Information for parents, guardians and families

Hi and welcome to the University of St Andrew's guide to the UCAS application.

I’m Joseph Curran and I’m an Admissions Representative for the University.

I’m going to talk you through the stages of the application process and will hopefully provide a clearer picture of what to expect throughout your application.

The UCAS application is what comes between where you are now and getting a place at your desired university.

As such the application is time-consuming and we advise that you start the application sooner rather than later.

We advise this because the application can seem daunting at first and as this is your chance to set yourself apart from your peers when applying to university by being prepared you give yourself the best opportunity to showcase your potential throughout your application.

UCAS is the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, your entire application to university goes through UCAS and they serve as the middlemen between you and the institutions you are applying to.

However, UCAS offer more than just your application to university.

You can start to research for specific courses and universities through the undergraduate section of their website.

After you have applied to your chosen university you can track and manage your decisions from here also.

The UCAS deadline is the same for everyone, this academic year it's the 26th of January 2022., but there will probably be a deadline within your institution so do make sure you have taken note of this and have allocated yourself enough time in the coming weeks and months to set aside for you to properly complete your application.

We understand that most college coordinators set the UCAS deadline for students before the Christmas break so please be aware of this.

To apply to UCAS and set up a personal account you need a buzzword.

Hopefully, you will receive this by now but if not please ask your college coordinator as soon as possible.

The UCAS application should not be done in a day or in the days running up to your deadline.

Therefore allow yourself time to gather proper understanding of the application, what is required from you you will more than likely need specific documents and qualification certificates so please look these up before applying.

We would even go as far as recommending that you put time in your schedule now to work on your application at least once or twice a week.

The UCAS application can be quite difficult to get your head around as there are many parts to it therefore we've decided to break down the application process into smaller and more manageable chunks.

You think you should start the research and planning process then go on to completing your UCAS application.

To begin with, you will start setting up your personal profile with the buzzword given to you by your college coordinator.

Now at the same time as this do make an effort to start researching and planning your university choices and subjects.

It's at this point that you should think about drawing at a roadmap for your degree and beyond.

Start by researching what you enjoy, as an example, you could be interested in politics or language.

Start your research with these specific interests in mind and build your potential universities and subjects from there.

Or you can do it the opposite way and research specific universities that you want to apply to, their subjects and specific modules that they offer within their disciplines.

You might come across a degree subject you haven't heard of before and find that you want to apply for that.

Either way choosing your specific subjects will come easier with research.

You can move on with your application to selecting your desired courses and to write in your personal statement.

In addition to this, you are also to fill in your previous qualification details, have a referee set up to write your reference.

When adding your previous grades on your UCAS application please ensure that they are in chronological order so the reader who is making the decision on your application can easily understand the information you've provided.

This is why we advise gathering all the documents and certificates together before inputting the information for grades.

We also ask that you make sure that you are using the correct qualification codes so do double-check these before officially submitting your application.

For more information on the personal statement, we have made a separate video for all hints and tips for this part of the application and you will find this at another point on this webpage.

Your reference is written by your chosen referee.

A major point in the reference may include its extenuating circumstances, you can include this in your personal statement but your referee will have more word space than you and they could go into more depth if this is required.

However, we do go into more detail about this in our personal statement video so please watch that for more information.

Before making your UCAS choices there are a couple of things you should consider, you get to add up the five choices on your UCAS application, this being five specific subjects at your chosen universities.

We recommend that you apply using all five spaces to give yourself as much opportunity as possible.

We recommend that you apply for a similar subject at different universities this is because you only get to write one personal statement to reflect all five of your subject choices - pick one avenue and make your application revolve around this.

We say make a good spread of choices to help you think about entry requirements necessary, for example, think about applying to courses with a range of entry requirements some with high grades and some of grades in the middle ground.

Pick ones that you are comfortable with for the grades and ones that may be a bit of a stretch for you but you intend to achieve these grades.

This way you won't be setting your expectations extremely high and potentially setting yourself up for disappointment.

If you are to defer your entry to university at all use the last part of your personal statement to tell us why you will defer your entry to university and what you will be doing.

We are interested in this and again we do speak about this more in-depth in the personal statement video.

We've included this information to give you a rough timeline of events following the submission of your UCAS application.

This will give you a bit more detail on what happens behind the scenes upon your submission.

Once you complete your application your application then goes to your referee where they will upload your reference and submit your full application to UCAS.

Again your college deadline will be much earlier than the official January deadline so there is time for you to send your application to your referee, a reference to be uploaded and the entire application to be sent to UCAS before the 26th of January deadline.

Your application is then processed by UCAS and is sent to each university that you applied to.

