This may be one for aficionados of the nuances of UK Higher Education admissions trends. A lot of attention has been paid to the rapid growth of unconditional offers as a way of inducing undergraduate students to go firm with a university. But there seems to have been no comment on last year’s near 38% rise in Record of Prior Acceptance (RPA) applications registered by UK students.
For the uninitiated the RPA allows a student and university to deal directly to make/accept an offer rather than going through the UCAS system. To ensure that the UCAS reporting captures all students universities then report the RPA students to UCAS. Once the student completes the RPA form they are not able to make any other applications.
After a period of relative stability the number of RPAs registered increased by 7870 year on year for UK students. This was in a cycle where the number of UK applicants overall fell. Both Other-EU and International students using RPAs increased – the former by 43.6% – but from a lower base.
It seems plausible that the driver is that students have decided to start using RPAs more often during the clearing process. But it seems a stretch to believe that they know about this route for applications before engaging directly with a university. For the university it allows them to help the student while reducing the chance of that individual shopping around for options.
In the scheme of things, the numbers involved are still relatively small. Just over 6% of the total number of students used the RPA route in 2018. But that’s up from 3.9% in 2014 and just 4.8% in 2017. As the demographics make UK students increasingly sought after it’s another dynamic to consider.