What happens to your application?

Your application is received in the Student Recruitment and Admissions Office (SRAO) who will acknowledge this by an email or letter, which will include details of how you can keep track of the progress of your application. If you have not heard from the SRAO within two weeks of submitting your application to UCAS please contact us.
Your application is forwarded to the relevant department (or departments for Joint Honours programmes) for consideration.
If a department does not want to make you an offer your application is returned to the Student Recruitment and Admissions Office and the decision processed through UCAS.
If the department would like to make you an offer within their quota (where either a conditional or an unconditional offer is to be made) we guarantee to find a college for you.
At this point, internally your application form is forwarded to the college you nominated. If you have made an open application (i.e. not stated a college preference), we will select this on your behalf. If the first college is unable to give you a place, a place will be found for you at another college.
Once the department has indicated it would like to make an offer and a college has accepted you, an offer is processed through UCAS by the Student Recruitment and Admissions Office. You will also be contacted by the college. The offer issued through UCAS is the official offer.
For almost all courses we do not interview applicants because interviews are not an effective method of selecting between applicants and we believe the written submission is the most objective way of determining academic ability, merit and potential.
In three specific circumstances we insist on an interview: a) for applicants to programmes who do not show adequate evidence of recent and relevant knowledge in their application; b) applicants who have experienced a break in their study prior to application; and c) in Medicine and Primary Teaching and Foundation Centre (which is targeted at applicants who have experienced a break in their study prior to application) we interview all applicants. Thus outside these three courses, only a handful of applicants are interviewed each year.

Regrettably, due to the high volume of applications we receive, we are unable to write to unsuccessful applicants to inform them of our decision.

Durham's application and offer-making process

Unlike most universities, we use academic staff based in our departments to make admissions decisions. At Durham ensuring that we admit the very best students is one of the most important things that we do, so we ask our academic staff to make these judgments. This approach sets us apart from many other universities who use staff not directly involved in teaching to make these decisions. To support this approach, we have invested in professional training, supported by a publicly available University Admissions Policy and admissions is overseen by a senior professor within the University, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Learning and Teaching. We believe this is the most effective way of assessing merit and potential.

Every application is special to us. Each one is assessed by at least two academic members of staff who are experts in their field and actively involved in teaching the subject. We do this because we receive considerably more high quality applications than places available which means we have to make difficult decisions.

The selection process

We aim to select students who we think will benefit most from the unique experience Durham offers and can contribute most to university life, irrespective of their background. All applicants are assessed on the basis of merit and potential. This includes their motivation to make the most of the wide range of academic and non-academic opportunities available within Durham. We look at the contribution applicants can make to university life overall, including our college communities. Our admissions policy is based on the core principles of fairness, transparency, consistency and operating a professional admissions process.

The best summary of the process is that if a department wants to make you an offer of a place within their quota (whether conditional or unconditional), we guarantee to find you a place in one of our 16 colleges, though it may not be your first choice college.

Making an offer

If a department would like to offer you a place within their quota, internally your application is passed to your selected college. If you have not nominated a college in your UCAS application, we will select this on your behalf. The make-up of each college is really important to us, to ensure we have a good mix of students across all subject areas. This might mean that we are unable to allocate you a place in the college you nominated in your UCAS application. If this happens, we guarantee to find you a college place and immediately pass your application to another college.

The important thing to remember is that anyone who has been accepted by an academic department within their quota will secure a place at one of our colleges. Because of this two stage process, consideration by a department and a college, it takes longer for us to make decisions. However, we do this because your application really matters to us and we want to make the right decision, for you and for us. We will keep you regularly informed of the progress of your application.