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Transforming our student admissions service

29 June 2022

Sign up for an Admissions Transformation Programme Town Hall to find out more about UCL's approach to admissions for 2023 and beyond.

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A transformation programme has been established with the aim of improving our admissions service to deliver an outstanding and world leading experience for students and staff.

The Admissions Transformation Programme (ATP) is a three-year programme of activity that will examine and make improvements to all aspects of admissions, including our policies, processes, ways of working and systems.

Experienced admissions specialist, Peter Derrick recently joined UCL from UCAS to lead the programme. At UCAS Peter led all aspects of the operational service delivery portfolio, including the end-to-end admissions cycle, the annual Confirmation and Clearing activity, delivering improvements to the service UCAS runs every year.

"I am delighted to join UCL to lead the ATP. It is an exciting programme of work that will deliver institution wide improvements, such as reducing our turnaround times and ensuring we recruit and admit the students with the most to gain from a UCL experience. We will deliver the best admissions service to our applicants, of which I hope staff will be proud.”

The programme has already agreed several changes including:

  • Improved policy framework – a review of policies relating to admissions to enable UCL to have a robust decision-making framework, for example a new framework for applicants to meet the English language requirements of the programme, offering departments more nuanced approach to suit their needs.
  • Improved information to applicants – working with colleagues in the Digital Team to improve the information we provide to applicants to help guide them through the next steps of their application, reducing the number of enquires we receive.
  • Change to Taught Postgraduate Applicants – streamlining the process for requesting a deferral and only allowing them in certain circumstances which will assist with planning and forecasting student numbers.

The programme is structured around six work packages:

  1. Deliver best practice/ seamless applicant experience
  2. Responsive admissions enquiries service
  3. Future Admissions Service & ways of working
  4. Simplify, standardise & automate processes
  5. Adopt effective policies (includes best-fit students & cohort diversity)
  6. Accelerating Widening Participation

For more information about the programme please look at the Admissions Transformation Programme SharePoint site.

Want to find out more? Come along to our Town Hall

The Admissions Transformation Team will shortly be holding some Town Hall events. Come along to find out more about UCL's approach to admissions for 2023 and beyond including selection criteria and use of other selections methods. This will also be an opportunity to hear from the Programme team and ask questions.

The Town Hall will be held via MS Teams at the following times:

Thursday 14 July – 2pm- 3pm

Tuesday 19 July – 11am- 12pm

Please sign up here if you would like to attend.

Next steps

Central Admissions will shortly be contacting colleagues in departments to discuss new and revised selection templates and confirming the new English language requirements for their programmes.

Governance

The ATP board is chaired by Professor Christoph Lindner, with senior representation from across UCL. The programme also has a Stakeholder Advisory Group comprised of staff from all Faculties who act as a steer and help us to shape proposed changes. More information on both groups can be found on the Admissions Transformation SharePoint site.