At this point the admissions officers from each university will receive your application and start reading through them, however, decisions and offers are not made until after the UCAS deadline even if you have submitted well in advance.

This is to make sure that all applications are read and decided upon fairly.

Once the university has made a decision on your application UCAS is updated and you'll be able to see the decision in your in the track section of your personal UCAS account.

Upon receiving all your decisions from universities you may be asked to decide upon a firm choice and insurance choice.

This will happen if you've received conditional offers only, you do not need to do this if you have received an unconditional offer.

You will notify UCAS of what your first and second choice would be if you were to make the conditions.

So all in all your decision from university should be with you by the end of March and you can make your film choice by the end of May.

We hope that this quick guide to the UCAS application has made it more manageable and understandable for you.

If you do have any more questions regarding applying to St Andrews contact the email address on this slide and one of our admissions colleagues will answer your inquiry as soon as possible.

Thank you for listening.

Hello, and welcome to the 'Applying to university funding' video.

The University of St Andrews has a large number of scholarships and funding awards on offer that one can apply to through a simple application on our website, so continue watching to see how you could apply to one or more of the awards offered.

Once you've applied to a course to the University of St Andrews, you will receive an email providing login information on how to access the 'My application' portal. In this portal, you will be able to find the scholarships and funding catalogue. To find this catalogue, visit the University's landing page, and in the search bar at the top right-hand side, search for 'my application', and you will be taken to this page and requested to log in. Note that you will be provided with the details to log in from an email sent to you once you receive your university application.

Once logged into 'My application', you can get into 'My scholarships and funding' through 'My pages' tab at the top of the page or down the right-hand side in the 'Useful links' box. Either of these links will take you to the main scholarships and funding options 'Create' homepage, and the four options you see here.

'Creat my funding financial profile' will help calculate your household income for any needs-based applications, and in turn, will pre-populate questions in your application form.

This tab [the 'View the scholarships and funding catalogue to apply' tab] will let you search for funding and apply to all types of funding offered.

This one [the 'View or continue my funding applications' tab] will let you view or continue your funding applications.

And this tab [the 'View my funding payments' tab] will only appear once you've been awarded funding and the payments have been set up. You can then view the schedule of payments to see when and if they have been paid.

It is recommended that applicants applying for needs-based income complete the funding financial profile before applying to a specific scholarship or funding award as the information you input here will pre-populate financial questions in the funding application form. 

The funding financial profile will ask you to select if you are financially dependent or independent. Note that this information should reflect your current household income that you can provide evidence for. If you're aware of significant changes to your household income that will come up once you have become a student, you can detail this in the personal financial statement that you will continue that you will complete as part of your application.

Once you have chosen if you are financially dependent or independent, you will be presented with a series of questions relevant to the status you have chosen. 

This is an example of the profile you will see if you select that you're financially independent. Enter a figure in each box that is relevant to you and your household. At a later stage, you will be asked to upload supporting documentation to confirm the figures you enter in this section.

Once you have completed this section, click the 'Update my financial profile', and you will then see a summary of the information you inserted and can then either edit if something is wrong or exit the summary and return to the homepage. 

So, if you were to go back to the homepage, you can go on and view the scholarships and funding catalogue. When you're in the scholarships and funding catalogue, it should look a little bit like this. You can then choose options from the drop-down boxes to filter the scholarships and funding offered.

For selecting the academic year you're applying to, this will default to the current academic year. So if you're applying for a new course, such as one that starts in August or September 2021, and are looking for funding for that course, select 'Entry year funding 2021-2022'.

For the funding type, you can search for specific types of funding. For example, tuition and maintenance, accommodation awards, and financial assistance. 

For 'School', choose the School you're applying to.

And for 'Study level', you will most likely be choosing 'Undergraduate'.

But do note that you do not need to make a choice for every drop down. You can just select an option in the first box - that being, 'Select the academic year you're applying to', and see what is on offer. However, the more detail you enter, the more accurate the funding awards will be.

Once you have made your selections, click on the 'Refresh list' at the bottom and you will see a list of scholarships and funding available in the funding catalogue. 

The funding catalogue is where you can see all the options that are available from your selection in the funding search. Here, you can see more information on the specific scholarships or funding awards as well as applying for a specific one from here.

Clicking 'Apply' will open up the application form for a specific scholarship or funding award you have chosen. For example, this is what you will see if you were to apply for the Accommodation Award. Information here will detail the application deadline, the amount of scholarship reward per year, and a note on who is eligible for the award.

For each application, you will be asked to create a personal financial statement to give the decision panel as much information as possible and to decide on who gets the awards. This is a Word document that is not too long and is normally between half a page and a full page. Here, you can describe any history or financial needs, for example, free school meals or bursaries, your current financial circumstances as well as any changes to income once you've become a student.

