Undergraduate FAQs

You can find all the information about applying to us on our ‘How to apply’ pages. You’ll need to visit the UCAS website and submit an application online. You can find information about filling in the application on the UCAS website. You can also apply to us directly from the application link at the bottom of our course pages.

Our undergraduate degree programmes offer an excellent teaching structure and cutting-edge facilities on our modern city campus.

If you’re still deciding on the right course to study, take a look at the degrees we offer. The course pages include details of course content, teaching structure and career pathways. You can also search for a course by subject area if you aren’t sure which course is right for you.

You can also read our guide to ‘Choosing where and what to study’.

Find out more about UCAS application deadlines on the UCAS website. The deadline is usually towards the end of January. You can still apply after the January deadline, but you could miss out on your chosen course because it could become full or the entry requirements could change.

If you’re applying directly to us, only some of our courses have set application deadlines. These are specified on the course pages If you’re unsure of the deadline, please email admissions@port.ac.uk. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

Take a look at our support and guidance for writing a great personal statement, including the personal statement hub. Our hub is full of resources to help you make your personal statement the best it can be, you can then send us your draft for feedback.

For health care, social care and dental care courses, we screen personal statements for particular criteria. Our page about demonstrating the NHS values has advice about information to include in your application.

Yes, you can. Whether you apply using UCAS or our direct application form, you will have a space to enter a personal statement. If you’re applying for different courses within your five choices, you may wish to submit an additional personal statement. If necessary, you can email your additional personal statement to us at admissions@port.ac.uk after you’ve submitted your application. Please include your ID number so we can add this to your application.

If you’re unable to provide an academic reference, we can accept a professional reference from your workplace. We understand that if you’ve been out of university for a while, it may not be easy (or relevant) to get back in touch with your old lecturers, or that you may not have attended university before.

If you can’t provide a professional reference, other referees might be able to help you. Please email admissions@port.ac.uk if you're a Home applicant, or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk if you're an EU or International applicant, for further guidance.

You can check the status of your application via our Applicant View system, or if you applied via UCAS, check it in UCAS Hub.

Once you've submitted your application, there are still some things to do before you start with us.

Read our guidance on ‘getting your offers and results’ to find out what you need to do next. And check out our other information about preparing for uni.

Our MyPort website (aimed at current students) has lots of information to help you settle in to uni when you arrive. It’s useful to start getting your head around the MyPort website as you’ll be using it a lot.

If you’re taking a distance learning course, you’re still welcome to visit us in Portsmouth and take advantage of the on-campus facilities.

We aim to reply to you within 10 working days of submitting your full application. Our reply might include a request for further information to help us make a decision or an invite to interview. If we can make a decision straight away, we will contact you via email to confirm whether we can issue an offer.

For any updates on your application, you can track its progress using your Applicant View portal.

If you require further help in relation to an update, please email our dedicated Global Admissions team, who are looking after your application, who will be able to assist at globaladmissions@port.ac.uk.

A transcript lists the modules you’ve taken during each academic year, their credit value, and the marks you obtained in each module.

You can upload any qualifications we’ve asked for in the "Documents" section of the Applicant View system. If you're having difficulty uploading your documents, you can email them to admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant)

Our Admissions team needs to review the information you provided. Once approved, this section in Applicant View will change from red/amber to blue, showing no further action is required. This is a manual process for our team. We aim to respond to all applicants as soon as we receive additional information.

Please keep checking your Applicant View and your emails in the days after submission for updates. You will hear from us soon. If you want further information about the status of your application, please email us at admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant).

We express entry requirements for our courses using UCAS Tariff point ranges. Most qualifications have a UCAS Tariff value depending on the qualification size and grade achieved; for example, an A Level at B grade is worth 40 points.

Use the UCAS points calculator on our ‘entry requirements for undergraduate courses’ page to calculate your UCAS points.

We normally make individual offers within the tariff range published on our course pages. For the most popular courses, we expect to make offers at the upper end of the range.

