Should DD submit her UCAS earlier? Grades in hand

[Bestmoonlove]

DD is in a gap year; she got Astar, A, A.

She is applying for the following universities;

Imperial College: Design Engineering
Bristol: Design Engineering
Loughborough: Product Design Engineering
Strathclyde: Product Design and Innovation
Queens Mary: Design Innovation and creative engineering.

She is doing the maths test for IC in January so is planning to submit her application after.

Questions:

Can she and should she submit her application earlier?

Do you have to put them in certain order?

If she gets offers straight away can she wait to confirm until the other offers come through?

How would you rate these universities and courses? If you got experience of them

Can she and should she submit her application earlier?

Yes, she can, although if the maths test is mandatory, presumably Imperial will hold off from deciding (unless rejecting for some other reason) until it gets the result. One thought, though - if she will know the result of the test in time to decide whether it is worth pursuing the Imperial application, she could hold that one back and substitute a different course if she doesn't do well.

Do you have to put them in certain order?

No. Iirc, the system automatically sorts alphabetically. And the universities only see their application, not where else you have applied.

If she gets offers straight away can she wait to confirm until the other offers come through?

She actually has to have mo 'unresolved' applications at the point of choosing her Firm (no Insurance needed if her Firm choice offer is Unconditional). So, responses from all, or she can withdraw her application to her 'also rans', if she gets an Unconditional offer from her favourite early on.

How would you rate these universities and courses? If you got experience of them

No experience, sorry. (But 'Which course interests me most?' and, 'Do I want to live <here> for the next 3 / 4 / ?5 years? would be my considerations, and hope the two intersect. Plus, is this course accredited by an organisation which is helpful / necessary for my career plans?).

Thank you,

That us tricky. How long does she have to firm one university?

Just make sure she does a placement year, wherever she goes

Ok. In understand she can wait until all universities have responded to firm her offer? IC says they will have made decisions by end of March so it should be fine.

Good point. Thank you

Quite a few students have UCAS submissions in already - some schools / colleges encourage them to get them in earlier for “competitive” courses. I’m not completely sure on the reasoning as there has to be a “equal consideration” date but just passing on advice some are getting. Some oxbridge and medicine courses have an earlier deadline too so some kids have their applications in early because of that.

There are clear timelines on accepting courses: https://www.ucas.com/applying/after-you-apply/types-of-undergraduate-offers/replying-to-your-offers
There isn’t a big rush to accept, she’ll need to wait till all unis have replied with either offer or decline. It’s not like she has to get back to them quickly once she hears from one course or she’ll miss out. Check the timings in here.

The rules around responding to offers are on the UCAS website - no individual university can insist that the applicant informs it whether or not it is the applicant's Firm choice or otherwise outwith the scheme laid out by UCAS. For the applicant, the deadline for decisions will depend on when they have received responses from all the universities they applied to (but can be 'short circuited' by withdrawing applications to universities they are no longer interested in which haven't yet responded).

Your DD should already have seen this, but here are the UCAS 'Key dates':
https://www.ucas.com/advisers/help-and-training/key-dates-timeline

There is no cunning needed with deciding on who to accept - they all have to reply by a certain date and there is a subsequent set date by which she will have to respond so don’t worry about that.

As the previous poster has said, if she is waiting to apply to Imperial until she her maths result (presumably as she will use that slot for somewhere else if she doesn’t do well enough), fine, provided she applies by the equal consideration date (Jan 14th I think) but there is no reason not to get on with applying to any of the others if she is certain she wants to try them. Get the application in with one gap left empty and add imperial later. Not sensible to delay the others.

Yes we’ve already done ours here and had all the offers back.

Counsellor here.

I'm in two minds as to whether early apps are worth it, depends on the student. The advice I've given is that it's better to submit a good application than an early-but-poor one - to stop them rushing to get them done and out of the way (in France - students have an insane workload in final year so they tend to rush through everything).

Those that submitted early for Oxbridge are getting offers on the less prestigious unis / courses that they included in the early deadline applications, but the big ones I don't expect responses for a while yet.

My DDs done hers and had her offers back, she’s also on a gap year.

Have you been to the uni open days to look round? That helped decide where dd wanted to go and what course to do.

Only managed to see IC and Loughborough from the list

All applications have to be treated equally until the deadline of 14 January 2026. After that unis may have given out all their offers.
It's important to have your application in before then.

Important to remember if you're doing a test in Jan (8 or 9 for TMUA). The results come back after the deadline for UCAS so you can't wait for that. You have to put your UCAS stuff without knowing the results and these will get sent to the unis directly in Feb.

Ah. Yes, if he maths tests results will be back after Jan 14th then no point in waiting. Get the application in

Thanks. This is helpful

DD applied early because one of her choices is Oxford. She is also applying with grades in hand. She got offers back pretty quickly once her application was in (apart from Oxford where she is waiting to hear if she has an interview) so hopefully you will get quick decisions.

If they have to be treated equally until the deadline; I am not sure why you need to submit earlier. DD will definitely submit before deadline but I think she wants to spend more time in her personal statement. It seems that the best universities and courses don’t rush into giving offers.

Who is acting as her reference? She will need to let them know - once she submits the application then goes to the referee (at least if you’re at school - assume the same if you’ve left), and the referee has to submit by Jan 14th - hence doing it now.

Also nice to have an offer or two by Christmas.

Not true that the ‘best’ don’t rush into making offers btw. Even the ‘best’ have plenty of admissions officers who are happy to devolve decisions to admissions teams - ie have them done automatically!

This is a good point. Our sixth form college asked all the students to get their completed ucas forms to the college by end of this week so they can check them and add references - it takes time for them to get through all of them. If whoever is doing her reference is also doing them for lots of other students, it’s worth checking on timelines with them.

Another factor is getting it in this term can sometimes give scope for strategic applications. For instance, if Strathclyde and QMUL are there as her more “safety” offers (I don’t know the courses - just taking as an example) , she could just put her favourite of the two now and if she gets an offer from them before the deadline, that frees a slot up for another aspirational one, alongside Inperial and Bristol.

This is particularly for people with grades in hand as they don’t need a safe insurance offer, so it would be a shame to miss out on this perk of grades in hand

There’s no advantage ucas wise to applying early, but it does tick a big box for those who have got lots of other things to juggle.

ds has mucks straight after Christmas so leaving his ucas application until nearer the January deadline would just add to the pressure at that time of year.

Your dd needs to get her ps finalised and liaise with whoever is providing her reference to give them sufficient time to complete their part in advance of the January cut off. That date is final - no other choices should be added after that.

I’m surprised that your dd isn’t more aware of this and hasn’t visited more places though tbh.