My first look at the UCAS form

Date: around ?/09/2002

UCAS form - the genuine article
Photocopy - for practicing on
Personal statement sticker - to do my statement separately
UCAS how to apply guide - an instruction booklet for the form
Acknowledgment card - to show UCAS got my application
Application flowchart - to show the UCAS process

I never really looked at the application flowchart because I knew most of the processes already. First you choose six choices for university and fill them in on the UCAS form, the references are completed and the form is sent to UCAS where they confirm it. It is then sent to universities who either make you an offer based on the form, interviews or your exam results, or decline to make you an offer. You either get an offer and go to that university or get rejected or decline all offers and then go into clearing, where you can still get a place.

By now I had some sort of idea of the places I might be interested in studying and the courses I would like to study. I also needed to hurry if I wanted to apply for Oxford as my schools deadline (the time it takes to get the references done in time for Oxfords deadline) was only two weeks or so away.

I asked my teacher for a UCAS form and as well as the form I got given a whole pack of other stuff listed below:

Next a quick look over the UCAS form itself: personal details - easy, further details harder - what were my student support arrangements, fee code or residential category.
Institutions - easy once I know what I'm doing. Secondary education, criminal convictions - easy, nut what is an occupational background. The second page was all just exam results, no problem there I thought except how to lay it out. Third page was employment details and my personal statement, easy to put down but not so easy to write a personal statement. The last bit I had to do would be to sign it and send off £15 for processing - these applications don't come cheap. The fourth page was stuff for the referee to fill in so I didn't need to worry about that.

There was no need to look at the photocopy yet - it was just the same as the UCAS form and I wouldn't need to use it until I had decided what universities I wanted to put down. Same with the acknowledgement card - I could leave it till the rest of the forms were filled in.

The last thing was UCAS' how to apply guide which was over 40 pages long - I was advised to read it all through before starting to fill in the UCAS form. I ended up reading most of it once and some bits many times over.

The first thing it told me was there were other ways to apply apart from filling in the form. There were to electronic systems which I could have used has my school decided to implement them. The guide heavily recommended the UCAS website which is I have to admit very good. It also told me when I should apply (as early as possible after September the 1st. There was also a list of dos and don'ts for filling in the form and also a little bit about what would happen after I submitted the form. The rest was about how to fill out the form page by page.