How to accept your undergraduate offer

This table shows the equivalent qualifications to various standard offers, for instance, if the standard offer for the course you have applied for is three A-Level grades ABB and you are studying for an International Baccalaureate, you will typically be asked to gain 33 points in your IB.

A conditional offer means we will offer you a place if you meet certain conditions, which are usually based on your exams.

Our offers are normally expressed in terms of GCE A-Level grades, or their equivalent, depending on what qualifications you will be sitting. You may be asked to achieve specific grades in named subjects.

All Made Offer Terms and Conditions can be found on our Admissions Web pages. 

An unconditional offer means you have met all the academic requirements for your chosen course and we are happy to accept you. We may contact you if we need proof of your qualifications, by email in the first instance. 

We are aware of the trend for some universities to make unconditional offers to applicants who are yet to complete their A-Levels or other Level 3 qualifications.

In general terms, we only make unconditional offers to applicants who have already met our entry requirements. We feel that unconditional offers based purely on predicted performance are unhelpful both to applicants and their advisers.  Our courses are challenging and it is important that students are resilient and equipped to take advantage of the many opportunities provided by our undergraduate programmes. 

If you have applied to Swansea University and have received an unconditional offer from elsewhere we would encourage you to contact us on 01792 295111 to discuss any concerns you may have.

This information is intended to help advise you if you have received a conditional offer from Swansea and an unconditional offer elsewhere.

All Made Offer Terms and Conditions can be found on our Admissions Webpages. 

A choice can be withdrawn either by you or us. The reason will be displayed in UCAS. It may be withdrawn because you didn't respond to any emails or letters from us, or because you didn't attend an interview.

This means that, unfortunately, we have decided not to offer you a place.

We may decline your application for many reasons, one of which could be that the course is full, so it may not be based on the quality of your application.  If you would like to find out why your application was unsuccessful, contact us and we will try to give you feedback which may be useful for future applications.

What does that mean?

If this has been included in your offer, we need you to send us photocopies of your exam certificates before the start of term.  We will usually need copies of your highest qualifications, e.g. A-Levels, Access course results etc.  We don’t normally need copies of your GCSE-Level exam certificates.  Please send the copies to the Admissions Office.

What do I need to do?

All applicants for Medicine and most Health-related degrees (such as Nursing, Midwifery and Audiology) must fulfil GMC (General Medical Council) and NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council) professional requirements for the courses before they can be admitted.  Once you have accepted our offer as your first/firm choice, the Admissions Office (for the Graduate Entry Medical degree) or the School of Human and Health Sciences (for health schemes) will write to you asking you to complete Criminal Records Bureau and Health Assessment forms.

We are happy to consider requests for deferred entry for most courses.  The only exceptions are the MBBCH in Medicine, the BMid in Midwifery and the BN in Child Nursing.  This is because of the intense competition in these areas for a very small number of places. 

For all other courses you are welcome to request deferred entry, but please contact us as soon as you decide to take a year out, so that we can offer your place to another candidate.

Please see the Accommodation web pages for further information on how to apply, the types of accommodation available and for details on the allocation policy.

If you have changed your examination subjects from the ones you listed on your application form, please contact the Admissions Office to tell us.  If you don’t let us know, your application will be delayed in the summer when your examination results are released while we try to find out the result of the missing exam.  This could jeopardise your choice of accommodation.

You should ask your school or college to write to the Admissions Office to let us know about any issue (ill health or teaching-related) that might affect your studies or examinations.  This information will be attached to your application and taken into consideration, should you not meet the terms of your offer once the exam results are published.

There is no need to wait until you know your examination results before making an application for financial support. Please read our Fees and Funding pages for further information.

Universities typically indicate that they are making an unconditional offer because they have been favourably impressed with the candidate’s application.  As flattering as it can be to receive such an offer, we would suggest that you consider why a university is behaving in this way.  In this situation you are being invited to enrol on a degree programme without having to demonstrate prior achievement or a relevant base of subject knowledge.  This says quite a lot about the university and their lack of confidence in being able to attract strong students.

While it can be reassuring for applicants to know that one of their UCAS choices is willing to give them an unconditional offer, it is important to fully consider the implications of accepting offer in these circumstances.

When deciding which offer(s) to accept we would encourage you to base your decision primarily on the course and university that you feel represents the best long-term opportunity for you, rather than on whether their place would be automatically guaranteed.

Students can be tempted to accept an unconditional offer as doing so can help to reduce the stress of pre-university examinations, as their university place will not be dependent on exam performance.

There is a growing body of evidence that students who accept an unconditional offer experience a dip in eventual exam performance.  There may be longer-term consequences if you do not obtain the Level 3 (e.g. A-Level) exam results that reflect the effort and ability you have demonstrated throughout your educational career.  Many graduate employers consider Level 3 qualification performance when shortlisting applicants for graduate schemes.

You should not feel rushed into making decisions over your choices.  Offers should not be time-limited and you are best served by weighing up the merits of the individual schemes that you have applied for.

We make offers where we feel applicants demonstrate they are capable of meeting our entry requirements and succeeding on their chosen course.

If you accept Swansea as your firm choice but narrowly miss the conditions of your offer, we would consider whether we could still admit you during the confirmation and Clearing period in August. We value the commitment that a student makes in opting to hold Swansea as firm choice or insurance choice and recognise that these applicants have fully researched their UCAS options and choices.

If you are made formally unconditional by another institution then your insurance choice will be automatically declined, and as such you would no longer hold any other offers. Therefore the only route available to study anywhere else would be via Clearing.