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.

Replying to offers: give yourself enough time

You’ve waited anxiously for your university choices to make their decisions. You’ve logged in to Track to check thousands of times and now you’ve finally received all your offers. You’re probably thinking “What a relief, the wait is over!” but don’t relax just yet, as once you get to this stage there’s a big decision to make: which offers will you accept?

Know your reply deadline
Although you might still be weighing up your different offers, there’s one thing that’s certain, and that’s the deadline you need to reply by. If you’re wondering when it is, it all depends on when you received the universities’ decisions. The first deadline is 7 May, which is for those who received all decisions by 31 March, but Track will display the right deadline for you so make sure you check.

Reply sooner rather than later
Whether you’re one of the people whose deadline is 7 May or not, once you’ve had decisions from all of your choices then it’s a good idea to reply to your offers sooner rather than later. That’s not to say you should rush your replies though – it’s really important to think carefully until you know which you’d like to make your firm and insurance choices. But once you’ve made your decision it’s best not to wait until the last minute.

You might think you’ve got plenty of time but don’t let the reply deadline creep up on you. The unavoidable truth is that if you leave it until deadline day to reply to your offers in Track, you’ll be feeling the pressure – even panicking. When you’re rushing it’s more likely that you’ll make a mistake, which could mean selecting the wrong replies. Just imagine – you’ve spent months perfecting your application and working towards meeting the conditions of your dream offer and you accidently select ‘decline’ instead of ‘firm’!

Now that’s not to say this doesn’t happen to even the most prepared applicants. You may be able to change your replies within seven days of making them – if you call us then we'll be able to let you know if this is possible.

Avoid unnecessary stress
If you miss the reply deadline altogether you’ll end up lumbered with unnecessary stress, as the offers you received will be automatically declined. We call it ‘declined by default’ and if you find yourself in this situation you should contact our customer service advisers straight away – they’ll be able to accept your chosen offers, but only if you get in touch within seven days.

So the most important piece of advice is to give yourself enough time to reply before the deadline. Here are just some of the benefits of replying in good time:

1. You’ll get peace of mind –  your replies will be done and dusted and out of the way, so you can begin enjoying your summer
2. You’ll avoid last minute problems – you’ll have the chance to ask for help from your teachers and UCAS, should you need it. 
3. You’ll be able to make plans – universities and colleges will often wait until you’ve replied before they let you apply for accommodation. 

For help replying to your offers, take a look at our post Replying to university offers: the big questions or watch our video guide.

Three things to do while you wait for uni decisions

Katie Collins, Social
Media Exec at UCAS

So you’ve sent your application – great! Now it’s just a case of waiting for decisions, right? One after the other they’ll pop up on Track and you’ll get those notification emails. Right... BUT don’t expect it to happen straight away. You could find that it’s several months before you hear from a university, or for the lucky few it could happen straight away. The truth is every university and college will take a different amount of time to get back to you. It’s undoubtedly an anxious time and it can seem to last forever, but I assure you it won’t. Although you don’t know exactly when you’ll get all those heart-stopping Track notification emails, you can be certain that it will either be by 7 May (if you applied before 15 January) or by 16 July (if you applied after 15 January and before 30 June).

To pass the time as you wait for decisions, you – like many others – might find yourself compelled to log in to Track day and night to check for updates. Other than causing a repetitive strain-type injury, this isn’t likely to have any impact on how you feel. So if you want to use your time more wisely, here’s what I recommend you do between now and your last uni decision:

1. Figure out the next steps. When you’ve had all your uni decisions it’ll be time to reply to your offers. You’ll want to get this right, so have a read of our advice and watch our how-to guide to find out what you’ll need to do. It’s also a good idea to prepare for the unexpected: no offers. If you end up in this situation you could use Extra to apply for another choice, so make time to find out about this option.
    
2. Get to know the universities a bit better. Most of them are eager to meet you on social media, so what are you waiting for? Make the most of the opportunity to ask them your questions and stay up-to-date with what’s going on around their campuses. It could help you when it comes to choosing which offers to accept, plus you’ll get a feel for what it’s like to be part of their student community.
    
3. Suss out student blogs. Who else can tell you what it’s really like to go to uni other than real life students? A frank and honest account of student life is the closest you can get before embarking on it for yourself. Many unis feature student bloggers on their websites and there are lots of other students out there who blog independently.

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.

Why can't I see any change to Track?

Have you had an email telling you Track has changed? Have you logged onto Track but can't see any changes? 

If so, it'd be best to check the choice again! A change to the status doesn't necessarily mean a decision has been made. There could have also been a change to the campus code, course code, the start date, point of entry or conditions for example. 

Your questions about Clearing answered!

The Contact Centre at UCAS

Being the seasoned Clearing veterans that we are on the social media team, we've put together some answers to the questions that get asked a lot each year and which will most definitely be being asked right now.

