Cookies
What are cookies?
We’re not referring to the yummy kind of cookies here!
Cookies are tiny text files that are placed on your computer when you visit a website. They help the website work properly, and are used for a number of reasons, e.g. to count visitors to a site, help you fill in forms, help content load quickly, or let website owners like us know which pages are most popular.
How do cookies work?
When you first visit a website that uses cookies, a simple text file is downloaded to your computer, which is then read each time you return to that same website. The file, called a ‘cookie’, can be used to remember your preferences or to personalise searches you’ve made in the past (like when a pizza company remembers your favourite order!)
Cookies can be placed on your computer by website owners themselves (these are called first-party cookies) or by a separate third-party website which will allow content or advertising to be delivered to you (these are called third party cookies).
What are your cookie choices?
We use cookies to allow the site to work for you, to improve your user experience, and to provide us with information about how our site is used. Here are the categories of the cookies that we use:
Strictly necessary cookies (first-party)
These cookies are essential for a website to operate securely and deliver the information you need. They can’t be turned off.
Functional cookies (first party)
These are the cookies which give you a better, more relevant experience on the site.
Performance cookies (first or third-party)
These help website-owners like us make improvements to our sites by collecting information about our users. This could be information such as how many people visited our sites, how long they stayed on our sites, and what pages they looked at.
Marketing cookies (first or third-party)
These are the cookies which allow us to deliver you the content you need for free! They help website owners like us fund the cost of running our sites by delivering relevant advertising to you.
When you visit our site, you have an option to accept ALL cookies, or choose the type of cookies you’re comfortable to be placed on your device. We’ll remember your choice for 30 days and ask for your consent again after this time, or every time after you clear your cookies.
Changing your cookies preferences
You can change your cookie preference at any time for all of the cookies - except those that are the strictly necessary ones! Without these strictly necessary cookies our websites just won’t work, and we won’t be able to deliver any kind of content to you. These cookies are placed by default when you visit our site and are always active.
You can change your preference for the other three categories at any time by revisiting this page and clicking on ‘Manage Cookies’.
Whenever you deactivate functional cookies, we clear these from your devices.
If you deactivate performance or marketing cookies, you’ll need to clear your browser data to remove these cookies, as they may include third-party cookies (that aren’t managed by us directly).
To clear your cookies please go to your browser settings and select ‘Privacy and Security’ and look for ‘Cookies’. You can then clear individual cookies, or else clear all cookies at once.
You can also set your device to accept all cookies, to notify you when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at all. You can usually find these settings in the ‘Options’ or ‘Preferences’ menu of your browser.
These links may be helpful, or you can use the ‘Help’ option in your browser:
- More information on cookies is available from:
- Information Commissioner’s Office
- All About Cookies
Retargeting services
To help you along your educational journey, we use retargeting services on behalf of our trusted clients (universities and higher education institution partners) to show you advertising that you may be interested in, based on what you’ve looked at on our site. You may see these ads when you’re visiting other websites.
Retargeting sounds complicated but it’s really not. It works by us having a look at the areas you looked at on our sites – such as course subjects or university locations – and then we’ll create targeted online advertising campaigns on behalf of our clients. These ads are aimed at helping you make the right university choice, with a particular focus on the types of subjects and institutions you’ve previously looked at on our website.
We are able to do all this by using Cookies and Smart Pixel technologies, and to allow us to retarget users, we work with trusted partner companies such as Admedo.
What type of cookies do we use?
Strictly necessary cookies
These cookies are required for the operation of our website.
| NAME | PURPOSE | LIFE TIME |
| JSESSIONID | This cookie is used to give each user a unique identifier so we can make your journey smoother while you are on the site | Session |
| AG_CK_POLICY | To show cookie policy pop up to user whenever there is a change in cookie policy | 30 days |
| STUDY_LEVEL | This cookie is used to personalise content in IP and CD pages. IP and CD page won't load with previously applied study level and filter window opens every time user visits the page without consent | 30 days |
| NATIONALITY | This cookie is used to personalise content in IP and CD pages. IP and CD page won't load with previously applied nationality and filter window opens every time user visits the page without consent | 30 days |
| LOCATION | This cookie is used to personalise content in IP and CD pages. IP and CD page won't load with previously applied Country of Residence and filter window opens every time user visits the page without consent | 30 days |
| STUDY_MODE | This cookie is used to personalise content in CD page. Revisiting user won't be able to view courses based on their previously applied study mode without consent | 30 days |
| CHILD_QUALIFICATION | This cookie is used to prepopulate Qualification in Enquiry and Prospectus forms. Qualification dropdown won't be prepopulated in Enquiry and Prospectus forms without consent | 30 days |
| SUBJECT | This cookie is used to prepopulate subject in Enquiry and Prospectus forms. Subject field won't be prepopulated in Enquiry and Prospectus forms without consent | 30 days |
| cookieconsent | This cookie is used to store the user preference of manage cookie settings | 30 days |
Performance cookies
These cookies let us recognise and count the number of visitors to our websites, and see how users move around the site. This information helps us to improve our site, for example, by making sure users can easily find what they’re looking for.
| NAME | PURPOSE | LIFE TIME |
| USER_TRACK_SESSION_ID | This cookie is used to track user actions and store in DB | 30 days |
| _ga | Used to distinguish users | 2 years |
| _ga | Used to distinguish users | 2 years |
| _gid | Used to distinguish users | 1 day |
| _gat | Rate limiting on logging to Insights GA | 1 minute |
| _gat_newTracker | Rate limiting on logging to Insights GA | 1 minute |
| __utma | It it used to calculate new and returning visitor statistics. | |
| __utmb | This cookie determines new sessions and visits and expires after 30 minutes | |
| __utmz | This cookie identifies the source of traffic to the site – so Google Analytics can tell site owners where visitors came from when arriving on the site. | |
| __utmt | These are used to throttle the request rate for the service – limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites | |
| __utmc | This cookie is used to record anonymous information about our web traffic. This particular cookie is one of a number of cookies on the site from the third party Google Analytics traffic statistics service. This data informs us on how to improve the pages and journeys on the site for our users | |
| VWO script | To allow different tests and track visitor behaviour on the website to deliver the best user experience. No personally identifiable information is collected |
Functionality cookies
These cookies are used to recognise you when you return to our website. They let us personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (e.g. your choice of language, region etc.). If you choose not to receive functional cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the website's features, and we may not be able to personalise your experience on our site.
Marketing cookies
Marketing cookies are used to target advertising to a user (this is called behavioural targeting). They are often served by third party companies, and track a user across websites.
Disabling targeting cookies means you will still receive advertising, but it will not be tailored to your preferences.
| NAME | TYPE | PURPOSE |
|---|---|---|
| Admedo | Retargeting | These cookies let Admedo know when to serve ads, ensuring that ads are served only to people who have previously visited the site. |
| Adroll | Retargeting | These cookies let Adroll know when to serve ads, ensuring that ads are served only to people who have previously visited the site. This includes cross site tracking to tailor ads to user. |
| Google DoubleClick | Advertising | These cookies is used by Google's DoubleClick for Publishers system which serves the banner advertising on the site. |
| Google Adsense | Advertising | These cookies are used by Google's Adsense to measure interactions with ads and to prevent the same ad from being displayed too often. DEVCOM: This cookie created by third party. __gads(our domain): This cookie is associated with the DoubleClick for Publishers service from Google. Its purpose is to do with the showing of adverts on the site, for which the owner may earn some revenue. The main purpose of this cookie is: Targeting/Advertising |