Postgraduate applicants are not required to submit a reference letter with UCAS, but it may be required if the chosen school asks for one. Undergraduate applicants are required to submit one reference letter through UCAS. A UCAS reference letter is an account your teachers, tutors or employers write on your behalf, describing your suitability for university study. It’s also an extremely important part of your UCAS application, since undergraduate programs in the UK use an applicant’s reference letter as a key deciding factor in admissions decisions. This will help evidence the student’s potential to succeed in Higher Education and how they might contribute to university life.What a UCAS reference letter is and its requirementsĪ reference letter is a required part of any UCAS application for universities in the UK. If you feel the predicted grades for the student do not portray their potential, now is your opportunity to provide further information or evidence about their academic abilityĪlongside academic qualifications, you can include information on the student’s skills, achievements and experience.The Admissions team will find this helpful when assessing their application If the student is taking non-standard qualifications, resitting qualifications or having exam papers re-marked, include this in the reference.

These help inform the university of what the student is expected to achieve It is important that you include a summary of the student’s academic performance and give accurate predicted grades.We spoke to Antonia Fox, Senior Admissions Administrator, who gave us an insight into what exactly you should include in the reference. If the applicant left education years ago, an employer, volunteering supervisor or trainer can write the reference.Īs a referee, you will need to provide your contact details such as email address, phone number, school/college name and full address, as well as your relationship to the student. References should be written by somebody who knows the applicant academically, such as a current teacher, tutor, principal or head teacher. It is important to remember that it is an academic reference, so it should not be written by family, friends or partners as this could result in the application being cancelled. Like a personal statement, UCAS references also have to be less than either 4000 characters or 47 lines. They allow an unbiased but positive account of a student and their abilities, in addition to their own personal statement. UCAS references are an important part of the UCAS journey and provide an academic assessment of an applicant’s suitability for a course. By Amy Fairbrother - 7 December 2018 What is a UCAS reference?

Ucas academic reference example