For College Counselors and Independent Education Consultants Only:
Before we dive in, there’s two things you should know about the UCAS buzzword:
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Adding a UCAS buzzword is not mandatory. If a student doesn’t add a buzzword to their application, they will be considered an independent applicant.
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The student can add a buzzword midway through their application.
? Need help with your UCAS application? Get our UCAS Guide for $39
Creating a Buzzword
If your school or organization is interested in creating a buzzword, there’s a few things you should know before starting the process:
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You must become a UCAS centre first before you can create a buzzword
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If you are an IEC (Independent Education Consultant) and have an organization, you must provide a reference letter from a university to support your UCAS centre submission. This could take weeks to process unless you are buddy buddy with a university representative.
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You can choose to pay for your student’s applications at the end. This could be helpful if you are working with students who might be applying at the last minute and come to find out that their credit card won’t take international payments.
First thing you’ll do is register your school as a Centre on UCAS. You can do this on this page: https://www.ucas.com/corporate/eu-and-international-schoolscentres
After that is set up, you can create your UCAS Buzzword. You’ll sign into UCAS and go to your Advisor Dashboard:
You’ll then click on the right year in the Centre Management section, where you’ll see these categories:
Here you will see ‘Centre linking (buzzword)’ and this is where you can create and save your buzzword! You’re then ready to give out your buzzword to students when asked for.
Ultimately, linking a UCAS application to a school/organization is a quick and efficient way to help support students in their UCAS applications. We hope the above information is useful and helpful in your journey to applying (or helping a student apply) to UK universities.
For more information, check out the UCAS website on how to manage applications as a UCAS centre.
Need help figuring out your UCAS application? Check out our step-by-step UCAS Guide! Get the UCAS Guide for $39
About the Author:
Ashley Jeanson is an international education expert with over 9 years of experience in the field. She’s worked for a mixture of study abroad providers, universities in the US and the UK, and third-party providers, mostly specializing in helping American students attend UK universities. In her spare time, she travels the globe and is eternally in search of the best cup of coffee.
