End of cycle

Ucas publishes data on the 2020 university admissions round

The Ucas end-of-cycle report—detailing trends in the latest round of higher education applications and offers—is a familiar bookend to the year. Today sees the publication of the 2020 edition (with more to come at the end of January), which covers what the applications body calls the “Covid cohort” of students, and gives us some insight into how this most unusual of years has affected university recruitment.

Readers will know only too well that this year involved significant grade inflation among 18-year-old applicants, as students—albeit after a fashion, in England at least—were given the option to use their centre-assessed grades for university applications.