Could someone please help me with UCAS Extra?

Hi, this is for a friend as he’s panicking, and I was hoping I could hear your thoughts and advice.

He’s currently already on a gap year and has been put on several reserve lists for medicine from 3 different universities. This was the exact same situation as last year, and he unfortunately wasn’t able to secure a place. As his last course decision, he chose a Finance course, and has been rejected, since his personal statement was medicine related. Annoyingly, he had the offer last year, yet due to this year’s severely increased competition, wasn’t able to receive one.

He’s thinking to reject his reserve list universities so that he’ll able to use UCAS Extra. There’s a great number of universities he’s interested with courses related to Economics/Finance/Accounting.

However, he understands that the courses are very competitive, and may not even be listed in UCAS Extra. Is it possible for universities to inform potential applicants whether courses will be listed in UCAS Extra after the starting date has passed (25th February)?

Otherwise, is someone else going through UCAS Extra this year? I was hoping if they’d be able to check if courses are available and possibly let him know. Thank you very much.

Its exceptionally unsual for any Med School do do 'Reserve Lists' until all interviews have happened and all offers made. Has you friend been interviewed, and when? And how/when did they find out they were on a 'Reserve List' for a place?

Your friend should be able to check what courses are in extra when it opens next week.

He could check now using the filter for only courses that are available. I checked the other day and there were many Economics courses still open and these will probably be in extra when it opens. However there were very few Russell Group universities shown if your friend is looking at them. With the grade inflation that happened last year and probably this universities are more able to fill places than in past years.

How does he check which courses are available, and we thought he had to reject all his university choices in-order to even just check itself! Is this correct, or did I miss something? He’s not necessarily hoping for a Russel Group University, such as Loughborough, Reading, East Anglia, Swansea are all choices he’s content with.

How does he check which courses are available, and we thought he had to reject all his university choices in-order to even just check itself! Is this correct, or did I miss something? He’s not necessarily hoping for a Russel Group University, such as Loughborough, Reading, East Anglia, Swansea are all choices he’s content with.

He can just phone relevant Unis about the subject he is interested in and check if they are still open to applications. For Extra he needs to research all of this before dropping all the other choices. There will still be many good courses still available - all varieties of Chemistry, plus Pharmacy, Neuroscience, etc.

He can go into into ucas course search click on filters then show courses with vacancies. Based on that he can ring the appropriate universities to check. Using the filter system it shows Economics vacancies in East Anglia, Reading and Swansea along with places like Cardiff, Liverpool and Lancaster. When extra comes out he can check the lists and ring whichever uniiversity he is interested in.

I note he is interested in Swansea, They offer a large number of medicine type courses in their Medical School such as Genetics, Pharmacy and Applied Medical Sciences. It might be worth your friend looking into those as they are closer to what he originally wanted to do than Economics. Most of these were in clearing last year so will likely be in extra although he will need to check with the university.

https://www.swansea.ac.uk/medicine-health-life-science/

Woah, didn’t even know about the UCAS filter till now; much appreciated! Weirdly enough, he’d rather choose Economics over the medicine-type related courses, unless it’s Medicine itself . We’ll ring the universities to confirm before withdrawing the university choices then. Do you think the amount of universities offering these courses will reduce significantly if we don’t get in our application through UCAS Extra early?

Nobody can tell but if they still have vacancies they will probably be there for a while. The problem is universities dont always inform ucas that courses have closed so you do need to check. From memory I believe Economics was available in Swansea in clearing last year and is most years so I suspect it will be available. Aberystwyth and Cardiff also had most of their courses in clearing so could be other options if your friend is looking at Wales but most RG didnt have courses or very few in clearing last year. Other universities had a load of courses in clearing.

Ah, I see. Well, looks like the plan’s set. Thanks a lot for your time, I’ll make sure to keep nagging you for questions .

He went from Medicine to Economics? Is he sure he wants to do that? How much did he like medicine?