Is it really possible for one to 'fail to matriculate' ?

I'm not any one of them, but just wanna know if you have ever heard of someone being so?

This kinda pops my mind as this is something so fundamental that it doesn't seem to deserve an entire official school document to outline.

Yes, of course you can fail to matriculate. If you don’t turn up in the right place at the right time for your uni and therefore don’t sign the formal paperwork to get yourself registered, then you have failed to matriculate

Everything is done online now, isn't it ? Only students requiring visas & present in the town need to get the final step of their matriculation - ID check - done in person. I guess the chance is already very low. Hope that wouldn't happen to anyone though.

Depends entirely how the Uni/College/Dept wants to run it. But I doubt everyone will be doing it remotely and even so, there are people who are admin-clusters who will still fail to complete any online forms in time.

This is in the St Andrews uni forum, so the OP will be referring to St Andrews.

To the OP, everything this year and last year for matriculation was done online for me as a UK student. Even the ID check last year was done online through Teams.