Entry grades data

Applying to university can feel like an aspirational choice, or perhaps even out of reach for young people when looking at entry requirements, especially those from disadvantaged or under-represented backgrounds.

Showing entry grades data in a transparent manner on course pages within our search tool will ensure students understand there is often a level of flexibility between advertised entry grades and the actual results previous students were accepted with, and help them ultimately make informed choices.

What is the entry grades data?

Entry grades data is a new feature in UCAS’ search tool. Where there is adequate data, the tool will show the grades students held when accepted, with the aim of improving transparency and student decision-making. 

Historic entry grades were available for advisers to see in the adviser portal from 2021, but this was expanded so the information is also accessible to students.

The entry grades data is displayed on course pages from the 2025 cycle, with the aim of helping students researching their choices.  

Why are we making this information available?

Our

identified that some students were deterred from making aspirational choices if they perceived entry requirements to be out of their reach. However, students don’t always appreciate the nature of entry requirements, and their flexibility, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Therefore, for some time, advisers and students have expressed an interest in better understanding this aspect of admissions.   

There were also calls from sector bodies, such as Universities UK and the Office for Students, for providers to be more transparent on the differences between advertised entry requirements, actual offer conditions, and the grades students are ultimately accepted onto courses with. The UCAS Reform and Reimagine Group explored the benefits of such information being provided centrally by UCAS, recognising the efficiency, consistency, and transparency this would bring.  

What data is available and where?

Historical entry grades data is displayed on course details pages alongside the published entry grades requirements. This includes three key data points:

1. Most common grades held by accepted applicants (alongside the highest/lowest grade ranges). 
2. Percentage of applicants who received offers. 
3. Personalised confirmation rate when predicted grades are supplied. Students can add their own grades to see a personalised acceptance rate.

What data is being used?

For the 2026 cycle, it will be A level and BTEC grades of 18 year olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland across the 2022 – 2024 cycles. We plan to expand the qualifications included in the future. 

We have engaged with Universities Scotland to understand how we could incorporate Scottish grades. 

Contextualising the content

One of the key pieces of feedback we received from providers when developing the tool, is the desire to be able to display information about contextual admissions alongside entry grades data to clarify what else they consider when making offers, or any changes in offer making practices.  

During engagement with students, they confirmed that they understand that more is involved in admissions decisions and echoed having additional information alongside the feature would be useful.  

We have therefore developed functionality within the collection tool to enable you to add contextual admissions at course level. We have also created a new page on ucas.com to raise students’ awareness of what contextual admissions are, as engagement shows this is not widely understood.  

There are two new fields for each course: 

• Free text field – here you can add up to 500 characters to advise students of any key policies, offer-making practices or specific requirements. 

• URL link – here you can link to further information on your own website.  

To ensure the process is efficient it is possible to update these fields in bulk within the collection tool by following these steps:

1. Selecting the ‘Edit course information’ option within the Bulk Course management section of the collection tool.
2. Selecting 'Standard qualification requirements’.
3. Adding the Contextual Offer Information URL and/or text.
4. Choosing which courses to apply the detail to and click ‘Update courses’.

Best practice examples 

To offer guidance, we have created examples of best practice to show the type of information that should be included in the new best practice fields. 

Example 1: 

To nurture individuality and foster diversity in our performance courses, we adopt a balanced approach to admissions - considering both individual portfolios and exam results.  

We may extend offers below our standard entry criteria to those with strong portfolios or students who have faced challenges impacting their performance and were anticipated to achieve higher results. 

Example 2: 

We understand that each student is unique, and aim to cultivate an environment where individuality, diversity, and academic excellence thrive.  

For courses starting in 2026 we have revised our offer-making policy and to be offered a place you must meet the entry requirements stated above – including a GCSE in grade B.  

Example 3:  

Within our Contextual Offer Scheme, we strive to embrace students whose educational and social backgrounds may have influenced their academic journey.  

Our decision-making process transcends grades; we assess the entire application.  

All applicants will be invited to interview, after which we will then make an assessment based on your grades, application, and interview performance. This means that not all students who meet the entry requirements will be offered a place, and equally we may make offers to students from disadvantaged backgrounds based on lower grades.   

 

What support materials are available to assist me in communicating this change for the 2026 cycle?

To support you in informing colleagues about the entry grades data, we've put together this 

: You can use this to highlight key details about the feature.

If there are any other resources you think would be helpful, please let us know by emailing Qualentrydata@ucas.ac.uk.

How is the data aggregated?

For the 2026 cycle, the data is available at course level for providers who accept over 40 eligible applicants – the threshold applies to each qualification individually.  

Each qualification is reported separately – ensuring there is a reasonable amount of data to robustly represent the entry grades at a given course or subject. 

Where we can identify foundation and postgraduate courses, these have been excluded from the data set. 

Do providers have an opportunity to review their data?

Yes, for the 2026 cycle providers were given between w/c 16 December to 28 February to review the 2022 – 2024 data set.  Providers will also be able to see a final view of their file in March 2025. 

I'm a smaller provider and fall below the threshold, what is displayed?

A message appears to confirm there is not enough data to display a result. We do have plans to expand the qualifications and pathways included, therefore in the future your courses may be included – we’ll let you know when this happens. 

Can providers opt out of supplying actual entry grades data?

Following extensive research, UCAS has deemed the availability of entry grades data as a key reform in raising offer-making transparency, due to the lack of accessible information across the sector.

If providers already provide this information to students on their own website in a clear and meaningful format to aid decision-making, we appreciate they may want to have their data withheld from the UCAS search tool. We therefore offered providers the opportunity to request to opt-out when provider-level data was shared. This will be repeated during the next provider-level preview window. 

What’s planned next for the feature?

Based on feedback following launch, we've already made the following changes:

• Removing personalised percentages from the course results grid view – to ensure students only review the data alongside published entry requirements and other contextual information.
• Improving the navigation to entry grades: Adding a more intuitive drop-down selector for a smoother experience.
• On-screen wording: We’ll update the wording to better support students in understanding and interpreting the data.

When the 2026 cycle opens on 29 April, the following changes will also go live: 

• Updating the data range: Data will span the 2022 – 2024 application cycles, providing a more current view and removing pandemic years from the date range.
• Lowering the minimum course data requirement: Currently, data is shown only for courses with at least 50 placed students; this threshold will be reduced to 40 students. For courses with fewer than 40 students, we’ll work with providers to group data with similar courses.
• Inclusion of all data for some providers: While we currently exclude the top and bottom 5% of student data to exclude any extraordinary circumstances, providers will be able to request that all their data is included.  
• Displaying the offer rate as a percentage: To make the statistics clearer to students.
• Enhanced confirmation rate information: Students entering their grades will receive more comprehensive return, to help with decision-making.
• Provider autonomy over normalised grades returns, whilst ensuring a good student experience: Where grade profiles exceed the minimum grade profile, these will be populated to provide a more consistent user experience, but providers will have the opportunity to review and update the profiles. This offers you greater control over the data, allowing you to suppress specific grade outcomes resulting from normalised grades that you deem unacceptable.
  

Once the feature is updated for the 2026 cycle, we will continue to monitor feedback, and plan to then add more qualifications and consider how we can represent mix grade profiles – so more students can benefit from the transparency.