If you’re applying for university, you’ll know it’s not an easy time. It’s natural to feel stressed or unsure about the application process. The choices you make now can have a huge impact on your education, and on your life. But you can make the whole process a lot easier by using MyUniChoices.
MyUniChoices is a tool which helps you make the right decision about your Higher Education experience. It can be used at any stage of the application process, but it’s best to use it early on and keep returning to the tool to help guide your research.
MyUniChoices is designed to help find the best course for you. It does this by asking you 150 questions about your interests, and then building a profile of the courses that are best suited for your interests. After this, you can fine-tune your results, and carry out further research into universities and courses.
We’ve designed MyUniChoices so that it can be used throughout your university application. However, there are some key points during the process where we think that MyUniChoices is most useful. To help you make the most of MyUniChoices, we’ve come up with a list of these key times, and what you should be doing during them to keep your university application process as easy as possible.
Initial research
When it comes to your university application, it’s never too early to start your research.
If you’ve already started your A-levels or other qualifications, you’ll probably have some idea of what areas of study you might want to pursue at degree level.
However, at this stage, it’s a good idea not to discount any options. You might find that your interests change as you study. Keep an open mind and use this time to explore as many different courses and areas as you can.
At this stage, you can use MyUniChoices to help you direct your research to specific areas. Answer the questions honestly, and Centigrade will generate your report of the course areas which are most suited to your interests.
Once you’ve got this report, you can use it to explore the different course areas which you might want to study at university. Don’t be too specific at this point, though. Keep your research broad and investigate lots of different course areas. MyUniChoices recommends a number of course areas which are suited to your interests, but you can also explore the full UCAS course range.
Narrowing your options
Once you’ve carried out your initial research, and you’re starting to get closer to the UCAS deadlines, it’s time to start narrowing down your options. To do this, you can make use of the Preferences feature of MyUniChoices .
The Preferences feature allows you to pick which course areas you’d like to explore. You can choose up to 3 course areas to select for further research. Once you’ve done this, read through the information MyUniChoices provides on these areas, and follow the recommended links to find out lots more.
MyUniChoices breaks down course areas into different aspects, and highlights which are more or less suited to you. For example, if English/Literary Studies was a course area that’s of high interest to you, you might see that the Communication aspect is very well suited to your interests, while Administration or Modern Languages is less so. Think carefully about these breakdowns, as they may challenge your thinking on why it is that you’re attracted to certain courses, or uncover areas of interest that you’ve not thought of before.
Picking courses
Once you’ve narrowed down your course areas, and selected some to take forward, it’s time to get even more specific. This means picking some courses which you think you’d like to study, as well as the universities that you’d like to study them at.
To do this, MyUniChoices has a filtering tool. This allows you to select the course titles you’d like to study, as well as your predicted grades. You can even select if you’re interested in studying in the UK, Ireland or the EU.
After you do this, MyUniChoices will display a list of the courses which match your preferences. It categorises these into Fallback, Solid and Ambitious options, according to your predicted grades. This helps you figure out a range of universities to apply to in order to have the best chance of success.
The course list will guide you through the process of researching universities and courses. You can add your own ratings and notes to the different aspects of the courses and universities. Be sure to research course features like facilities and additional course costs as well as university research like accommodation and library facilities. MyUniChoices has lots of information about universities and courses, and also contains helpful links out to the university website to make research easy.
Finalising your options
Once you’ve picked your final choices, it’s easy to export them.
Once you’ve shortlisted your options, MyUniChoices makes it easy to finalise them. You can pick up to 5 courses to apply to through UCAS. You can compare the ratings you’ve given your shortlist, and pick the best courses for you.
Make sure to double check your research at this point. Universities sometimes update their course profiles over the year, so verify that your information is correct before you make your final choices.
Once you’ve picked your final choices, it’s easy to export them. You can email a list of your choices to yourself as well as your parents or teachers.
Clearing or Adjustment
If your grades are very different to what you expected on results day, don’t panic: there’s a number of things you can do.
If your grades are lower than what you needed to get into your university choices, you’ll usually have to use a system called Clearing. This process means that you can contact universities in order to get a new offer for a different place. Usually, this is done over the phone.
If you’re using Clearing, you can verbally accept a number of offers from universities, but you can only enter one institution on the UCAS system. This means that you need to be sure that this is the right university for you. While Clearing can be stressful, it’s always good to pause and do some proper research on the course and university before you accept it on Track.
If your grades are higher than you expected, you may want to think about entering Adjustment. Just like Clearing, with Adjustment you can change your offer to one additional course. You can only enter Adjustment if your actual grades are higher than the conditions of your firm offer.
MyUniChoices can help you carry out your research for both Clearing and Adjustment. If you come back to MyUniChoices after your application, all of your original data will still be there. You can adjust the predicted grades to reflect your real grades, and MyUniChoices will automatically display your new university results