UCAS : Successful UCAS applications

Introducing UCAS

Would you like to study for a Bachelor’s degree in England’s top universities, from Scotlandor Wales? You dream ofstudy at Oxford University,ofCambridge, to the London School of Economics (LSE) or theUniversity of Edinburgh or St Andrews in Scotland? To apply to these universities, you need to must complete and submit your application on a centralized online platform called UCAS. The equivalent of the French “Parcoursup” website,  UCAS signifie “Universities and Colleges Admissions Service“.

So the first step in realizing your plans to study in England or Scotland is to register on the UCAS website. As you’ll see, there are sections dedicated to students and others to their parents. To get started, go to UCAS  to create your account! >

A maximum of 5 courses to be selected for UCAS

On the UCAS website, each applicant can select and apply to a total of 5 university courses.For example, you can select from the following five courses:
1) BA Mathematics, St. Anne’s College, Oxford University
2) BSc Mathematics, Imperial College London
3) BSc Mathematics, University College London (UCL)
4) Licence en mathématiques, London School of Economics (LSE)
5) BSc Mathematics, King’s College London (KCL)

What’s more, it’s important to note that the UCAS application is common to all selected courses, so your choice of courses will need to be consistent.It is therefore generally advisable to choose an academic discipline common to all 5 universities to which you wish to apply (mathematics, philosophy, law, English…).

We strongly discourage you from applying for both a BA in Mathematics at Oxford and a BA in Philosophy at UCL. It would be difficult for you to defend such different academic backgrounds in the same application.

What should you include in your UCAS application?

In addition to your personal information and your choice of 5 university courses, you will also need to provide the following additional elements in your UCAS file:

1) Your UCAS Personal Statement

In less than 4,000 characters, you must present your parcours and experience and demonstrate your interest, skills and motivation for the university course you wish to enter.

The basic questions you need to ask yourself are: “Why did you choose this course?” and “What have you done so far that makes you think you’re a good candidate for this course? ?”.

Visit UCAS personal statement plays a decisive role in your UCAS application form. So it’s important to devote a lot of time to it.

Indeed, it is not uncommon for some students to have torewrite their UCAS personalnal statement a dozen times before you achieve a satisfactory result. So give yourself enough time to think, write and edit your UCAS personal statement until you’re completely satisfied with it. You should probably spend at least 1 month writing it.

2) A letter of recommendation from one of your high school teachers

In addition to your UCAS personal statement, you’ll also need a letter of recommendation from a teacher at your high school. This letter also plays a very important role in your  UCAS application form. So it’s vital that you think carefully and strategically about which teacher you feel is best suited to write a letter of recommendation that highlights all your qualities for the course you’re considering.

What must be included in your letter of recommendation to make the difference?In order to write a letter of recommendation that will impress university selection committees in England, there are a number of points that must be included in your letter of recommendation.The three essential points to include in the letter are:

• Student performance and academic results
• His personality
• Its potential

3)  An estimate of your Bac results by a high school teacher

The teacher who will write your letter of recommendation will also have to predict the grades he thinks you’ll get at Baccalaureate level.

This estimate will play a fundamental role in your UCAS application. In fact, as your school reports are not part of your UCAS file, universities will only use this forecast of results to determine the grade you are likely to achieve at Baccalauréat.

So, if the estimate given by your teacher is lower than the minimum mark required for your chosen course at the university, you risk being eliminated before you have even been assessed on the other elements of your application file. For example, if the London School of Economics (LSE)  For example, if the entry requirements for the BSc Economics require 15/20 in math at Bac level, and your teacher’s letter of recommendation estimates your predicted grade at Bac level at 13/20 in maths, you will probably not receive an offer of admission from the LSE.

You have submitted your UCAS file. What do you need to do next?

Once you have gathered all the above elements and you have submitted your UCAS application before the deadline (October 15 for Oxford and Cambridge universities and January 15 for all other universities in England and Scotland), you will then need to wait patiently for the results and start revising for your possible admission interviews and your Bac to get the best possible results! Your admission to a university in England will always be conditional on achieving a certain Baccalaureate grade: an offer may, for example, be “admitted to UCL en LLB Law with French Law on condition of obtaining  15.5/20 average in Bac with 15/20 in English”. Universities will have until the beginning of May to respond. Don’t worry, many universities are already starting to send out conditional offers just a few weeks after receiving your application.

You should generally have received the majority of your responses from universities on UCAS by the end of March.Some more specialized or competitive courses will also require you to take additional exams, such as the test TSA (Thinking Skills Assessment) for the BA en “Philosophy, Politics and Economics” (“PPE”) to theOxford University or the test STEP (Sixth Termination Paper) for mathematics.

For specific courses, or to gain admission to Oxford or Cambridge, you will also be invited to attend selection interviews. To prepare your UCAS application form, vhere are a few questions you can start thinking about right away: here are a few questions you can start thinking about right away:

• Why should I be a the right candidate for the university course in England ?
• How can I prove to the university of my dreams that I have the level required to study there?
• What activities and reading could I consider doing outside school to learn more about the subjects that make up this curriculum?

How can Your Dream School help you with your UCAS application?

Visit Your Dream School experts and our graduate mentors from Oxford and Cambridge have extensive experience in helping students prepare a UCAS application and a UCAS personal statement that really makes a difference.

We are committed to support at every stage of the UCAS application process and help you improve it to the point of a fully convincing result. N’hésite pas à nous contacterpour parler de votre projet d’étude en Angleterre ou en Ecosse.

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