked on the option 'Ask a registered school, college or organisation to write your reference only' you can click on the link to ask someone else to write it.

If you’re applying independently and have clicked on the option 'Ask a registered school, college or organisation to write your reference only' you’d need to call us and an adviser can reset your reference request. You can then click on the option to ask someone else to write it.

ii) Send it off without a reference

This should only be done as a last resort and it carries a degree of risk. If you follow the same steps as above for getting someone else to write the reference, you can tick a box to say that no reference is required:

As the message states, you should only use the option if all your choices have agreed that you can send the application without a reference. If you haven’t spoken to them and got the OK to do it, then they can choose not to consider your application if they wish.

However, if you’re not able to get in touch with all your choices and your options are either to not send the application by the deadline or to get it in on time without the reference, then the second option is obviously better.

You’d then need to get in touch with your choices as soon as you can to explain why you had to send off your application without a reference and to ask if they’ll still consider your application if you were to arrange for the reference to be sent direct to them.

We'll be on hand to deal with any
last-minute late-night issues on 15 January 

3. Your application has been returned to you by your school/college for amendments and you’ve not sent it back to them

As many of you are probably well aware, your school can return the application to you for corrections to be made. If this happens, you get an email from UCAS telling you to log onto Apply. Once on the Welcome page, you’ll see a message from your school explaining what needs to be amended.

If you do have to correct anything in your application, make sure you send it back to the school after! You just need to click on ‘Pay/send’ (you don’t need to pay again though). The requirement to send it back to your school sometimes gets overlooked and results in the application not being sent by your school.

Stay Calm... 
Above all though, try not to stress about it! Our Customer Service Advisers will be putting in extra hours this week and next to answer all your queries on our social media channels and telephone lines. They’ll also be available until 00:30 (UK time) on 16 January to make sure your questions are answered right up until and beyond the midnight deadline. 

5 Essential Things To Know About Your UCAS Application Over Christmas

1. UCAS opening hours over Christmas

Monday 24 December	10:00-16:00 (UK time)
Tuesday 25 December	Closed
Wednesday 26 December	Closed
Thursday 27 December	10:00-16:00
Friday 28 December	10:00-16:00
Saturday 29 December	Closed
Sunday 30 December	Closed
Monday 31 December	10:00-16:00
Tuesday 1 January	Closed

2. Letters will not be sent out by UCAS over the Christmas period

The last day before Christmas that letters will be sent from UCAS will be Thursday 20 December. We'll then resume sending letters on 2 January 2013. Therefore, if you send your application over the Christmas period, the Welcome letter won't be sent out before 2 January.

3. Track will update over Christmas (if updates are made by your uni choices!)

Each year we get asked whether Track will update over the Christmas break. Track will work as usual over this time BUT bear in mind it's only going to update if universities are actually making decisions during this time. As many universities will either be closed or operating with reduced staff over Christmas, it'll mean less decisions get made and as a result Track might be fairly quiet.

4. Schools and colleges will be closed over Christmas

Yep, stating the obvious now but there's good reason to do it! There are some things on your application that only your school can process. These include:

Sending your application to UCAS

Approving your application

Moving you into another tutor's group to write a reference

Returning an application to you for amendments (if it hasn't yet been sent to UCAS)

Therefore, if you need any of these things to be done over Christmas, you'll need to get in touch with your school when they reopen. Also bear in mind, whether you're applying independently or through a school, the reference must be completed before the application can be sent to UCAS.

5. Applications will be processed over Christmas

Any applications sent to UCAS over the Christmas period will be processed as usual, although as mentioned in point 2, a Welcome letter won't be sent until 2 January at the earliest.

15 January deadline: Last minute issues and how to avoid them!

The 15 January deadline is fast approaching. The deadline has probably been seared into your memories by your schools, colleges and advisers so you probably don't need another reminder! Instead I've gathered together the sort of issues that've caused applications to be submitted late in previous years and given some advice on how to prevent them happening to you!

Know your login details for Apply

Make sure you know your login details, as you'll need to log in to Apply to send your application. Use the login reminder service on the Apply page if you're not sure. You can also find guidance on login problems for Apply here

Send it earlier if you can

The deadline is midnight on 15 January (23:59 UK time) but try to send it sooner in case you experience any problems, e.g. internet connection issues, payment problems.

