h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Only one applicant unable to get here due to the protest at Stansted - she phoned from the airport in Germany to say that her flight this morning had been cancelled and all alternative flights were fully booked except one via Manchester, which would involve her coming on by train for most of the night, so we told her to go home, and we are trying to work out a time later in the week.

The usual glitches happened, but thankfully I had a very experienced undergrad helper in charge of the 'sheepdogs', so she was able to deal with most of the minor problems. The first applicant of the day arrived late - unfortunately for her it was for an interview with one of the fiercest interviewers ...

Every year I try to make the interview invitation letter *even* clearer - telling them that they should aim to arrive at least 30 minutes before their first interview, as they may have to go to another part of the college/university. And every year, a few of them arrive with minutes to spare before their interview starts, claiming not to know ...

Doesn't bode well for the success of their application I would have thought.

Basic compliance with college/university rules a bit of a must for humble undergrads I would have thought.

You'd have to put in a few years before you can make a devil may care for your regulations stance - and be bl**dy briliiant as well!

Well, you'd hope so. The admin staff in the various college admissions offices are always swapping horror stories about what applicants have done/not done and saying: "if only we had a say in the decision process, we'd get rid of all the ones who don't fill in the form properly, don't answer emails etc etc ..."

My favourite excuse this year, when chasing up something which had been requested in the main acknowledgement email: "I thought if it was important, you'd ask for it more than once" !!!

hmmmm sounds familiar (we spend most of the summer wondering why we're admitting most of them......)

HI Annie you might not see it from this angle, but the young person going through UCAS is absolutely bombarded with paper and, from some establishments, with e-mails. If it were just one line of attack it would be straightforward, but the process feels more like one of those computer games where the idea is to shoot as many balloons as you can and not to worry about exploding every one perfectly. I'm also sure that your place doesn't do this, but we've been asked to fax or send certificates which haven't yet been issued, and for which confirmation has already been supplied by examining bodies - if not, why did the university send acknowledgement months ago?

As a parent I really wish that the applications process didn't have to be be done during the school term. I'm sure nobody in the universities would appreciate it, and the schools prefer pupils to apply whilst they are still attending but we found the whole round of visits, interviews and relentless travelling very hard going combined with course-work and a school timetable which does not assume that everyone should have Wednesday off. I would now hesitate to recommend anyone to miss school for visits unless absolutely necessary - it was actually counter-productive chez jam, and I see a number of 'wrong-ish' decisions because of the overload of information.

But apart from all that... !¬)

Thanks petal - that's actually really useful information.

We will be having a review meeting once this admissions round is over (end of January/beginning of February) to discuss very much this sort of thing. This is the first time we have conducted the process mainly by email, and I can see that while this may be easier for us, it can have drawbacks for the applicants.

However, I have got a bit fed up over the last two days with applicants not following instructions which they have been given twice verbally, and which have also been displayed clearly on noticeboards!