So we start with the meat and bones bit, the whole point of the form. The choices you’ve made for your courses and places.

Don’t list them in order of preference. UCAS will re-organise them anyway into the alphabetical order of the institution code name.

There’s space for five choices, but you don’t have to use them all, and if you are applying for art & design, you can only list three of those courses (plus up to three other non-art & design courses).

To complicate things even more, if you are applying for medicine, dentistry, veterinary science or veterinary medicine, you only get four choices. Also, the closing date for these courses is the same as for Oxbridge, i.e. mid October.

Don’t apply to both Oxford and Cambridge. They don’t like that, which is a bit sniffy and pretentious, but that’s Oxbridge for you. There are exceptions to the rule though. It’s not such a faux pas if, for example, you’ve already got a degree or if you’re applying to Homerton College in Cambridge to do a BEd. Oh, and if you’re thinking of Oxbridge, there’s a whole other application to fill in as well.

All the details for the course and institution codes are in the UCAS book and on their website too - or be a smartypants and click on the ? next to each of the boxes to pick out your choices from a list.

A couple of other boxes to look out for are the Defer one, which can be used to hold over your application for another year, giving you a chance to take a gap year . The other one is the Home box, which is there to say you want to live at home while you’re studying.

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