We like to consider every application on an individual basis, taking into account your entire profile, including your qualifications, experience and enthusiasm for study. After your application has been reviewed in full, you’ll be sent an offer based on all of the information you provided.

We’ll make you a bespoke offer for the course based on your predicted grades.

You can find the entry requirements for a particular course on its dedicated course page. You can search for our courses here.

If you are still unsure, please feel free to email your qualification(s) to admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant) and one of our team will be able to help you.

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) allows you to convert relevant university-level knowledge, skills and experience into credits you can put towards a qualification. RPL can come from previous study, employment, voluntary work and training courses, including courses and qualifications you didn't complete.

Please visit our ‘Recognition of Prior Learning’ page to view the different types of RPL and which one is most applicable to you. For further guidance, please email admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant) and one of our team will be able to help you.

If we've asked you for a unit descriptor, it's likely you're taking a BTEC or Access to HE Diploma qualification and we need to assess whether you're taking the right units to meet our entry criteria.

Please provide us with a syllabus of your course and a list of the units you're taking, including the unit title and the credits associated to the unit. You can usually find this information in a course or unit handbook, or from your current school or college.

Please send this information to admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant) and one of our team will be able to help you.

Scholarship opportunities may be available for the course you’re interested in.

Home students

Contact our Student Finance Centre for questions about finance and funding your studies – studentfinance@port.ac.uk.

Find more information on our ‘Scholarships and bursaries for undergraduate students page.

International and EU students

Contact our Global Team for questions about finance and funding your studies – global@port.ac.uk

Find more information on our ‘Scholarships for international students’ page.

If you’re paying your tuition fees with a tuition fee loan, the Government will pay your tuition fees to us directly.

If you or a sponsor are paying your tuition fees, we’ll send you an invoice when you need to pay.

Find more information on our tuition fees page.

To pay your tuition fees, head to our ‘make a payment’ page.

Contact the Income team for advice about making a payment for your course, or any payment-related queries – income@port.ac.uk or +44(0)23 9284 5533.

If your enquiry is related to applying for a student loan or any other funding-related enquiries e.g. scholarships and bursaries, please contact our Student Finance team – studentfinance@port.ac.uk

When you apply to study with us, we’ll use the information you provided to determine your fee status as Home, EU or International. If we need more information, we might ask you to complete an online fee assessment questionnaire or provide further documents. If you’d like to know more about this process, please visit our Fee Assessment Information Page, or if you have any questions, please contact feeassessment@port.ac.uk.

Accommodation application deadlines may influence when you need to apply by and accept us as your firm first-choice university.

When you firmly accept your place with us, we’ll send you an email inviting you to apply for accommodation. This email will include the application deadlines.

If you have questions about accommodation, email our Student Housing team student.housing@port.ac.uk. Or take a look at our student accommodation pages.

If you applied through UCAS, you need to let us know your decision in UCAS Hub. If you’re unsure how to accept your offer, please get in touch with UCAS.

Before you confirm your decision in UCAS Hub, you need to wait for all the universities you chose to get back to you.

If you applied by the UCAS deadline in January universities have a deadline to respond to you. Some will get back to you earlier. You’ll have several weeks to make a decision once all your universities have replied. You don’t need to rush.

Accommodation application deadlines may influence when you need to accept Portsmouth as your firm first-choice university.

If you applied to us directly, you need to log in to your Applicant View and let us know your decision.

You can't make a decision on your choices until all your chosen universities get back to you in UCAS Hub. Once they all respond, you can then:

• Select 1 course as your firm (first) choice
• Select 1 course as your insurance (back up) choice

UCAS has information about deadlines to reply to universities.

We like to consider every application on an individual basis, taking into account your entire profile, including your qualifications, experience and enthusiasm for study. Find out more by reading about how we make our offers.

Please contact admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant) for more information about contextual offers.

We normally make individual offers in the tariff range published on our course pages. For the most popular courses, we expect to make offers at the upper end of the range. We review everyone's application individually and make you an offer in relation to your predicted grades.

