How do Universities Find Out This?

[janeeire244]

Does anyone know how universities verify whether you are at another university when you apply?

For instance, Oxbridge claim they don’t allow you to apply to them while studying elsewhere. But, how would they know for sure if you just applied and said you weren’t at another university on UCAS?

I understand that would be a fraudulent thing to do but I’m not asking whether or not it is right or wrong to do so; I’m just asking practically how they’d find out?

I also work in University Admissions. You can’t see where a current applicant has applied until they have made their Firm and Insurance choice. Once the choice is made, you can see all 5 choices and offers & also if they went through Clearing. If an applicant has applied in a previous cycle to your University, there is a drop down on UCAS which shows previous application choices and decisions.
Either way UCAS would know and are supposed to do fraud checks. So if reapplying isn’t allowed, it’s possible UCAS could provide this information to the University.
You’d certainly need to explain what you had been doing when applying and also previous A Level results will show on UCAS too, so you’d also need to declare them & I imagine Oxford or Cambridge will request a reference from your school who could also provide further information.

Something I’m curious about is what happens to UCAS applications once someone enrols at university and is fine there. By this I mean does their UCAS account exist for like 3/4 years showing their acceptance into their course or does the app refresh and their old account for say, 2022 entry disappears?

I guess you’d need to check that with UCAS bur we have our own system and retain the UCAS application data on that.

I thought universities destroy information for university applicants at the end of the cycle?

Just get your degree wherever you are now and if you do well, do a postgrad at Oxbridge.

I am a former admissions tutor and @MeAgain9327 is correct.

UCAS does fraud checks and you really don’t want to risk this. Most immediately, your A level history is available to all institutions you apply to on your UCAS portal.

In the situation you describe, Oxford would surely ask about your earlier A levels. If you are at another institution, the only ways out are to plead ignorance and withdraw your application, or to lie.

I am not sure about this, but I think it possible that if such a lie were found out it would become an obstacle to the practice of Law. And it probably would be found out: presumably you would use references from your school or sixth form college, and they would be expected to say something about what you’ve done in the interim. You cannot ask your referees to lie, even by omission. How do you propose to handle that?

In short, aside from the ethics the plan is not viable.

Once the applicant has all five decisions and has firmed and insured you are able to see them. Obvs you can’t see others before that stage.

Just realised who the poster is you’re not even at uni, you’re resitting, you haven’t reapplied to Oxbridge. You’re obsessing. It’s massively unhealthy. Focus on your resits. Apply again with grades in hand. Or don’t. Or go as a postgrad. But this obsessing is going to damage your chances at improving your grades.

and for the record no of course we don’t destroy previous applicant data - at least not for applications made within the last five or six years. It’s a hugely rich and useful dataset.

Well, they're resitting OR got amazing grades and resent those who got offers for less OR are a parent to a wayward teen. The only thing we can be sure of is that at least half the posts are fantasy, whether as a creative writing exercise or otherwise.

Thank you. I’m only involved with applications at screening and up to the offer point so I didn’t appreciate that it changed after that.

Then how come as I am resitting and created a brand new UCAS account it automatically linked to my previous UCAS ID but I essentially got to make a brand new application for this new cycle?

If I firm and enrol at a certain university this year, couldn’t I just create a new UCAS account and reapply to Oxbridge through that? Then, they’d link my application to my old UCAS ID.

When they do that would they discover that I was already at university or would it be totally brand new like this year with no mention of where I applied in the prior cycle?

Have you applied to Oxbridge before and been rejected?

You know that there is no guarantee you will be accepted next time you apply?

If you have a place at university try to excel at that, there are options at Oxbridge at post graduate level too.

Lying to get somewhere is not something you should even be considering at this point. You know they don't accept people currently enrolled elsewhere so you are trying to play the system to get around that.

Oxbridge is not the be all and end all but if you want to reapply then take a gap year and take the associated risk of rejecting good offers that you might not get second time round.

My son applied and was interviewed by Oxford, he wasn't offered a place but is more than happy where he now is. Most people he knows were unsuccessful with their Oxbridge applications.

The main thing is what I said earlier. All of your A levels can be seen and anyone with
half a brain knows there is a story there. Your referees will be expected to address the ‘gap year’ as will you. You and they will need to lie or Oxford will make the correct inference.

They won’t do it and you can be very heavily penalised possibly affecting your eligibility to practise Law.

Yep, this is indeed the same poster who had created multiple threads, all under different names, obsessing about Oxbridge having failed to apply in time while doing her resits, and dreaming up various obviously doomed-from-the-outset schemes to secure a place.

There is absolutely no point wasting your time in responding to her. Numerous people have tried with kindness to advise her, but she has zero interest in listening to anything that undermines her increasingly delusional obsession with securing an Oxbridge place.

I hope she manages to get some professional support to allow her to come to terms with her situation and make something constructive of her life, but responding to her in good faith is here not helping at all.

Who would write your reference?

My old school teacher who I’m still in contact with and understand my situation and wrote it for me this year.

So you're applying again in October?

I still don't think, given your posts on here, that you'd last 5 minutes in a 1 on 1 academic supervision, and I speak as someone who did them for 3 years.

That’s great and very supportive of them.

What I meant though is if you go this year to a different university for one year and then apply to Oxford (which is what this thread seems to be about), who will write the reference and what will they say about this year as you don’t want Oxford to know about this university that you want to go to for a year.

You can’t have a teacher at a school who won’t have taught you for two years by then.

For UCAS can’t anyone write a letter for you like an employer or private tutor so long as they know you’re situation? After all, that’s what mature students do.

Fraud is a criminal offence.

Get over yourself. Rather than thinking you are somehow owed a place because you’re special follow the bloody rules. It isn’t difficult and everyone has to do it.

You will have accepted the place via UCAS, matriculated, have fees paid by SFE. Just accept that links will be made and it is not an option. Oxbridge has not worked out this time, or last. Iirc you hoped to get in via a foundation scheme but presumably did not apply again. You could look for postgrad but chances are once you accept another course you will stop hankering after it and move on.

But what are they going to say on your reference that you have been doing for the year that you have been at a university that you don’t want Oxford to know you have been to?

That is my question.

Look, just stop it, Jane.

My son was in a similar position, in his case pooled but not offered by Cambridge, got excellent grades but missed the deadline for reapplication as he was in a bad place at the time.

He found it hard to accept that he had genuinely missed an opportunity and wasted quite a bit of mental energy trying to think of a workaround. But accepting that sometimes things don't go your way is just life. (Are you male, despite the username? Your writing style is very similar to his, but maybe that's an ASD thing.)

Anyone who knows you have been at university will say so. No one is going to join you in fraud, for that is what you are proposing.

Also: what if you proceed with this plan and actually get an interview, OP?

Your A level resits will have been this summer. The 2025-26 academic year will have been your alleged gap year and you will need to conceal your university attendance during that time.

Face to face with an admissions tutor, in the knowledge that we have seen it all and excel in concealing our reactions, and not just an Oxford place but a legal career (because of the fraud) may be on the line, how will you react? You will need to spin quite a compelling lie about your ‘gap year’ activities and be able to answer seemingly innocuous questions from the tutor.

Good luck with that.

Hopefully you are just venting here.