Offers and replies.

Congratulations on finishing your UCAS application! That's the hardest part out of the way, so now it's time to sit back, relax, and watch all your offers roll in! Once you receive an offer or something changes on your application, you will be notified by email (make sure you confirm this on UCAS!) If you haven't provided an email address, UCAS will notify you by letter so don't worry. Before accepting any offers, you need to consider a few points first:

• If there's one thing I would STRONGLY recommend, it would be to visit each of your universities on open days. I attended open days for each of my choices and found them extremely useful. Going to open days gives you a feel for the place you may be studying, and the majority of the time there are opportunities to visit the university accommodation. Something else I found useful was the fact you get the chance to talk to course tutors and current students. Ask them anything and everything you can think of, it really helps to get as much information as possible. Sometimes a prospectus or the university website can mislead you, as obviously they want you to believe that they are the best university for you so its important to visit the university and form your own opinions. Also, open days often feature "life fairs" which include information about things from student finance to student nightlife (sometimes they give out cool freebies so check them out!)
• You need to be 100% sure before making any decisions, as once made they can't be taken back - this includes the insurance offer which I'll explain later!
• You don't have to wait for all your offers to get back to you before replying, you can cancel any you definitely don't want to attend, but this cannot be reversed so ensure you know exactly what you want to do!

There are three options when it comes to replying to your offers, you have to make a firm acceptance, an insurance choice and and the rest will be declined.

Firm acceptance

A firm acceptance will be your preferred choice out of all those you have made, and you can only pick one of these.

If you choose to accept an unconditional offer, you are agreeing that you will definitely attend the course and must therefore decline any other offers. If you want to accept a conditional offer, then that means you are agreeing to attend the university if you meet all the entry requirements. With accepting a conditional offer, you can accept another as an insurance choice. 

Insurance choice

The insurance choice can be conditional or unconditional, and is basically a back up; if you don't meet the requirements for your firm choice, but do for your insurance, then you are committed to your insurance choice. If your insurance choice has higher requirements than your firm choice, and you don't meet those for your firm, it doesn't mean you will automatically be accepted. Also, you don't have to make an insurance choice if you don't want to!

Decline

Once you have confirmed your replies, you can decline the ones that you definitely do not wish to attend. 


Here are the dates by which you need to make your decisions by:

The date of your last        The date you need to reply
 offer:                                by:

31 March 2013	8 May 2013
9 May 2013	6 June 2013
7 June 2013	27 June 2013
18 July 2013	25 July 2013

So I've complied information here about replies and offers from a few sources, but there is one that you should most definitely have a look at! This one! Also while you're on UCAS' website, have a look at the pages on what to do if you receive no offers or if there are any changes you need to make. 

I hope this has been useful, and don't forget to have a look at my following posts :) Thank you!