Fill in most of the UCAS form

Date: around ?/09/2002

It looked pretty complex but it wasn't all that bad - the hard part was making the choices now I just had to write them down

Now I knew what courses and universities I was applying for I could fill in most of my UCAS form. I couldn't do the personal statement because the school was going to be printing it on the form for me. Also the references needed to be done by the school too, but I would be handing the form in before that was complete so no need to worry there.

Page 1

The first section was just personal details which was easy to fill in. I did make on mistake on the actual form here where I wrote down my email address wrong. I didn't bother to correct the mistake because it would mess up the form and I didn't think they would send anything important to me by email anyway. I also made a decision to leave my mobile number blank, though I did have one I didn't really want any calls from UCAS on it.

The next part, further details, was a little more difficult because a number of codes and names had to be filled in, the first being my student support arrangements. Because I live in England the amount of student support I receive is assessed by my LEA (local education authority). I needed to put down the name of my LEA which was Oxon LEA. Next was my fee code. This was 02 (applying for student support assessment by LEA). Next was Residential category, mine was A, because I was a UK national and lived in the EEA for three years. Then there was a disability box, I have not disabilities so put a 0 here. There were also a few easy parts in this section such as nationality, country of birth and area of permanent residence. This section was generally easy because it was well explained in the UCAS booklet.

The next part was where I put the universities I applied to, for some reason they had to be in alphabetical order. First I had to look up all the codes for the universities and courses I had applied to using the UCAS directory at my school. A list of institution code names, institution codes, course codes, and short course titles is shown below.

Click on the institution code name of a university to see its page on UCAS' website.

There were many boxes that I left blank on this section. Campus code was left blank because none of the universities I applied to had more than one campus. No further details needed to be filled in and I wasn't staying at home or going for a deferred entry so a lot of this section was blank.

The last few sections on the first page are short and easy to fill in. First there is the secondary, further and higher education section where I just had to write the name, address and the dates I attended my previous school from. For some reason I didn't need to put my middle school, maybe it doesn't count as secondary education. Next was criminal convictions where I ticked no, and the finally the additional information section. Information in this section wasn't used by the universities for selection. It asked for my occupation background, which according to the UCAS booklet, was the job of my highest earning parent (in my case IT support). Lastly they needed my ethnic origin which was 11 for white, British.

Page 2

The second page was for qualifications, it was split into two parts: a part for qualifications I had already completed (GCSEs and AS-levels mainly) and a part for uncompleted qualifications (A-levels). I also needed to write my exam and assessment centre names and numbers which were the same in both cases (My school, 62309).

Filling in the qualifications part is quite easy, I just had to remember what exams I did, when I did them, which board it was with and what my results were. I did make a few mistakes on my first try on a photocopy though and it takes a little while to get it laid out nicely.

There were lots of examples of how to lay out the form in the UCAS guide though not one that fitted me perfectly. The GCSEs and AS level parts were easy to fill in and so were most of my uncompleted exams. The problem I had was with further maths.

The way we studied further maths at my school was to do two modules in the AS year and four in the A2 year to make up a complete A-level of six modules. The problem is AS and A2 parts of courses are normally split into three modules - so though I was doing further maths and had completed two modules I had no AS in the subject. There was nothing in the guide which really covered this, eventually I decided to leave out these modules and just put further maths in the uncompleted section at the bottom.

I put down further maths twice - I can't remember whether I did this on the actual form or just the practice, but I think it was probably the wrong thing to do now - I should have just put the full A-level here.

Page 3

The bulk of the third page of the UCAS form is taken up by the personal statement. There is no picture of the statement here because it was the last thing to go on the form and was printed onto the form by my school. You can see the personal statement part on the Writing my personal statement page.

The rest of this page is mainly taken up by the employment history details section and the declaration. The first part is a special needs and support section which you only fill in if you entered something other than 0 in the earlier section. As I had no special needs I left this part blank. Next was the employment history. I have only had one part time job where I worked at my local Tesco's for just over a year. I put the start dates but left the finish dates blank, I'm not sure if this was the right thing to do the guide didn't really make it clear. On the photocopy the nature of work box has been left blank, I'm pretty sure I filled it in on the real form but cannot remember exactly what I put - I expect I wrote my job title which was general assisitant.

After the personal statement there are only a couple more sections I need to fill in. The fist was did I have a national record of achievement. I was never really totally sure what one of these was supposed to be or how important it was. As it happened I did have something like it, a folder containing all my exam result certificates, other certificates and important bits of paper, but I couldn't see any reason when any university would want to see that. After asking my school I didn't tick either of the boxes because they said I didn't really have a record of achievement so I was a bit confused here.

The last section was the declaration to say that what I had written was actually true. I'm pretty sure it all was so I signed and dated the form added the £15 for UCAS' admin fee.

That was it, my part of the UCAS form was complete. I haven't talked about exactly how I went about filling it in, it wasn't all in order as described above. I filled in all the easy bit first such as personal details. Then I filled in the bits where I had to look up stuff for the UCAS booklet. Next I filled in the bits I had to look up from my own information such as the dates of my previous work or the dates I was at school from. When I was sure I had decided what universities I wanted to apply to I filled in these bits, next I filled in all my grades and things. Lastly there was a check for any bits I might have missed then I handed it back in to my teacher who got the references done.

Page 4

I didn't need to do anything on page four, it was to be filled in by my reference which would be my form tutor at school.