Registering your school, college or organisation

If you are a member of staff at a school or college and would like to use the staff section of Apply, you can register your centre with us by emailing our Customer Database team at customerdatabase@ucas.ac.uk. If your establishment was registered in the previous application cycle, we will automatically send you your new username and password. You do not need to register each year.

If your establishment is not registered on the UCAS Contacts Database, or you are unsure of your situation, please email customerdatabase@ucas.ac.uk for advice.

Your team should appoint one member of staff to be your 'Apply coordinator'. That person will have responsibility for setting up your staff area, including adding members of the team and allocating appropriate levels of access. Once your staff area is set up, you can create a 'buzzword' (similar to a password) which will allow your students access to the system.

We recommend that you complete the registration process in June, although you can register at any time. This allows you enough time to inform your students of your buzzword before they leave for the summer break.

Step 1

Log in and check your school's or college's contact details. These will be pre-filled from details on our main database but they can be updated if necessary for use in Apply. Please note that this will not automatically update our main database. Please also tell us of any changes by emailing customerdatabase@ucas.ac.uk. You can specify any dates when all students will be unavailable for interview. Any such dates will be pre-filled on all applications, but can be changed later (by the referee) for individual students as required.

Step 2

Set up group names, if necessary, to help staff members manage applications from groups of students. This is particularly helpful if there are large numbers of students. Some schools set up groups based on tutor groups or subjects.

Step 3

Choose a payment method from the following options.

  • Individually by students using debit or credit card
  • We bill your centre for total due, or
  • A combination of both of the above methods.

You can still accept cheques from individual students, but if they are made payable to 'UCAS', your centre must send them to us only as part of an invoice payment. Individual students must not send cheques direct to us.

Step 4

Select the qualifications that are most appropriate to the applicants you administer. This will create a shortlist for quick and easy entry of qualifications for each applicant. Applicants will still be able to select other qualifications from an A-Z list.

Step 5

Once your staff area is set up, you can create your 'buzzword' - this is similar to a password and gives your students access to the system.

The initial set up is only necessary the first time your centre registers to use Apply. For subsequent application cycles, you can carry forward the list of groups and staff members. Each staff member will automatically be given a new username and password each year. The coordinator will only need to add access levels and to update any records where changes are required.

Some helpful advice

  • Use the links on the left-hand side of the screen to navigate between sections and access help text for each section.
  • Click on the red question mark next to a field to access help text that is specific to that question.
  • Within the reference section, click on the envelope symbol to send an email to the applicant.
  • Always use the log out button when you have finished using Apply.

Managing staff and student passwords

Once you have set up each member of staff the system automatically generates their individual username and password. You should take a print of this screen for each user, because after leaving this screen, passwords are not displayed again.

The first time each user logs on to the staff area, Apply will ask them to change the password to one of their own choosing. This allows the user to choose a more memorable password than the system-generated version.

If a member of staff or a student forgets their password, the coordinator can change this for them in the 'security' section of Apply.