What is Ucas Extra – and when should students use it?
For students with no offers – or who have changed their mind about what or where they want to study – the UK application system has a built-in safety net: Ucas Extra
By mid-spring, many UK universities will have made their decisions. Hopefully your students have lots of offers, and their next step will be to choose a firm and, if they want, an insurance choice.
For some students, though, those offers may not have materialised – or students may have changed their minds about the courses, the universities or the subjects they applied for (or even all of the above).
Disappointment and uncertainty can make this a difficult time for students and their families. The UK application system does have a built-in safety net for these scenarios, though: Ucas Extra.
What is Ucas Extra and how does it work?
Ucas Extra is less well known and less used than Ucas clearing, but can be a valuable option for some. It is available to students who used up all five of their application choices and received no offers – either because they were rejected from all five or because they changed their minds and declined any offers received, or withdrew from one of their five choices.
Extra allows students to add one choice to their application. They can search the Ucas website for courses that still have vacancies – but it is also recommended that they contact the universities they are interested in to check that they are still accepting applications. Students can also ask any additional questions at that point.
Students can then add an extra choice to their application. They can only add one choice, and universities have 21 days to respond. Once an offer has been made, students can accept it. If they choose to decline the offer or the university takes longer than 21 days to respond, students can add another course instead.
Ucas Extra typically opens in the last week of February, and is available for students to use until early July, when the clearing system opens. The exact date will vary by year.
Extra cannot be used if students are still waiting for a university to respond or if they have not used all five choices. In the latter scenario, they should already be able to add a further choice in their Ucas Hub.
The benefits
The Extra system is very useful for students who don’t hold any offers, perhaps because they applied to a very competitive course, such as medicine. It adds further chances and flexibility.
Extra is also helpful for students who have changed their minds about their study plans – though in that case it is worth discussing their motivations for change carefully before going ahead.
If the student misses a Ucas Extra offer or changes their mind later in the cycle, they can still use clearing when it opens in July.
...and the risks
Possible risks to discuss with students include the fact that the Extra system does not allow for an insurance choice. And if a student has declined existing offers in order to use Extra, those offers are not reinstated if they are unsuccessful or change their mind later about an Extra choice.
Ucas does not allow students who changed their mind about their course subject to submit a second round of personal statement answers. Instead, the student would need to check with the university if a second statement is required – and, if so, where and how it can be submitted directly.
Advising students about Ucas Extra
The Extra timeline allows for conversations between counsellor and student, and between student and university. Discussing the student’s aims with them – looking at what they want from a course, any entrance requirements and whether slightly different courses may have more flexibility about these, as well as the location and type of university they hope to attend – is valuable at this point.
The student may see using Ucas Extra as anything from another go at getting an offer to a completely new set of priorities, so this will need ascertaining.
A university may make a decision about an Extra choice later than for applications submitted by the January equal-consideration deadline. This can affect the deadline by which a student needs to accept or decline any offers. Students should check individual deadlines carefully in any correspondence from Ucas or universities, rather than assuming that they will be the same as their peers’.
More information is available on the Ucas website.