UCAS 2024-2025 deadline dates consultation

You will recall that UCAS recently staged a consultation on the key deadline dates for the 2024-2025 application cycle and IB submitted a strong plea to ask for consideration to be made of the IB examination dates when setting the deadlines. The consultation has now reported and its findings can be found here. The outcome is that UCAS has decided to maintain the current key dates into the 2024-2025 application cycle which is to keep the ‘Equal Consideration Deadline (ECD)’ on the last Wednesday in January and the ‘Rejection by Default (RBD)’ deadline on the second Wednesday in May. This second date falls well into the examination session which is not the outcome we wanted to see.

UCAS states that responses to the consultation clearly demonstrate an appetite for a wider review of the admissions system to futureproof it and meet the needs of all customers. UCAS will launch this in 2024, building on the comments and themes that have arisen from the consultation and other forums. As a result of its submission UCAS has invited IB to contribute to this wider review and when details become available IB will come back to IBSCA schools to gather feedback.