Oxbridge application - do all five choices have to be listed by 15th October?

[RandomFriend]

Or does DD just need to select the Oxbridge choice by 15th October, and can she add the other four choices later?

When you submit your UCAS form that is it, yes. Get a move on but good luck to her and hope she doesn't need to put anything else because Oxbridge bite her hand off !

When mine applied 4 years ago he only put 4 on initially & added the 5th later

But it might have changed since then of course

I thought you could add others later... dd has only put 3 so far and is planning to add another 2 < starts panicking>

we were told no a few weeks ago at an oxbridge evening. I just remember it becuse they said that the other unis would still know that you had applied or oxbridge because the subsequent submissions wuld have the original submission date on.

sorry no as in no you dont have to put all choices on original form!

As far as I am aware you can add others later. I bloody hope so as DS is submitting his this week with only 3 choices on for now as he cant make up his mind whether to put another 2 on or not

I'm fairly sure you CAN add the remaining four after the 15 October deadline as long as it's before the january deadline.

I stand corrected.. sorry!

Thanks for all the replies! That is a relief. We are outside the UK so we haven't visited anywhere else yet.

She knows she has to get a move on, but she is one of about three applying from her school.

I applied for three universities last year and got regular emails from UCAS asking if I wanted to add any more.:-)

My DD's school made them make all 5 choices on the one form by the Oxbridge deadline. The downside is that the other 4 universities know you have applied to Oxford or Cambridge but if you are good enough, you should get other offers anyway.

The other universities do not know for sure that you have applied to Oxbridge - UCAS does not give them that information. Not all students who apply early are applying to Oxbridge (although most are).

What do the other universities see? If I understand correctly, each university will see both the date that the application was submitted to UCAS, as well as the date that the application was submitted to them?

This would mean that if DD submits her application before the Oxbridge deadline, and then adds her second to fifth choices later(say, in two weeks), the other universities will know that they are a choice that has been added later?

It is already enough work to complete the application, I don't want to stress DD further by asking her to make choices about where she will spend the next three years of her life without allowing her time to at least look at the websites of different places, and preferably even visit some of the during half term.

Universities must give equal consideration to all applications received by the January deadline. They cannot and do not discriminate just because they were a choice which was added later than the initial application. (Indeed, I cannot imagine that most university admissions teams have the time to keep track of the dates of UCAS submission versus arriving with them.)

Universities are also not going to assume that they are less favoured just because they are added later - they know that many students won't make up their minds about first and second choices until much later.

Even if universities suspect the candidate is applying to Oxbridge, this will generally have very little impact on their decisions. (Indeed, why would it? Applying to Oxbridge doesn't mean that the candidate is definitely going to get an offer, meet the offer and go there.)