If your offer is conditional, we advise you to work hard to achieve the best grades you can. You should continue to do this even if you get a lower offer – committing to your studies and exams will help once you start uni.

If you have more questions about your offer, pease contact admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant).

You can only swap each choice once. Please contact UCAS to make your swaps if it’s before 25 July 2024.

For more information, including deadlines for swapping your choices, visit UCAS.

If you don’t meet the conditions of our offer, we'll look again at your application to see if we can accept a lower grade to confirm your place. We’ll take into account any extenuating circumstances or additional information you’ve provided.

We’ll keep you up-to-date by email and contact you by email on results day. If we can’t offer you a place on your chosen course, we’ll see if we can offer you a different course. If this happens, we’ll email the new offer to you, which you can choose to accept or decline.

We can withdraw your application completely, but this will delete your UCAS account. If you’re happy with your account being deleted, email us at admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant) and we will process it for you.

If you applied to us directly and withdraw your application, your Applicant View account won’t be deleted. This won’t affect your applications with any other universities. Your application with us can be reinstated if you want.

We consider transfers for many of our courses at the beginning of each academic year.

Whether we can admit you depends on how well the modules you've completed so far match the modules on our course. If you’d like more information about this process, please read our guidance to Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL).

Please get in touch with admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant) for more information about transferring to us.

We can only defer applications that are Firm with us, so you need to select us as your Firm choice before we can process this.

Once you’ve made us your Firm choice, please email admissions@port.ac.uk (if you're a Home applicant) or globaladmissions@port.ac.uk (if you're an EU or International applicant) if you want to defer your place. Please allow 12 to 24 hours for your firm choice to update on our system, and then contact us again with your deferral request.

You can request to defer your place until the first week of September, so you don't need to make a decision right away about deferring.

Not all of our courses accept deferral requests.

As a current University of Portsmouth student, you'll need to talk to your current course administration team to seek advice about your next steps. Please contact the MyPort Hub for your course for advice.

Yes, we can provide you with proof in the format of a letter stating that you’re a student or you’re registered here. Send your request to our MyPort Information Hub – myport@port.ac.uk.

You will be emailed information about registering onto your course, ordering your student card and how to access your personal ‘Student View’ pages from late August onwards from our registration team.

A lot of our students do part-time work while studying to earn extra money or build skills and work experience. For advice about finding work while you study or managing your workload around your degree, email careers@port.ac.uk.

If you’re an international student and want to work while studying, read our ‘working during your studies’ information, or email global@port.ac.uk for advice.

If you want to study alongside your job, there are lots of options available to you including distance (online) learning degrees, Learning at Work degrees and Degree Apprenticeship programmes. Find out more on our ‘studying while working’ pages. For more information about Learning at Work courses, email learningatwork@port.ac.uk

For more information about Degree Apprenticeship courses, email degree-apprenticeship-office@port.ac.uk

If you'd like to request a letter for this purpose, login to your Student View and click on the ‘My Student View’ tab.

You will see 6 blue boxes. To request the letter you need, click on "Request Standard Letters" and pick the one you need. If you need something more specific or a copy of a transcript, please contact your MyPort Hub.

If you've used all five choices on your application, and you're not holding any offers, you could still find a place using UCAS Extra.

Adding another choice using Extra is easy:

1. Search for courses with vacancies using the UCAS search tool (you can skip this step if you know which course you want to apply for with us)
2. Get in touch with us to make sure we’re still accepting applications for your chosen course before you apply.
3. Add the details in the UCAS Hub.

Clearing gives you another opportunity to find the best course for you – whether you've changed your mind, your results surprised you or you're just starting to think about going to university this year.

Clearing opens in early July each year. You'll need to have your exam results to go through Clearing. When you have your results, search our Clearing courses to find out what's available. If you're taking your A level exams in the summer, you'll get your results mid-August. See UCAS Clearing pages for more information about the dates.