Three things to do while you wait

So you’ve sent your application – great! Now it’s just a case of waiting for decisions, right? One after the other they’ll pop up in your application and you’ll get those notification emails. Right... BUT don’t expect it to happen straight away. You could find that it’s several months before you hear from a university, or for the lucky few it could happen straight away. The truth is every university and college will take a different amount of time to get back to you. It’s undoubtedly an anxious time and it can seem to last forever, but I assure you it won’t. Although you don’t know exactly when you’ll get all those heart-stopping Track notification emails, you can be certain that it will either be by 16 May (if you applied before 31 January) or by 17 July (if you applied after 31 January and before 30 June).

To pass the time as you wait for decisions, you – like many others – might find yourself compelled to log in day and night to check for updates. Other than causing a repetitive strain-type injury, this isn’t likely to have any impact on how you feel. So if you want to use your time more wisely, here’s what I recommend you do between now and your last uni decision:

 

1. Figure out the next steps. When you’ve had all your uni decisions it’ll be time to reply to your offers. You’ll want to get this right, so have a read of our advice to find out what you’ll need to do. It’s also a good idea to prepare for the unexpected: no offers. If you end up in this situation you could use Extra to apply for another choice, so make time to find out about this option.
2. Get to know the universities a bit better. Most of them are eager to meet you on social media, so what are you waiting for? Make the most of the opportunity to ask them your questions and stay up-to-date with what’s going on around their campuses. It could help you when it comes to choosing which offers to accept, plus you’ll get a feel for what it’s like to be part of their student community.
3. Suss out student blogs. Who else can tell you what it’s really like to go to uni other than real life students? A frank and honest account of student life is the closest you can get before embarking on it for yourself. Many unis feature student bloggers on their websites and there are lots of other students out there who blog independently.
4. Making the right decision. If you get offers, but you're still not sure how to reply to them, here's some advice that might help.

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