Record of Prior Acceptance (RPA)

The applicant: 

• must have met the requirements for entry to the course, because they will automatically be set to unconditional firm (UF)
• must not have a live application in UCAS already 
• can only apply for a single choice 

To gather the information you need to submit an RPA for your students, you can use our

Important: If any of these details are incorrect, your RPA or spreadsheet will fail to load.

Check the Collection tool for the right course details.

Make sure the course(s) you are submitting RPA applications for are open. They do not need to be published.

You’ll need to know the correct course code, campus (if different from the main site) and the start date.

You can search by either:

• the applicant’s last name 
• the applicant’s date of birth 

Make sure you click the All indicator to search all UCAS applicants.

If the applicant has multiple names, or you’re not sure about the order of names, you can use the asterisk * or percentage symbol % as a wildcard. Or if an applicant has multiple names, or a preferred name, you can search for these too in case they have applied to UCAS under that name.

Check their status as this will determine what you need to do next:

• Waiting for Choice/Extra/Clearing. If the text is in orange, this means they are unplaced. They can refer themselves to you by adding a choice through the main route, Extra, or Clearing, provided the course is open.
• Referred, and you can’t access the application – this means they have applied to another provider. They will need to wait for a decision. If accepted they can either self-release, or request release, to apply to you.
• Holding offer, and you can’t access the application – the applicant is holding a conditional firm/insurance choice at another provider. This means they’re waiting for a confirmation decision. They must wait until the provider(s) have processed their decision(s).
• Placed, and you can’t access the application – this means they are holding a place with another provider (UF or CLA). They can either self-release, or request release, to apply to you.
• Referred, Holding offer or Placed, and you can access the application, this means they have already applied to you – what you do next depends on the time of year. Please check the admissions guide for options.
• Placed and deferred – the application needs to be completely withdrawn by the provider so that an RPA can be processed.

If the applicant is unsure about the status of their application, or what to do next, they can contact our Customer Experience Centre for advice.

At this point you’re able to fill out some of the details and save a draft to come back to later. Or you can fill it out in full (mandatory fields are asterisked) and submit immediately. 

The mandatory fields are: 

• Title
• First name
• Last name
• Date of birth
• Gender
• Address
• Country of address
• Area of permanent residence
• Country of birth
• Nationality
• Ethnicity
• Disability
• Residential category
• Fee payer
• Course code
• Campus code
• Year of entry
• Start date

When you’re ready to submit the RPA to us, click Submit and we’ll process the application.

You’ll need to confirm you agree to our declaration before you can upload an RPA. Once you’ve done this, the Choose file button will be activated. Select your completed RPA file and click Upload.

We’ll validate the file to ensure the data has been entered correctly. If there are any errors with how the data has been entered, you’ll be presented with a message to show the rows you need to update before the file can be submitted.

Please note: Do not change the format of the spreadsheet or enter additional columns or data as this will cause it to error and fail to upload.

Once the file is successfully sent to UCAS, the applicants will be included in the Processing list and the status will show as In progress until it has passed our checks.