| Chapter 1: | The United Kingdom |
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Vocational Qualifications (SVQs) are completed in the workplace or at FE colleges and training centres.
The typical entry route to university is to study three A-Levels or five Scottish Highers, although successful candidates for competitive-entry courses, such as law and pre-clinical medicine, or at prestigious universities will often have taken more A-Level subjects or, in the case of Scottish students, Advanced Highers.
Nuts and Bolts
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) is the organisation responsible for managing applications to the more than 50,000 higher education courses available in the United Kingdom. UCAS operates a tariff system which maps different types of qualifications onto a points scale, enabling comparisons between applicants with different types and numbers of qualifications. Practically all British higher education institutions are members of UCAS, so almost anyone wishing to study for a first degree in the United Kingdom must apply through it. This includes U.K. residents, residents of the Channel Islands and Isle of Man, E.U. citizens, and other international applicants. A single application for up to five courses is submitted via the UCAS Web site. UCAS forwards applications to the relevant institutions, which cannot see any of the applicant's other choices.
The UCAS application comprises an applicant's educational and employment history, a reference, and a personal statement by the applicant. The educational history includes qualifications already obtained as well as any being studied for at the time of the application. The typical applicant—an 18-year-old in the second year of studying for A-Levels—will submit his or her application before receiving A-Level results. For those qualifications, the candidate's institution is required to submit estimated grades. The reference—typically from a tutor for applicants in full-time education—and the personal statement may each be up to 4,000 characters (including spaces) or 47 lines of text (including blank lines), whichever is reached first.