´óÏó´«Ã½

CONTENTS

1. After choosing your universities

2. What happens when you accept an offer?

3. Deadlines for replying to offers 2025

4. Clearing 2025

After choosing your universities 

You could get up to five offers from the courses you've applied to. You'll then need to decide which of these will be your first choice and which will be your insurance choice. Take your time to consider your insurance place but also make sure you check the deadline for replying to the university.

• You can accept one offer as your firm choice, often called your conditional firm (CF) or unconditional firm (UF)
• If your firm choice is CF, then you can accept a second offer as your insurance choice – whether it’s conditional (CI) or unconditional (UI)
• After this, you must decline any other places offered by universities

Many applicants who have more than one conditional offer will accept their favourite university as CF and then a university that's made a lower or unconditional offer as their insurance choice.

You can also decline all your offers if you realise you've made a mistake in your choice of subject. If you've used up all of your five UCAS options and want to look for another subject, you can use UCAS Extra or enter Clearing.

Most students accept one offer as their firm choice to make sure they have a place at university in the bag (depending on grade requirements of a conditional offer).

What happens when you accept an offer?

Once you've accepted an offer, you and the university are bound together by the rules of UCAS:

• If you firmly accept an unconditional offer, you have a definite place at that university.
• If you firmly accept a conditional offer and then meet all the conditions, the university is obliged to accept you – and you're obliged to go there to study.

Firm choice 

Assuming you have conditional offers, you'll have to balance your desire to attend a particular university against whether you think you can meet the conditions.

For example:

• If you expect to get ABB at A Level and the places offered are all BCC or below, then your choice is easy.
• If you expect to get BCC and your offered places require ABB, BBB, BCC, and CDD, the decision is more difficult, especially if the conditions are higher for the university you want.

Insurance choice 

Most applicants with more than one offer make an insurance acceptance as well. On results day, if you're accepted by your firm choice, the insurance choice becomes irrelevant.

If you want to, you can just have a firm acceptance and decline the rest. This is only advisable if you know you can meet the conditions of your firm acceptance or don’t mind applying again through UCAS Extra or Clearing.

What happens when you decline an offer?

When you decline an offer through UCAS Hub, you're released from your place. If you choose to decline all of your offers you can use UCAS Extra to add another course or wait to enter Clearing. For example, you may do this if you’ve changed your mind about what subject or course you want to study.

If you'd just like to hold off until the following year, you can always defer your place rather than declining your offers.