Take a look over them and if your question isn't answered, don't forget we're all only a few keystrokes away on Facebook and Twitter to help you out! You can also get comprehensive information in the Clearing section of our website.

Why doesn't the 'Add Clearing choice' button work on Track?
It will usually be for one of the following reasons:

• You've already got a confirmed place with a university. If that's the case, you’ll need to ask them whether they’d be willing to allow you into Clearing. Any decision to do so would be at their discretion. If they allow you into Clearing, you’ll then be able to add a choice on Track. If allowed into Clearing, Track will usually update immediately with their decision. However, if they're using their own internal systems there can sometimes be a delay of up to 24 hours before it appears on Track

• You've been unsuccessful with one of your original choices but they've given you a 'changed course' offer rather than saying you're unsuccessful. In this instance, you’ll need to make the appropriate reply before being allowed into Clearing.  As your reply depends on the status of your application, it’d be best to check our guidance on replying to changed course offers. 

• You've already added a Clearing choice. If you've done this and don’t want that choice any longer, you’ll need to contact the university to ask if they can put you back into Clearing.

Where can I find my Clearing number?

You'll only see a Clearing number if you're eligible for Clearing. This can be found on the Welcome page and Choices page in Track. However, if you've already added a Clearing choice, the number will be removed. 

What's a changed course offer? 

This will appear as 'UCC' on Track. This means that you haven’t been successful for your original course choice but that the university are making you an alternative offer.  This could be an offer for a different course or it could be a change to the start date or point of entry. Once we’ve had decisions from both your firm and insurance choice, you’d then have five days in which to reply. As your response depends on the status of your application, it’d be best to check our guidance on replying to changed course offers.

Why hasn't Track changed? It still shows I have a conditional offer!

This will usually mean that the university hasn’t yet made a decision.  If you’ve narrowly missed meeting the conditions of the offer, they may be waiting to see what the general trend is with the rest of their applicants before deciding. If a significant amount failed to meet the conditions they may then offer places to those who were just below getting the required grades. You may also want to check that the university has definitely received your results and that there are no other conditions that you need to meet - for example, a GCSE result which won't be available until the Thursday after A Level results day. Also bear in mind that if universities are using their own internal systems there may be a delay to decisions appearing on Track. *UPDATE: On 16 August the systems were running slower than usual at certain points which will have caused a delay to some decisions being made*

I don't want my university place any more. Can I go into Clearing?
Whether you've been accepted at your original firm choice or been accepted by your insurance choice, you need to ask the university if they’d be willing to allow you into Clearing. As you’ve got a confirmed place with them you’d be expected to go there, in much the same way that they’d be expected to honour their agreement in giving you the place. Any decision to allow you into Clearing would be at their discretion and they’d be under no obligation to do this.

I've got into my firm choice but I want my insurance choice instead. Can I do that?
When your place was confirmed at the firm choice, the insurance choice would've been made aware of this. Therefore, they'd no longer be expected to hold a place for you. If you want to go to the insurance choice, you'll need to call them to ask if there's still a vacancy and whether they'd be willing to offer you it through Clearing. If they can, you'll then need to ask the firm choice whether they'd be happy to allow you into Clearing. This would be at their discretion and they’d be under no obligation to do it.

If that all gets agreed and processed, you'll then be able to add them as a Clearing choice on Track.

How do I reply to a Clearing offer?
You wouldn’t need to reply to a Clearing offer. If a university has provisionally offered you a place which you want to accept, you’ll need to go to the ‘Choices’ section of Track, click on the 'Add Clearing choice' button and the enter the details of your course. It’ll then be up to the university to confirm your place on Track. When they've confirmed your place it will say 'Clearing Accept' next to the choice.

I got better results than expected. Can I use Adjustment?

To be eligible to use Adjustment:

• your results must have met and exceeded the conditions of your conditional firm (CF) choice;

and

• you need to have paid the full application fee (£22 for 2012).

If you have paid the single application fee (£11 for 2012) and want to use Adjustment, you need to pay an additional £11.

You are not eligible to use Adjustment if:

• you are confirmed (UF) at your firm choice but did not exceed the conditions of the offer
• you have a confirmed place on a changed course offer

your original offer was unconditional.

Why am I unable to register for Adjustment?
The option to register will be displayed on Track for all applicants whose firm choice has gone from being 'conditional firm' to 'unconditional firm'. However, it is then up to the universities you contact to make sure you're eligible to use Adjustment. In order to be eligible, you need to have met and exceeded the conditions of your original firm choice's offer. So you'd need to make sure you meet this requirement.

Also, Adjustment is available from 16 August until 31 August, with your individual Adjustment period beginning on 16 August or when your conditional firm choice changes to unconditional (whichever is later). So you need to make sure you're trying to register within that date range.

You should visit our website for full details of how Adjustment works.

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.