THE Universities and Colleges Admissions Service has received a 140 per cent increase in electronic applications so far this year compared with last year (TES, November 19).
The vast majority have been sent to UCAS successfully. However, the huge increase has put pressure on our electronic communications and has slowed the transmission of applications.
Also, there have been technical difficulties with installing the Electronic Admissions System on some school and college networks and this has increased demand on our support helpline.
Upgrades to the EAS software can be downloaded easily from the web-site, www.ucas.ac.uk, where they have been available for several weeks.
We are up-rating our electronic communications to speed up the transmission of electronic applications and we are making more expert staff available to deal with calls to the support helpline.
Many schools are also aware that we are holding EAS training days to help them manage the process. Schools can phone 01242 544807 for more details.
More and more schools are switching to EAS every day because it is easy for applicants to use, it eliminates many common errors and it can be processed by UCAS much faster than paper forms.
We apologise to anyone who has experienced technical problems but we are confident that these improvements will help us meet the rapidly growing demand for EAS.
Dr Tony Higgins
Chief executive
UCAS
New Barn Lane
Cheltenham
Gloucestershire
