An editor (such as a form tutor) then pulls all of this information together whilst also adding in further details about the school, extra activities, extenuating circumstances and so on. In my experience, when a typical reference is put together each an of applicant’s subject teachers contribute a comment about how the applicant is doing in their subject.

This new format could represent quite a departure from the old one.

Use this section to outline any other circumstances specific to the applicant that you think universities/colleges should be aware of.

Enter any information about extenuating circumstances which may affect this applicant’s performance in examinations or other assessments.

Enter a general statement about your school/college.

Instead, referees will provide responses to the following three questions:

In future, the reference will no longer be a single block of free text. This means that you’ve probably already written your last reference in the ‘old’ format and next time you sit down to write a reference the process will be a little different. Changes to the reference will be introduced for those applying in 2023 for entry in 2024, so they will affect your current Year 12 cohort onwards (at time of writing). So you will, no doubt, be interested to hear that UCAS references are going to change and they will be changing quite soon. UCAS referencesĪt Advancing Access, we know just how seriously teachers and advisers take the UCAS reference since we know from our own data that our CPD session on references is comfortably the most popular of all the CPD sessions we offer. However, it should be stressed that there are currently no plans to implement such a system in the foreseeable future. In recent years, you may have also noticed there has been a suggestion that there could be a move towards so-called “post qualification admissions” where students only apply to university once they already have their exam results. Four key areas covered in the report are references, personal statements, entry grades and widening participation initiatives and I will take a look at the plans for each of these areas in this blog. Earlier this month, UCAS released a report titled Future of Undergraduate Admissions in which they set out some ways they plan to change the undergraduate admissions process over the next few years to ensure that the process continues to best meet the needs of both applicants and universities.

Ucas subject reference examples