You also want to detail how the scholarship would assist in your learning at St Andrews. So, for example, if you plan to be a commuter, a scholarship could possibly help cover most of the cost of commuting. Essentially, the financial statement will provide a background context for your application as the household income figures you inserted before is not enough to make a decision. 

We would advise that you give yourself some time to think of the reasons you would need a scholarship or funding award and spend some more time writing up a coherent and concise financial statement.

You will also be asked to upload documentation to complement your application, so please ensure that you have access to these documents and get them organised. Highlighted here is some of the documentation you may be asked to provide. 

Once you have clicked on the 'Start application' button, you will be met with this box [shows 'Course selection' box] where you will select the course that you're applying to and the link to the new course application button as you will be a new applicant to the University of St Andrews.

You will then be met with an application form that may look like this. Each box represents a set of questions that you need to answer, and each fund will have different questions, so the number of boxes and questions may vary. 

The screen shows an example of how these will be presented, but depending on the fund you're applying for, there may be more or fewer sections to complete.

To complete the questions in each section, click the relevant box - for example, 'Student information' on the left - and complete the set of questions that appear.

Once you have completed the question in a specific section, click 'Next' and this will take you to the next section, for example, the student finance information.  Or you can click 'Save and exit' and can return to your application at a later point to continue or complete your application.

The third section will usually be for uploading documents. Click 'Browse my computer' to find the relevant document and then click 'Upload' to save it to your funding application. File types such as these listed [DOC; DOCX; GIF; HTM; HTML; JPEG; JPG; PDF; XLS; XLSX] are normally accepted and should be no more than two megabytes of size. And if your document is successfully uploaded, the box will change to this [File status: Successfully uploaded 100%], and you can move on to uploading other documents if they are required.

Once you've completed all the sections of the application form and uploaded any required documentation, you need to check and confirm your acceptance of the University's terms and conditions before submitting your application. 

When you have submitted your application, you will then be able to see your application in the 'View my funding applications' on the homepage. 

You will then see a page that looks like this. This screen will show you a summary of your submitted applications. Check back for the status message as this will tell you the status of your application and if it's been accepted or rejected. It is not pictured here, but you will find status information in a box at the bottom of the screen that explains the different status types and the steps the application may be taken. 

Should you have any questions or require assistance at any point of your application, there are a couple of places you can visit for help. You can type 'Ask a question' in the search bar on the University landing page, and you will see a number of frequently asked questions, but you can also ask another question if you can't find your answer. But you will also find the link to ask any questions in the summary box that will always be to the right or bottom of your application form. 

Note that all funding information and images used within this video are for example purposes only and are not necessarily funding offered by the University at this time.

>> CLARA: I think at high school there's a lot of myths that when you go to university you'll get no careers advice, but that definitely hasn't been the case for me.

They've been really welcoming to me, even as a first year, which has been really nice.

>> SIDNEY: They have specific area reps.

Their entire job is to just network and find careers there.

I think that was really helpful for me and for my parents cause my mom's biggest concern was, "Well, how are you going to get a job back home if you're going abroad."

But they have really recognised that concern, especially with Americans, and have done a pretty good job to fulfil it.

So if you're a motivated person, and if you are interested in doing something completely different than what your peers are doing, by going abroad you are going to be market yourself much better on your resume back in the states as well.

It shows you are a self starter and you can go somewhere and you can cultivate all these relationships and get involved in whatever you want to get involved in.

I think it's all about taking advantage of the opportunities that are given to you, and that's at any university, but St Andrews there's insanely more opportunities that are unique to St Andrews and unique to the diversity of the student population than anywhere else.

>> CLARA: Yeah, so I had an email from the careers department about their winter work shadowing programme, and they had a link to a load of different opportunities in all kinds of areas.

And then, hopefully, you're given an offer for work shadowing placement, which I was. So it was a really great experience.

>> ANNIE: So, the Careers Centre really helped me a lot advising me on what to do and also they helped me a lot on making my CV.

>> LEA: So last year I completed a Professional Skills Curriculum which is basically a course to teach you on professional skills at the University.

It's something that obviously really important for employability, but far more than that I think it's so great that we have something like that here because it's not just skills that we are learning for the world outside but actually skills that are so relevant to what is happening in our daily lives.

I'm involved in a lot of societies and extracurriculars in St Andrews, so it's so important to know about time management, and leadership, and change management.

Also, just speaking and voice coaching.

There's so many opportunities to be able to take those courses, and that's why I absolutely enjoyed the Professional Skills Curriculum and honestly would recommend it to anyone.