No one likes to admit that they have any failed qualifications. It can definitely be embarrassing! If you have some qualifications you are not proud of when applying to university, you may consider not putting these onto your UCAS application. This is understandable, but are you allowed to do it?
The truth is that you must list all qualifications on UCAS. This includes failed qualifications from secondary education onwards. You will also have to include results you are waiting on, as well as any failed results or results you have already achieved.
If you want to find out more about listing failed qualifications on UCAS, check out the rest of this article!
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Do you have to include failed GCSEs and A-Levels on UCAS?
When you go to fill out your application for university, you need to make sure that you record all of your grades. Unfortunately, this also includes your failed grades, if you have any.
It can definitely be hard to mention these grades on your UCAS form, especially if you feel embarrassed. However, filling these grades out on your UCAS form is the best thing to do!
If you don’t, you could be pulled up for not providing the correct details. This could lead to you not being able to apply to any university. You can find out more about what happens if you lie about your GCSE grades on this article from Think Student.
Which qualifications do you have to list on a UCAS application?
When you fill out your UCAS application, you must provide all of your qualifications from secondary education onwards. This includes results that you have achieved and results that you are waiting for.
Therefore, if you are waiting to receive your A-Level grades, you will need to fill these in as pending. Your teachers will then fill in your predicted grades.
You also need to fill in any details involving courses that you may have started but didn’t finish! If you fail to fill in any of these grades, your application would be declared void.
If you want to learn more about the qualifications you need to fill out on your UCAS application, check out this article from UCAS.
Does UCAS check your qualifications?
Before your UCAS application is sent off, schools tend to check your application to make sure that your grades are correct. Therefore, it is hard to lie about your grades.
When UCAS receives your grades on your application, they are matched to exam entry records to see if they are the same. This means that your grades are checked by UCAS to make sure that they are correct.
When your A-Level results come out, these are sent straight to UCAS and universities. This means UCAS doesn’t need to check them because there is no way that you could have changed your A-Level results!
Sometimes, universities will want to check your GCSE or A-Level certificates. However, this is quite rare. If you want to find out more about when this would happen, check out this article from Think Student.
Can you change your failed qualifications?
As already stated, you can not lie about your grades. However, if you are really not happy with some of your GCSE or A-Level grades, you can definitely do something about this. If you fail GCSE English Language or GCSE Maths, you have to re-sit these subjects until you are 18 or you pass.
However, if you fail a different subject, you still have the option to re-sit this! You will just need to talk to your school and college and hopefully, they will be able to arrange a re-sit. If you want to discover how many times you can take GCSE re-sits, check out this article from Think Student.
Only consider doing a re-sit if you really need the grades though because most of the time they can cost money. If you don’t need a specific grade in a subject you have failed, don’t worry about it!
As long as you pass the other subjects you need, universities will only focus on these grades. If you do want to resit some exams, check out this guide from ICS Learn to discover how.
You need to remember that so many students across the country would have failed a subject at least once. You are not on your own!
Therefore, don’t feel embarrassed if you do have to say that you have failed qualifications on UCAS. As long as you have a sufficient collection of grades to get you into your chosen university, a couple of failed qualifications doesn’t even matter!