UCAS Points - What They Are and How You Get Them

I remember back in my college days when I would be counting all my UCAS points to see if I could make it into university. At that time I was studying science A-Levels and always kept a bit of paper with all the UCAS points printed on it... you know... just in case I wanted to count them up again or something. Every exam preparation meant counting my grades to see how bad I could actually do yet still have enough UCAS points to get into the university I wanted to go to.

The way the UCAS points system works is that you may have your set of grades that are great but they don't provide as much flexibility as the UCAS points do. For e.g. the university you want to go to wants its students to have good grades, but, they don't want to limit who and how many students actually apply, so instead of insisting on having exactly 3 A's they ask for 360 UCAS points that means you can also have the grades A B C D (or another combination) and still get the UCAS points you might need to get in.

The average student in the UK studies 4 A-Levels as this allows them to attain the average number of UCAS points needed to get into university. Although, of course some people do study more than this. Most universities will request between 240 and 360 UCAS points. I don't think, during my university research did I ever come accross a university asking for less that 240 UCAS points for a degree course and if I did I would probably have dismissed the university as being low grade.

In the end, of course while I was worrying over my UCAS points I wasn't worrying too much over studying and all my UCAS points never added up when I really needed them to, so I was back again for my retake exams the following year... what a dunce!

If you are a student who keeps stressing over the small details of how you're gonna get through, I would say dont! All that extra worrying is not worth it, just put your head down and put the hours into studying and then the UCAS points will take care of themselves.