UCAS can today announce a number of changes to be made to the application process for 2008 entry.

Reduction in the number of choices

In line with the recommendations within the Government's response to Improving the Higher Education Applications Process being implemented by the Delivery Partnership Steering Group, the number of choices that an applicant can make is to be reduced from six to five. Students who apply to medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses currently make four choices - this will stay the same.

As before, if an applicant is not successful with their first five choices - either they do not receive an offer or they decline all of their offers - they will be eligible for UCAS Extra. This provides the opportunity to make rolling applications one-by-one to courses with vacancies remaining.

See notes to editors.

Additional questions

Two questions are to be added to the application for 2008 entry. These concern whether the applicant's parents have any previous experience of HE and whether the applicant has experience of being in care.

The UCAS Board met on Friday 9 March and arrangements surrounding the new questions formed part of their discussion.

The care question was approved in a format provided by the Frank Buttle Trust, a charity which is leading an initiative to support the progression of children in care to higher education.

Question format:
Have you been in care?
Yes or No response.
The question will be optional.

UCAS has also been asked to add a question on whether the applicant's parents have any experience of HE at the request of the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

Question format:
Do any of your parents have any higher education qualifications such as a degree, diploma or certificate of higher education?
Yes, No, Don't know response.
The question will be optional.

Data release point

At the Board meeting the issue of whether data on parental education should be made available to admissions officers during the decision making process was one of the points considered.

The UCAS Board felt that in order to support the continuing efforts of universities and colleges to widen participation, this information should be made available to admissions officers during decision making and that, in principle, data on parental occupation and ethnicity should also be released at the same point.

The data has been collected by UCAS for many years but is currently made available to institutions at the end of the admissions cycle. The practicalities of this change are currently being investigated and the views of stakeholder bodies being sought.

A precedent does exist for releasing such information earlier in the process within the graduate teaching application service GTTR.

NMAS to be integrated into the UCAS scheme

Courses offered via NMAS, the Nursing and Midwifery Applications Service (www.nmas.ac.uk) will be offered through the main UCAS scheme for 2008 entry and NMAS will cease to exist as a separate scheme.

Media Contact

Byron Price, Communications Executive
Telephone: 01242 544987
Email: communications@ucas.ac.uk
Out of hours: 07768 740 461

Notes to editors

The Government response to the consultation on Improving the Higher Education Applications Process, published in May 2006, asked if stakeholders were in favour of four or six initial applications to higher education.

There are two main reasons behind asking this question: suggestions that, for some stakeholders, the current process of allowing up to six applications was burdensome and that many students'fifth and sixth applications were often poorly considered.

There were 154 responses to this question with the following response:

Four 89 (58%)
Six 46 (30%)
Other 19 (12%)

Despite the reduction in choices being seen as a way of reducing over- and under- subscription to courses, as students would target their applications more carefully, many valid concerns were raised about limiting student choice and the disadvantage that could arise.

Because of this, the Government response recommended that a reduction to five initial applications is followed by a further period of activity, based on the current UCAS Extra process, that would ensure that students had the opportunity to continue applying for places, if unsuccessful with their five initial applications.

There is no change to the current four applications made to medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses with unsuccessful students able to make a further application in the mainstream system.

The Delivery Partnership Steering Group will monitor the impact the reduction of initial applications has on applicants and consider whether a possible further reduction to four applications in the longer term would be beneficial and whether any change would subsequently be required for applications to medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses. See http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/activities/admissions.asp for more information on the Delivery Partnership Steering Group's work.