This section covers educational, social and economic background.
- For data relating to protected characteristics under the Equality Act, please see the Equal Opportunities section
Questions you are asked
To see the questions we use for contextual admissions data, please download a Sample Contextual Admissions Form (for information only):
- Please see the Contextual Admissions Data page if you want to download data sets
How the data is used
All the questions in the Contextual Admissions page of your Application have a Prefer Not to Say option. However, we encourage you to answer the questions you are able to, to provide additional background about you.
The information you provide may be used:
- by Course Centres as part of their selection processes
- by Course Centres and the Clearing House for audit, research and service enhancement e.g. to consider developments to selection processes in future years
- by Course Centres and the Clearing House to create monitoring statistics and reports for themselves, for reporting data as required by relevant public bodies, and for possible publication in anonymised form
Please see each Course Centre's own website for up-to-date information about how the data you provide will be used by them.
- Please see the Courses section for links to each Course Centre's website
Postcodes and POLAR
We ask for your home UK postcode when you were age 17. We compare this with the national POLAR data produced by the Office for Students about the participation of young people in higher education.
Individual Course Centres may use postcodes for comparison with other similar databases on socio-economic background e.g. at a more local level.
- Please see the Office for Students website if you need more information about POLAR
Last updated:
1st September 2025