Be prepared for any payment issues

You must pay for your application before it can be sent to UCAS. If you enter invalid payment details five times, you will be locked out from making any more payment attempts - if this happens, you'll need to call us so send your application early just in case. You can get some guidance on payment problems here

If you're applying through a school or college, they'll need time to review your application

Your tutor needs time to complete the reference section and check and approve your application before they send it to UCAS. If they spot any errors, they'll send your application back to you to amend. If this happens, you need to change it and send it back to them, so that they can send it to us. It may not happen, but it's good to allow time for this just in case. Simply sending it to your school or college before the deadline won't count as sending it on time; it has to be received by UCAS.

You need a reference before you can send your application to us

However you request a reference (whether you're applying independently or through a school or college), you still need to have a reference attached to your application before it can be sent to UCAS.

If you're applying independently, allow enough time for your referee to read the instructions, write and attach the reference, and confirm that it has been completed. A red tick will appear next to the 'reference' link in Apply once it's complete. This means you can complete the rest of the application and send it to us.

If you're applying through a school or college, send your application to them early to allow them time to do write the reference and carry out the other checks before the deadline.

If you've agreed with the universities that a reference is not required - check the information on the reference page to see what to do.

University offers: what are you waiting for?

Getting your university application into UCAS can seem like a bit of a whirlwind. From pretty much the first moment you pass through the doors of your school/college in September, you get constant reminders to crack on with your application, research your choices, draft your personal statement, redraft your personal statement, meet your tutor to discuss the redraft of your personal statement, redraft it again  - the list can seem endless. Then once you've finally had it signed off by your school and they send it on to UCAS... almost a deafening silence. Apart from your UCAS Welcome pack and a trickle of confirmation emails from universities, nothing much happens at all.

This wait for offers can be an anxious one for many. This is heightened when you can see others getting offers when you're not. The process can sometimes be perceived to move at glacial speed and it's hard to see why it's taking so long to either say 'yes' or 'no'.

To help shed some light on how the process works once your application's with a university, why it might take some time to hear back and why others getting offers before you isn't necessarily something to be worried about, our guest blogger Richard Emborg, Director of Student Recruitment & Admissions at Durham University tells us what goes on behind the scenes:

Richard Emborg

The right decision versus the quick decision

Once you’ve submitted your UCAS application you’ll naturally be anxious about when you’ll hear a decision on your choices. For some of your choices you might hear quite soon after you apply. One university prides itself on making decisions on some applications within an hour! You might not hear from others for some weeks or possibly months, depending on the date when you applied.  No university or college will intentionally make you wait for a decision longer than is necessary but all will prioritise making the right decision over a fast decision. The right decision is one where offers go to the strongest applicants who are most suitable for the programme of study from amongst those who apply by the application deadline.

Although there are no guarantees over when you will hear a decision from a particular university or college, UCAS does set a deadline that if you apply by the 15 January deadline you should hear by 31 March and will definitely hear by 9 May. So you can be sure of that much.

Why it can take some time to hear back

There are a number of reasons that affect how quickly decisions are reached on applications. These include:

• When is the deadline for applications?
• How many applications are received?
• How competitive is entry to the course?
• Is more than the UCAS application considered when making a decision; such as interviews, admissions tests or the assessment of portfolios or written pieces of work?
• Who makes the admissions decisions: an academic member of staff or an administrator?
• Does the university or college adopt a gathered field approach? This is where all or some of the decisions on applications are delayed until all on-time applications have been received and assessed. Sometimes this might also be necessary to manage numbers of undergraduate students to student number controls set externally on universities and colleges.

Typically decisions might take longer for one or more choices if one or more the following are true:

• If some of your choices are to courses with a 15 October closing date and some are to courses with a 15 January closing date.
• If there are more suitably qualified applications than there are offers available.
• If interviews, admissions tests, or assessments of portfolios or pieces of written work are required.
• If admissions decisions are made by an academic member of staff who also has teaching and/or research duties.
• If the university or college adopts a gathered field approach to making decisions or processing them to UCAS.

