Five to two: Making your final UCAS choices
As I write, many of you will be receiving offers from your chosen universities. It’s a nervous time, and while some of you will be getting offers promptly within days of applying, others may need to wait weeks, or even months for a decision.
So when you get all these decisions from universities, what happens next? Well, the response is now up to you.
The universities will all be hoping you’ll choose them. They’ll be sending you emails, inviting you to visit days, perhaps even sending you a brochure or two in the post. But the reality is that the power now rests with you. You get to choose which offers to accept!
So, how does it all work, and what should you be thinking about as you accept your offers?
The summary is this. You get to accept two offers. One is your Firm choice, and if you get the grades for this choice, your place is guaranteed. The other is your Insurance choice, so if you miss out on your Firm choice, but get the grades for this choice, you’ll be off there instead.
Simple? Well yes, but of course there are a few more things to think about.
Wait for all your decisions before making your choice
Firstly, you don’t have to make your choices until ALL of your universities have made their decisions. Until this happens, you do not have to make a choice, no matter how hard a university tries to pressure you.
Once you have all the university decisions, UCAS will let you know the deadline for making your choices.
For most of you, if you’ve applied by the recommended deadlines, the universities should make all of their decisions by 16th May. You then have until 6th June to make your choices. If you applied late, there may be different dates that apply to you. To be certain, check UCAS Track for your personal deadline.
Make sure you understand the offers you have received (and what they mean for you)
Secondly, you want to be really sure that you fully understand the offer you have received from each university. Normally, you’ll be receiving conditional offers, which means you have to get specific grades in A-levels or other qualifications to get in.
But you may also have other conditions, like English language qualifications where there are a variety of ways for you to meet the requirements. Make sure you understand these, and contact the universities if anything is unclear.
Some universities may issue you with an unconditional offer. This will normally mean that you don’t have to achieve any further results BUT, before you accept one of these, they may still expect you to complete your course. Check if you are not sure.
Also, some universities might write to you and make you a “conditional unconditional” offer. I know, complicated right? What this usually means is that you have to accept them as your Firm choice in order to get an unconditional offer. Otherwise if you make them your Insurance choice, conditions will apply.
More importantly, reflect on what would need to happen for you to meet the grade conditions of your offers. Would you need to put in loads and loads of study, and for everything to go perfectly on the day of each exam? Or are there some conditions that are so straightforward you could meet them even on a bad day?
If you don’t know your predicted grades from your school, and are unsure what they expect you to achieve, talk to your teachers. Make sure that they think your expectations are realistic, and that you are not kidding yourself about what you can achieve.
What further information do you need in order to choose your firm and insurance acceptances?
Perhaps you need to visit the university (or to visit it again?). Maybe you need to check out more detail about the course, its content and its structure? Perhaps you need to find out more about where you are going to live, or about the location and cost of living?
If so, now is the time to start to dig deeper into your university research. Obviously you can check out the websites, but here are a whole load of other possibilities…
Check out their applicant visit days. Read this article on how to make the most of them.
Go on-line and chat with a current student. Most universities nowadays use a platform called Unibuddy, through which you can contact their student ambassadors. Just look out for a link or pop-up on their website which says “Chat to a student” or something similar.
Have a look at some student reviews on sites such as What Uni and Uni Compare (though see this article for some cautionary advice on this).
You might even want to have a look at some of the league tables, rankings and university guides available in the press? If so, check this article before you do.
Whatever you, do this research thoroughly, so that there are no surprises when you start your course!
(Did I ever tell you about my fellow student studying Law at Edinburgh? He was the only English student on the course, because he genuinely didn’t know that Scots Law was different from English Law until day one of the course. Yep! Don’t be that guy!)
Finally, be super-clear on what Firm and Insurance choices mean
And it's actually quite simple.
Your Firm choice
This is your first choice. The one you really want to go to. You’ve reflected on how achievable the conditions are, and this one is allowed to be optimistic. Why can it be optimistic? Three reasons:
Firstly, you might do better in your exams than you, your parents and your teachers think.
Secondly, you might not meet conditions exactly, but the university might just offer you the place anyway. This happens to loads of students every year.
Thirdly, you have an Insurance choice anyway, if things go wrong.
So be optimistic, be aspirational. Just don’t be totally delusional.
Your Insurance choice
The clue is in the name; insurance is for when things go wrong. It’s there to give you a fall back if your results don't turn out as well as you hoped. So it should be an offer that you are rock-solid you can achieve AND it should be a place you are happy to go if this happens.
Normally, the Insurance choice will be an offer with a lower grade than the Firm choice. Perhaps one grade lower, perhaps several grades lower, depending on how aspirational your Firm choice is.
BUT what if your Firm choice, the one you really want to go for, is the lowest offer you have? In this case there are two possibilities:
If your Firm choice is a rock-solid offer that you can achieve even on a bad day, that’s fine, you don’t really need an Insurance choice.
If, however, all your offers are too high and too aspirational, you may just have to accept that your five choices were too ambitious. Put that mistake down to experience.
In either case, just make your second choice your Insurance choice. Just know that for you your real fallback is not the Insurance choice, but Clearing. That’s not the end of the world, as I’ll discuss next week.
And a quick final point: if your Firm choice is a fully unconditional offer, you won’t get an Insurance choice, as you won’t need it. Once you Firmly accept an unconditional offer, the place is yours!
In summary
Don’t rush your decision, make sure you fully understand your offers and what it will take to meet the conditions. Research your choices thoroughly, and then make your first choice your Firm choice. And have a sensible, rock-solid offer as your Insurance choice.
See? Not so complicated after all!
