By Louis Sherman
1st year BU student, BSc (Hons) Applied Geography
The wait for your first response to your UCAS application is one of the most painful and anxious moments of your life, well that is what I thought anyway.
Finally you have the relief of sending off your application and you don’t really think of the next step, the step where the universities reply. This can take days, weeks, even months and when you do get an e-mail from UCAS or the universities you have applied to, you get that gut-wrenching feeling where you keep putting off opening it, especially if it is from your main, top choice university. Now although this all sounds pretty dreadful it is also quite an incredible time. Although I was feeling constantly worried, at the same time the thought that you have now fully applied to university is a great feeling, knowing you truly have made one of the most important decisions.
My application was sent off just before Christmas, when the majority of university application offices are closed, so my wait was even more stressful as I did not even get e-mails from the universities saying they had received my application let alone given me an offer, for several weeks. Without doubt it is the waiting that is the worst moment, because as soon as those offers start coming in you are instantly lifted and so much more relaxed.
UCAS track is one the best bits of equipment you can have at this time, as UCAS straight away contact you with any changes to your application. Eventually, like every applicant, you will just end up refreshing it all the time every day until you have got all your offers, it really does kind of completely take over. But surely this is a great thing; it means that you truly do care about your future and what you want to do with it.
Once you get your offers in and it is once again up to you to choose your top choices, all the effort and all the patient waiting seems completely worth it, no matter how long universities take to make you an offer. At the time, there is no point saying “don’t get stressed, relax” because you just can’t! It is an agonising time but it is a great time, just be patient and with time your offers will be here and that face of stress will turn into smiles of pure joy.