The waiting game

No news can be good news

Some universities and colleges will contact you when they receive your application and/or during the period that they are making a decision, to inform you on the progress of the application. Others might provide a portal for you to check yourself. Whether you receive any contact or not, the main thing to remember is keep calm and bear in mind that not hearing quickly might be a good thing.  It might be because the university or college is considering your application very carefully and seriously considering making you an offer. No news can be good news. Remember that offers can be issued throughout the admissions cycle up to any decision deadline. There’s little you can do while you wait except ensure you satisfy any requests from your university or college choices. Better to concentrate on studying hard on any qualifications you are currently taking.

Here at Durham we have a reputation for taking longer than many other universities in making our decisions. Our average time for informing an applicant of our decision is actually within three months from when we receive an application, but some applicants might have to wait longer. The reasons for this are primarily the competition for places on our programmes and, for applicants applying for Medicine, Primary Teaching or our Foundation Programmes, a requirement that applicants are interviewed before an offer is issued.

The journey your application makes

There are full details of our process on our website. In summary, your application is initially processed in the Student Recruitment and Admissions Office (SRAO), where we ensure that it is complete. Then it is passed to our academic departments where an academic admissions selector (and sometimes more than one) assesses your application and makes a decision. It is here that an interview might be held or admissions test results considered. If you apply for a joint honours degree both academic departments will assess your application. For international students our International Office makes the decisions, applying selection criteria defined by our academic departments. The decision on each application is passed to SRAO and we process it to UCAS. We then pass applications successful in receiving an offer to our colleges to be allocated amongst them. Once a college is allocated, that college will contact the applicant informing them of this.

Whilst this process might seem quite simple, with around 25,000 high quality undergraduate applications it involves hundreds of staff, some really detailed thought and consideration and lots of hard work from a team dedicated to giving applicants as good an experience as possible. Making the right admissions decisions really matters to us!

Will there still be places available by 15 January?

Students sometimes express concerns that if they apply nearer to the January deadline than to September that there will be no offers left. That’s not the case at Durham. We are committed to the principle of equal consideration so that we can make our offers to the very strongest applicants. We proactively spread our offers between October and March to best ensure that there are enough offers left for later applicants. Like all other universities and colleges we also recognise that not every offer will end up in a registered student and so we make more offers than we have places available.

One final thing: when you’ve received decisions from your choices do think carefully about your replies to any offers. Don’t rush the decision and make sure its right for you.  Oh, and if you apply to Durham, good luck in your application; we’ll be giving it a lot of care and attention.

Should you reply to your offers by 9 May?

Many of you will need to reply to your offers on Track by 9 May. However, this won't apply to everyone and it seems to be causing some confusion. This flow chart will hopefully make things a bit clearer!

That awkward moment when you get a text message (or two!) from UCAS...

If you made your UCAS application by 15 January and you received decisions from all your university choices by 31 March then the chances are we will have texted you yesterday. In fact you will have been one of over 100,400 applicants to have been sent a text to remind you that your deadline to reply is on 9 May.

So, why did we do it?

The main reason, obviously enough, was to make sure you didn't miss the deadline for replying. Missing the deadline for replying can be stressful for those it affects as it means that your replies are automatically made for you and you decline any offers you had. You have a period of 7 days in which to get this sorted but this involves you having to call UCAS to change your replies to get it all rectified. This means more work for you and more work for UCAS.

Here are some numbers to crunch regarding contacts received (basically telephone calls, social media queries and emails) by our Contact Centre regarding the May reply deadline last year which should show what I mean:

• Contacts received in the 7 days before the May deadline asking to change replies: 1228
• Contacts received in the 7 days after the May deadline asking to change replies: 5083
• Increase in queries asking to change replies: 414%

So, from your point of view, if you can reply by the deadline then you're saved the stress of seeing your offers getting declined. You're also saved the hassle and cost of having to call us up to get it all corrected. Also, if you miss your 7 day window to correct it, it's then in the universities' hands as to whether they allow you to accept their offers.

From our point of view, it would massively reduce the amount of people contacting us to change their replies if the deadline was kept to. This would then mean that more advisers are available to answer other queries across our various channels. Everyone wins!

The final burning question that some of you will have is why you received more than one text reminding you! The answer, like with most of these things, was a 'technical glitch' which duplicated some texts. A big apology to anyone who did get more than one text - it definitely wasn't our intention to appear over-eager! Hopefully though, our reasons for sending it may now be a bit clearer.