It’s that time of year again, when students all around the world start thinking about where they want to spend the next few years of their life. For many of you, that means choosing a university and subject to study starting September 2016, and trying to work out how to apply for it. If you want to study a bachelor’s degree in the UK, you will need to use something called UCAS, which is an online system through which you can make applications to the university courses of your choice. The UCAS system is fairly strict, especially for UK students, but for international students it is a little more flexible. There are a number of important dates that you need to be aware of, however, which can have an impact on your applications if you’re not careful.

Let’s have a look at those dates in more detail:

October 15^th 2015 – This is the deadline for applications to Oxford, Cambridge, medicine, dentistry, and veterinary science. It is much earlier than other universities and other courses, and these applications also require a great deal more work.

January 15^th 2016 – This is the application deadline for most undergraduate courses if you’re a home student (someone from the UK). It’s basically inflexible: miss this, and you’ll have to apply through clearing. As an international student, however, universities are far more flexible, so you don’t need to worry about this particular deadline. International students will still be able to make an application right up until September 2016 at some universities.

February 25^th 2016 – If you don’t hold any offers from your course choices, then you can use UCAS Extra to add another choice. It opens on February 25^th.

March 24^th 2016 – Deadline for some art and design courses.

May 4^th 2016 – If you receive all your offers by March 31^st, you will need to reply by May 4^th. If you don’t, they’ll be declined and you’ll have to use UCAS Extra or ‘clearing and adjustments’.

May 5^th – If you completed all your applications by January 15^th, the university deadline to respond to them is May 5^th. Once you receive all those offers, then the next date is an important one…

June 8^th – This is the deadline for responding to all those offers you received by May 5^th. Make sure you don’t miss this one.

June 30^th – This is an important date for all students, as it’s the last date that you can apply to university for September/October 2016 entry. If you make an application after this date, then you’ll have to go through clearing.

July 4^th – This is the last date you can add on Extra choice on UCAS Extra.

July 5^th – The International Baccalaureate results are released today. Good luck to everyone taking them!

July 14^th – If you applied by June 30^th, this is the deadline for university and college decisions to make a decision and make an offer.

July 22^nd – This is an important deadline, as it’s the very last date for replying to offers that you received by July 14^th. Make sure that you don’t miss this one, as UCAS don’t send out any reminders! If you do miss this date, then you’ll enter clearing and adjustments.

August 18^th – A Level results are released on August 18^th, which means that adjustment and clearing opens. If you’ve missed your target universities, then you can go into clearing and apply for your course that way. You can only apply for one at a time, and as some courses fill up quickly you will have to move fast!

September 20^th – This is the last date for September 2016 entry applications through UCAS. Applications should arrive by 6pm.

October 20^th – This is it: the very last date for adding clearing choices, and for universities and colleges to accept students through clearing. Hopefully you won’t have waited until the middle of October to make your applications, but if you need to know it, then this is the very last date.

That is quite a lot of dates to remember, of course, and it’s not easy to remember all of them! For international students, you will have to apply for undergraduate courses through UCAS, but your deadlines are different. The January 15^th deadline is only for home students, so you can still make applications after January, but you will have to respond to any offers you get by July 22^nd. That is the key date, as after July 22^nd you will have to go through clearing; this can be confusing and frustrating, so it’s best to get your applications completed and everything replied to by July 22^nd! Of course, it is much easier if you ask an agent to make the process smoother for you, and if you don’t achieve the grades you were hoping to get, your agent will be able to give you some more options and advice.

For students who still don’t have an offer for September, it may seem desperate, but James Galloway has comforting news and essential advice if you still need to secure a place at a UK university.

It’s that time of year again – Spring has sprung, the birds are singing in the trees, and international students all over the world are excitedly checking their UCAS accounts to find out if they’ve been accepted by their choices. There will be a lot of happy faces. But spare a thought for those who didn’t make it, and are still not holding an offer from their university of choice, or have even missed out on all the courses they wanted to study. And if you are one of the unlucky ones, don’t worry too much – help is at hand.

Even if you’ve missed out on all your choices, there are still some options available to you. The first place you can go is to UCAS Extra. You can find this on the UCAS website, where you made your original applications. If it’s available to you, it will appear as a button when you log-in to track your applications. There is a video and some instructions for you to follow, but it is never easy using the UCAS website. Also, UCAS Extra only allows you to do one extra university application at a time, which might not be enough if you want to get results quickly, or you want to have similar options to when you originally applied.

Another option that you have is clearing. When you make your initial applications, the universities will look at your education grades, or your predicted grades, and then give you an offer from those. If you didn’t receive an offer, but you are confident that your grades are good enough to get you entry into another university of your choice, then you can wait for “clearing”. This is from July to September each year, and you need to act fast when it starts, as there will be a lot of students waiting to do the same. This means that places on courses go fast, and they can fill up very quickly. Because there are limited places on offer, and a large number of students applying to each course, waiting until clearing is not always the best option. It is probably best if you see clearing as your last resort – when all other options have failed, then clearing is the thing to try.

If you’ve been rejected by your university choices, however, then perhaps it is time for a second opinion. For international students coming to study in the UK, using UCAS can be tough, but also the number of courses is overwhelming. Are you sure what you chose are the right courses for you? Does it fit with your career goal? Speaking with an education adviser or agent about your applications will be a great help, as they will be able to look over your previous applications, and give advice about your personal statement, for example, or if your qualifications from home met the course requirements. You will be able to choose a university that is more suitable for you, at a university that is closer to what you are looking for. A consultant may also be able to help you make direct applications to universities through their contacts, which you can’t do on UCAS. Another important factor to remember is that you won’t have to rely on clearing, either.

The important thing to remember is that there are more routes and options than many people realise. You will need to be organised, and get some advice to start planning your strategy now, but you can still find a place. Just don’t panic!