THE UK UNIVERSITY APPLICATION PROCESS

In UK, all students apply for their university places one year before they begin their university studies. This means that students will be applying for their university places at the end of their first year of A-level studies through an organisation called UCAS. We advise our students to do their application in the summer holidays after their Year 1 studies. The application is done on-line and students are allowed to apply to 5 universities except for medicine, dentistry and vet science which limit applications to only 4. It must be submitted to UCAS no later than Oct 15 for medical studies and Jan 15 the following year for all other courses. Colleges will want it back much earlier so that their Principal may have the time to decide what grades to predict for their students in their finals, and also to have the time to write their students a testimonial.

Apart from a student’s personal details, the course(s), universities, his/her O-levels and AS results, he/she will have to write an essay, known as the Personal Statement, on why he/she is choosing the course of study. Based on all this and the principal’s testimonial and the personal statement, university admission tutors will decide whether or not to admit an applicant.

Singapore IP students need not worry about not having O-levels as universities know about this program. Even students who are supposed to do their O-levels may choose to skip their O-levels and join the 2-year course which starts in September before they complete their Sec 4 year. If asked why O-levels are not taken, the answer is simple. "I want to join my UK college in September but my O-levels exams start in November". However, many medical schools are not happy though, and potential medical students should do their research before they take this decision. They should also be mindful that medical schools will do accept any student younger than 18 when they start their medical studies.

For medical/dental/vet science courses, admission tutors will also take into consideration the scores that students have obtained from the special aptitude tests known as BMAT and UCAT for medical/dental/vet science studies, and LNAT for law studies. Increasingly, admission tutors are also looking at an applicant's work and attachment experiences. They will decide whether or not to call an applicant for an interview between November and March the following year. If an applicant is not called for an interview, it means his/her application is rejected. For Oxford and Cambridge and some other universities, as well as for medical/dentistry/vet science, the interview will decide the fate of the applicant.

All successful applicants will be given a conditional offer of a place. This means that his/her place will be confirmed if his/her actual results, which will be out in August, match or exceed the prescribed conditional grades. Medical/dental/vet science and law students usually get a A*AA/AAA conditional offer. Oxbridge want A*AA. Should a student fails to get the prescribed grades, his/her place will be withdrawn and open for competition by students who are not given a conditional offer, but who have done very well in their final exams, i.e. those who have scored 3 or 4 As with perhaps 1A*. This takes place immediately after the results are released in mid-August each year and is known as “clearing”.

Because of the critical importance of the interview,, it can be seen that UK-based students who are aspiring to get into Oxbridge, medical, dentistry and vet science have a distinct advantage. They are very likely to be called for interviews if they are among the top students as they will shine out among the majority of average students and, since they are already in the UK. A few universities will come out to this part of the world to interview students, but they will usually cheery pick the very top students. Other universities will invite a limited number of students from Singapore/Malaysia for interviews in the UK, but such students must again be exceptionally good students. This is because admission tutors do not want to waste students’ time and money travelling so far, unless the professors are pretty sure that these are the type of students they are looking for. By this logic, students in Singapore/Malaysia and other countries in the Far East who are called for interviews should have a good chance of being given a conditional offer, but unfortunately, they often do not get one. This is because students from this part of the world lose out to students who are studying in the UK at the interview as they are less acclimatized to the cold (interviews usually take place in mid winter), less confident, less exposed to things British and are not used to the style and the accent of the interviewers, whereas students who are studying in the UK are more in all of these traits.