November 2, 2017, by Philip Moriarty

Decisions, decisions…

We’re now well into the UCAS application “season”. Our regular Wednesday visit days will start later this month and, over the course of ten weeks or so, we’ll be welcoming hundreds of students (and their accompanying parents/visitors) to the School of Physics and Astronomy to spend an afternoon with us.

A key part of the visit day is a 15 minute interview with a member of staff. These are most definitely not meant to be an “interrogation” or a grilling. We’ll not be asking you to solve complex or complicated systems of mathematical equations. Instead, the interview is an informal conversation about your application — we are interested in you and just why you are interested in physics. What is it about the subject that appeals so much that you would like to study it for three or four years at university?

For insights into the UCAS applications process, I thoroughly recommend the videos below, made a few years back by our Head of School, Prof. Mike Merrifield – with a certain Dr. Brady Haran – when he was a fresh-faced Undergraduate Admissions Tutor. (Mike, that is). I took over the admissions tutor role a few years back and had to step into some astronomically large shoes. Indeed so large were those shoes that I share the role with Dr. Meghan Gray and Dr. Janette Dunn.

The videos answer some of the more common questions we receive about our applications process but they can’t, of course, cover every eventuality or query. So, we’ve decided to set up a dedicated Frequently Asked Questions account (a PhysFAQ, in other words). Please e-mail physicsfaq@nottingham.ac.uk or, even more simply, feel free to ask us any burning (or, indeed, not-so-burning) questions in the comments section below.

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