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The shortcut to your shortlist

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Making the final choice

Choosing a university checklist

Choosing a university needs a lot of thought and research. Use our checklist to make sure you find your perfect university.

Worried girl choosing a university

How do I create a university shortlist? 

To take the hassle out of creating a university shortlist we have created Uniselect. With Uniselect you can create your own personal list of universities based on your answers to a few simple questions. Choose where in the UK you’d like to study, the location and campus type, customise the choices based on the subjects and sports you’d like the universities to offer and Uniselect will serve you a list of unis for you to research further. You can make as many shortlists as you like based on different preferences and they can be saved to your profile to come back to later. 

Uniselect uses the high-quality data that we are known for to help prospective students narrow down their options from the 130 UK universities and 60,000 courses featured in our league tables.  

How do I narrow down my university shortlist? 

Once you are happy with the shortlists Uniselect has generated for you, it’s time to make them even shorter.

To help you narrow down your list to your final five university choices, we've put together a list of questions for you to think about: 

While it’s good to aim high you want to minimise the amount of rejections you may get so you have a wider choice when offers start to come in. Try not to add to many choices to your UCAS application that you are unsure of getting into. 

Have you been to an open day? 

Open days are a fantastic way to help you decide if a uni is right for you. 

Is it close or far away enough from home? 

You can use Uniselect’s map feature to see how far your shortlisted unis are from home.  

Can you afford to live in your uni’s local area?

With everyone stretched for cash at the moment, it's good to look at your budget.  

Take a look at some of our advice on budgeting and accommodation prices to help you out:   

If you are planning on living at home and commuting to university the Uniselct map will show you how far away you are from campus. If you will be moving away you’ll need to do some research into commute between you accommodation and campus. You should be able to find this information on the university website.  

You can find further information about travel in our regional and city guides and read our saving money on travel advice.

How safe is my university town or city?

Moving away from home for the first time can be scary, and if you’ve never lived in a big town or city before you may be concerned about crime rates. You can read Crime rates in university cities and towns or How safe is your city? to get the bigger picture. But remember, just because you are in an area with a high crime rate it doesn’t mean you have to be a victim. Read our tips on staying safe at university to find out more.

Does the university offer study abroad programmes or placements? 

If studying abroad or workplacements are important to you you should read the course outline from each of your shortlisted unis carefully to help you decide which ends up in your final five.  

Are there any other interesting additional options on offer that appeal to you? 

You can find out more about your shortlisted unis and what they offer on their websites or by attending an open day. Check out their student union for clubs and societies.  

While Uniselect shows the overall ranking for your shortlisted unis, in your final stage it may be good to delve a little deeper into our league tables. You can look at how well they do by subject or region and by a number of other measures including student satisfaction and graduate outcomes using the table filters.

For any university you apply to, you should be able to answer these questions positively. If you still have too many possible options, focus on your main priorities and rule out the ones that don’t perform as well in these areas.

If you need any more information about any of the topics on the list, just click the question to find out more.

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