Undergraduate Admissions Manager

Alex Bull, Undergraduate Admissions Manager, Student & Registry Services

I’ve worked in the role of Undergraduate Admissions Manager within Student & Registry Services for the last two years. Working in partnership with the other UG Admissions Manager, I’m responsible for the ensuring that the team delivers a positive application experience to students and their supporters as well as collaborating with colleagues across UCL who are involved in the admissions process.

The UG Admissions Manager post was a newly created role so there has been plenty of opportunity to develop and to contribute to enabling change within a large team. It’s been a challenging and busy two years! I’ve seen application numbers increase in my Faculty areas so learning to adapt quickly, manage your resources effectively and make processes more efficient for the team as well as keeping in mind applicant experience has been key. My area of responsibility has also expanded to incorporate an admissions specific widening participation team to support the introduction of UCL’s contextual offer scheme, Access UCL. This has been a particularly rewarding experience and the project has involved various aspects from the development and testing of contextual checks on UCLSelect, to integrating a new team into the wider admissions team.

Before joining UCL, I worked in variety of different roles within an academic registry setting to build up my experience and knowledge. I’ve held roles in exams, teaching and learning and compliance which has given me a certain level of versatility and has allowed me to successfully transfer between different registry areas. However, I found that admissions was a work stream which brought together a lot of my experience as it is involved in compliance areas such as CMA, DBS & OH and Visa as well as systems and process development. Working for a range of different HE institutions has really supported my career progression and has generated a professional network for me. Each institution I’ve worked for has had different priorities and pressures, so you learn to consider different approaches to tackling a problem and appreciate different ways of working. My roles at University of Reading and LSHTM have certainly shaped the direction of my career as they gave me numerous opportunities to focus on developing my people management, systems knowledge and strategic skills within an admission setting – these experiences have very much enabled me to get to my current role and to succeed within.

My advice to those interested in the Student Lifecycle Pathway is to be open to new experiences and not be afraid of taking on different roles or projects to work out what exactly where your interests lie. Be curious and look to develop your systems knowledge as this can help you further with designing efficient processes. As registry teams work with colleagues across UCL, keep your people management skills up to date by attending available training course, not just on performance or team management, but also on influencing and negotiating. Talking to other managers and colleagues at Community of Practice events is also helpful and can provide some useful insights or inspire you to take an approach you may not have considered.