Preparing for uni can be daunting. But don’t stress! With uni prospectuses available to order and university open days to go to, there’s plenty of time to think and prepare.
Updated: 14 Sept 2026
When you're in Year 11 or Year 12, you could easily say it's a bit early to start thinking about uni. At that point, you might not even know if you want to uni at all!
However, Year 13 can be particularly busy. There's a lot of stuff going on pretty much the whole way through the year, so anything you can do in advance is going to take some pressure off. Thinking about uni is a great candidate for that!
We're about to use a very overused expression, but it’s never too early to start thinking about university!
Even just having a think about whether uni is right for you is helpful early on. If you're still studying for your GCSEs, it'd be handy to do this now as it might make a difference to what qualifications you choose once you’ve finished Year 11.
As well as deciding if uni is right for you, considering what kind of degree you might want to study is also a useful thing to think about in advance. This helps you to choose the right subjects once you complete GCSEs.
Year 12 is the time to start thinking a bit more specifically about university. Year 12 is particularly important for anyone interested in studying at Oxford or Cambridge, or doing medicine, veterinary or dentistry courses, as these have an earlier application deadline than other courses.
NEXT: See all university application deadlines
So, you’ve decided that you’re probably going to go to uni after Year 13. You might even have a degree subject in mind. This is usually the first step after deciding you want to go to uni. Our course search tool will show you which universities offer the subject you’re after.
NEXT: Start searching for university courses
Even as early as Year 12, you might have an idea of your predicted grades, which will help you narrow down the right unis for you. The best thing to do at this stage is start ordering prospectuses, which give you more details about the course, entry requirements and the university itself.
NEXT: Browse prospectuses and order them for free
Reading prospectuses will give you a bit of an idea of what the university is like, but not the whole picture. Late in Year 12 and in the first term of Year 13, universities host open days for you to get a better feel for the course, but you don’t want to be going to hundreds of open days, dragging your loved ones up and down the country as you check out every English literature course going.
NEXT: Find and book upcoming open days at the unis you're interested in
Think about what kind of area you want to live in. Do you want to be close to home or further afield? Would you prefer to go to a university contained on a campus so everything you need is in one place, or one with buildings spread throughout a city so you can explore the local area more? Are you looking to live in a bigger city or smaller town? Are you longing to live near the coast? These decisions, along with the information provided in prospectuses, can help you build a shortlist of universities to visit when open day season rolls around.
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