Discovering Uni: planning your higher education journey

Many young people are awaiting A-level results in a couple of days’ time, or GCSE results the following week. You may also be thinking about the next steps in your educational journey. You may be starting university or college in the next month or so. Or you may be at an earlier stage of your higher education journey: attending university open days, looking at websites, and talking to friends, family and others.

There’s no shortage of information out there. But the sheer amount of it can feel overwhelming. It can be difficult to understand. And it may be difficult to judge its reliability.  

Introducing Discover Uni

Making a choice about where and what to study is probably one of the biggest decisions you'll make. So it’s important that you, and those advising you, have the right information to hand. 

Next month, the Office for Students (OfS) is launching a new UK-wide student information website. Discover Uni is designed to help you navigate your way through the complicated higher education information landscape.

Our research shows that prospective university students struggle to know where to find key pieces of information. This can be particularly tough if you don’t have friends or family who have gone to university, if you’ve been out of education for a while, or if you haven’t got access to specialist careers advice.

Student choice is central to the OfS’s approach to regulation. We want to ensure that anyone thinking about higher education can access high-quality, effective information, advice and guidance so that they can make informed decisions about what, where and how they study. Our student information, advice and guidance strategy sets out the work we’re doing to improve the resources and support available to them.

Navigational aids

Discover Uni will provide users with trustworthy and authoritative information which is relevant to them. You’ll be able to find the facts and figures on graduate outcomes and student satisfaction which featured on its predecessor site, Unistats. But Discover Uni will include additional advice and guidance to take you through the whole decision-making journey, from initial ideas to application. 

You might want to find out about the many different options on offer, such as apprenticeships, and higher education courses offered by further education colleges. Or maybe you need help demystifying the student finance system, or thinking how to choose a course and where to study.

We know that this journey may not always be a linear one. But whatever stage you’re at, Discover Uni will have information relevant to you.

Cutting through the clutter

Discover Uni has been designed with users at its heart. We’ve tested it with a wide variety of audiences, particularly those least well served by current information sources. It’s deliberately simple and ‘mobile first’: cutting through the clutter of other sites to give users clear information that matters to them, as well as signposting to other useful resources.

We’ll be adding more content and functionality to the site over the coming year. And as we continue to develop it, we want to hear what you think could help to make it even better. 

So if you’re a student beginning to plan your higher education journey, or a parent or adviser supporting that process, please look out for the site when it’s live, spread the word, and tell us what you think of it.  

In the meantime, very best of luck for results day!

Discover Uni will launch in September 2019.