Web content updates for an improved UCAS clearing applicant experience
In the lead-up to opening applications for 2025 entry to undergraduate programmes through UCAS clearing, we collaborated with colleagues in Student Recruitment and Admissions (Admissions Operations) to make improvements to the web content and forms that applicants use to apply for clearing places via our website. Initial insights during the clearing period suggest that our work has made the application process easier to understand, with scope for further analysis of the bigger picture and further improvements to our clearing application process.
Context
Clearing can be a stressful time for applicants and university staff; both need to make decisions quickly about last-minute applications, and the process is complex because it also involves UCAS.
For a prospective student, the clearing application process currently involves completing a form on our website to apply for a place on a specific undergraduate programme. As part of this process, it’s important that the applicant understands the following about their application:
- Their chosen programme must have vacancies at the time of application.
- They need to have the relevant tuition fee status (based on their country or region of residence) for the vacancies available on their chosen programme.
- They need to meet the entry requirements for their chosen programme.
To help a prospective student with completing the application process, we want the directions we give and the information required to be as easy as possible to understand.
Issues with last year’s applicant process
In seeking to make improvements to the application process, we set out to address the main issues that arose for applicants and admissions teams at the same time last year, as identified by SRA Admissions and College Admissions colleagues.
The two main issues were:
- The volume of applications received from ineligible applicants
- The volume of invalid form submissions received
Applications from ineligible applicants
Applicants were considered ineligible for a clearing place on their programme of interest if either:
- they did not have the relevant tuition fee status for the programme’s vacancies, or
- they did not meet the programme’s entry requirements.
Applications received from ineligible applicants could not be followed up by admissions teams with an offer of a place. The volume of these applications received suggests that users had difficulty assessing their own eligibility before submitting an application. Ideally, the user would self-assess their eligibility for a clearing place and proceed to complete an application form only if they were sure that they are eligible.
Invalid form submissions
Admissions teams also received speculative form submissions – considered invalid – from prospective students who:
- had already submitted a clearing application and were requesting an update on its outcome, or
- had already submitted a clearing application for at least one other programme, or
- had a query that was not directly related to clearing applications
The volume of invalid applications received caused difficulties for admissions teams to efficiently manage applications received from eligible applicants. It also indicates that some prospective students had difficulties with identifying:
- the most appropriate contact route to use to request updates on applications, or answers to unrelated queries, or
- that they should not submit more than one clearing application.
Goals for our work this year
To address the issues with last year’s applicant process, we set ourselves the following goals for the clearing webpages and forms:
- The content should efficiently engage prospective students who are eligible applicants – i.e., applicants who:
- are interested in studying a degree for which we have vacancies
- are suitably qualified according to our entry requirements
- have the relevant fee status for a degree’s vacancies
- The content should minimise:
- form submissions from ineligible applicants
- invalid form submissions – i.e., form submissions from prospective students who:
- have already submitted a clearing application form, or
- are enquiring about something other than a clearing application.
Meeting these goals should allow us to:
- provide a clearing applicant experience that is easier to understand and complete
- make application information received easier for admissions teams to manage
Content changes we made
In order to meet our goals, we made 3 key changes to how to website users interacted with the online forms and webpage content:
- We published separate information pages and forms per fee status – last year, we published only one clearing information webpage, and one application form with a “fee status” field to be completed at the start of the form.
- We added “Step-by-step guide to applying” information and instructions to each clearing information webpage.
- We added or updated helptext for several fields in the application forms.
These changes involved specific content updates and additions made to address the goals of our work. For example, to engage eligible applicants who are interested in a degree with vacancies, we included a link to ‘check degree availability on the UCAS website’ on each of the clearing information pages.
Some of these updates and additions are highlighted in the following screenshot of the clearing information page for applicants with the International/EU fee status.
Screenshot of webpage content with green arrows highlighting content sections included to address the goals of our work on the clearing application process.
Usability testing the content
Before publishing our content, we tested it with prospective undergraduates at an open day and with University staff members at our Unconference in late June. These tests highlighted some further changes to be made before publishing the content and also gave us indications of where the content was working as intended.
While neither of these groups were the ideal test participants, we would not have been able to test the content with genuine clearing applicants in advance of the clearing period starting in July. The tests we carried out did add value nonetheless, as we saw similar trends in how users from both groups engaged with the content, giving us some general insights into what was easy or difficult about the application process.
Mid-clearing insights from engagement with the content
While clearing activity was ongoing in July, we gathered some interim feedback and stats to check that no major problems were affecting the clearing application process.
In mid-July, College admissions teams generally reported that the forms were working well to collect information from applicants required for their decision-making processes.
As of 23 July, just under half of the total clearing applications that had been received had been rejected. Only 2 of these rejected applications had been categorised as a “duplicate enquiry”, suggesting that the content is working well for our goal to minimise invalid form submissions (from prospective students who have already submitted a clearing application form).
For the same period, location data for users engaging with clearing information pages suggested that the vast majority of visitors were navigating to the relevant pages for their own fee statuses:
- For the ‘Clearing for International and EU applicants’ page, 92% of users visited the page from locations other than the UK (top user locations included India, Malaysia and the United States).
- For the other two pages, most users visited the page from the UK:
- ‘Clearing for applicants from Scotland’: 85%
- ‘Clearing for applicants from England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland’: 84%
This data indicates that the content is working to meet our goal to efficiently engage eligible applicants who have the relevant fee status for degrees with vacancies.
More to learn from the Clearing 2025 “bigger picture”
Since we gathered the above interim data, UCAS clearing has closed for 2025 entry.
Now is a good time for us to revisit the data for the full clearing period (early July – late August) to learn more about how well our work on the clearing webpage and forms met our goals, and to get more insights on further improvements that can be made to the applicant experience for future clearing cycles.
It’s also a good time for us to engage with colleagues from across the University, to ask about the impact of our work on their efforts during the period and to hear about which parts of the process they think can be improved further.
I plan to share some of these “bigger picture” insights in a follow-up blog post – watch this space!
