UCAS application and applying to university in general - is there an idiots guide?

[FancyNanci]

I'm not from the UK and don't really understand the process for applying to uni which my son will be doing in September.
I know the school will guide him but I'd like to get a better understanding of the process.
He will be applying early to Oxbridge.

Ucas website for the general process and the website for his oxbridge course for his specifics.

You can look at the UCAS site itself for some good information. Your son probably has a subscription to Unifrog (and a login to UCAS) which are also helpful.

You might also want to look at the threads on the Higher Education forum - there's one for aspiring Oxbridge entrants that will probably be of interest :)

I don't think the UCAS website gives the nuances of the system.
The bit where you have 5 preferences but 1 of those has to be a safe choice... is that explained anywhere?

That's not a nuance of the system - that's personal choice and not everyone will do it.
I'd try posting in the HE topic for tips.

I agree with @redskylight - that is not a nuance. That is a sensible precaution. Since you can only accept two offers, you want at least one offer from a university you really want and a backup in case you don't get the grades you need. If you don't include a safe choice, you may find that all the offers you get require similar grades - worse, you could end up with no offers at all.

@FancyNanci you are running ahead of yourself. You put 5 choices down, you then wait and see, you might get invited to interview, you might get turned down and you might get an offer. You wait until you have answer from all 5, if you have more than one offer you choose one first choice and then ideally one with Lowe grades as your insurance. Then you do your A-levels wait till august, celebrate if you get the grades for first choice, if you don't quite make them you may attempt to negotiate with your first choice or accept your insurance. If you don't get the grades you enter the hunger games/clearing.

@FancyNanci , spend some time on the Higher Education section. There is a thread called Exeter admissions which gives lots of advice about how the course your dc chooses can drive the types of choices so the poster has dd who wants to do joint honours including a MFL which means she has loads of choice but if your dc wants to study economics or law you have to be much more strategic which is where your dc's school will help as they have knowledge of acceptance rates for courses / uni's etc.

Just to add you can't apply to 'Oxbridge' you either apply to Cambridge or you apply to Oxford, not both, not in the same year through UCAS anyway. And you'll be applying to a specific college , which IS full of nuance , or you can make an open application and the university will assign a college to your son for application. Tons of debate on here on the nuances of that.

Also if your son applies to say Oxford and Durham, neither university will know (or care,) when it comes to offers.

You'd be best off sitting with him and figuring out the choices of Uni and then doing your own research online, all Uni's have guides and query bots to answer 'idiot guide' level questions .

Have you attended any open days with your DC? Personally I would have died of shame if my parents came with me on open days to Uni, but you and your DC may have a different relationship!

A good place to start is here, its an idiot guide for teenagers ( who are mostly idiots)

https://www.theuniguide.co.uk/

@Milkbottle2000 , open days are full of parents. I went to a open day for offers at Exeter recently and the dept let parents into the talk with the students who all had offers already and the parents asked all the questions and irrelevant ones too like "is the city safe?", it was very embarrassing for me as a parent in the room!

https://www.theuniversityguys.com/knowledge/guides/

Has lots of information about how UK university applications work, although as others have said ucas.com really does also include pretty much all you need to know.

Oh I know, I remember going alone on all of mine and I was in a minority of the 'cool kids' who were on their own.

No way on Earth I would go with mine when the time comes. I think my parents know from their own university life, going to uni isn't 'real life' , its living in a bubble somewhere.

I'll be far more fretting about my DC going away to a new town for a job than Uni.

The actual uni open days I went to with DS (one with all his siblings too as we were out for the day and had nowhere to leave them - he was not amused!) always had a talk on the Uni admissions process as well and they were quite useful as noobs. But yes, he went to offer holder days alone!

The UCAS website itself once he had a login was also quite informative, plus the HE boards here (with a massive pinch of salt as you will get the Uber mums who think applying to a non RG uni is career, if not life, suicide) and websites like goodunigude and 100s of others all have articles summarising the process (which yes, is pretty bonker but you have to go with it).