“UCAS is processing your application”

[Ucastress]

DD applied to UCAS for a STEM subject. The entry went in before the early entry deadline ie beginning of October. Some of her friends are beginning to get offers so I asked her whether she’d heard anything.

Her UCAS hub states the following:
“UCAS is processing your application. Once this is complete it will be sent to the universities and colleges you applied to for their consideration.”

When I’ve googled, it says that UCAS takes 48 hours to process applications, not four weeks! What’s going on? Should I get her to contact them?

I think she probably should contact them and check all is OK. DD's application went in around the same time and she has had several offers (although it may be quicker/less complicated for her since she is applying with grades in hand).

Definitely call them.

Did she apply through her school or college? If so, might be worth checking her tutor has done all the necessary bits.

Yes she applied through school and saw the teacher press the send button! I think school have done their bit because she’s got that message from UCAS. Will try to persuade her to ring them but she’s got the teenage hatred of phone calls!

If she's applied by the early deadline because she needed to meet that deadline (as opposed to just being organised) then she needs to get this sorted asap. It can be sorted but time will be running out! This doesn't sound like it's going to resolve itself if left, it's very unusual to be waiting even as much as 48 hours.

Eek. Yes she’s applied to Oxbridge (I’m being deliberately vague).

Did she have any confirmation emails from Universities that she’s applied to, to confirm her applications?

Do Oxbridge still do aptitude tests? Seem to remember that most applicants did these in the half term holidays ie around now.

Yes she’s done the relevant tests. But they are administered not by UCAS not the universities and they don’t all require them anyway.

She sent me this screenshot. So it looks like she’s in the system somewhere but still somehow “processing”.

That looks fine. She’s just waiting to hear if she gets any offers / interviews.

Has she sent you a screenshot of the "processing" message, or has that gone now?

Has she received acknowledgement emails from the universities she's applied for?

How recently did it say “UCAS is processing your application”? That processing phase should be very short indeed - a few formalities (such as a plagiarism check) before the applications go off to all the universities. My DD’s form was submitted to UCAS as recently as last Friday 7 November, and is already beyond the “processing” status.

Ah that looks more as expected than it sounded like initially. Has she had acknowledgement of her application from any unis?

Oxbridge interviews take place around the middle of December. She will only get approximately a week's notice if she is offered an interview.

That looks like DD’s. She has two offers already so part of the circle is red and in the middle is 2/5, but the same otherwise. She’s also applied to Oxbridge.

The front page of the hub shows the processing message (screenshot attached)

Honestly, she should just give them a call and check. There is literally no downside to this, apart from the pain of the phone call!

If she's had acknowledgement emails from the unis, you can relax. If not, chase it up now! DS heard from all 5 unis within days.

Agree with PP. This is weird and she needs to ring. You mentioned an early entry deadline. It would be a shame if she’s missed that deadline because of this.

Yes, I would ring them. My daughter applied at the same time and has had offers from some and acknowledgements from the others. I would get onto UCAS asap - I'm sure it will be fixable but def worth querying now.

Thanks all. She’s going to phone them after school today. She hasn’t heard from any of the unis. She assumed because they are competitive.

DS has had an offer from one and acknowledgement emails from the other four (RG unis + Oxford). Hopefully whatever the problem is, it's easy to sort out!

Thanks @carpedaim
It’s very stressful! DD is in charge of it all of course but wasn’t aware that anything was wrong until I pressed her.

@Ucastress - it’s a bit of a tightrope to walk. It’s good for our DCs to be independent (younger DD really wanted to do everything herself) but at 17/18, they don’t always realise when alarm bells should be ringing. As PPs have said, hopefully this is easily fixable.

I don’t know if Durham is one of your DD’s targets but in case it is: i will say that MN tipped me off to some important things that i was able to feed back to my younger DD (Durham was her firm choice and she’s now there). The most important in the pre-exam phase was probably that students must fill in a separate application for accommodation. This is not done as part of selecting colleges but is a separate stage which follows after provisional college allocation - being allocated a college is not the same as being allocated accommodation in that college.

MN had alerted me to this step and to the fact that some students in previous years had missed this and had ended up having to go into private accommodation or deferring a year. It was good to know about because in fact DD didn’t initially receive her accommodation application, even though classmates allocated other colleges had started to do so, but because of MN, we knew we had to chase this down. Even though DD got irritated with me at times, she was glad of my help in the end. (It was needed again after results day - lots more boxes to tick at college and uni level; plus she had applied for Liberal Arts and needed to fill her timetable!).

There is a section in UCAS where you can authorise someone else to speak about your application. You can definitely do it as you apply, not sure if you can add it retrospectively. I did this with my autistic DS when he applied 2 years ago and UCAS will happily take a phone call from you with that permission in place. My DD has applied this time, she has just added me as permission just in case.

Either way, I'd call up UCAS just to check. my dd has received one offer so I can't compare the screenshots to her UCAS.