Spoiler: there is no data in this data blog! Instead, we bring you a mixed media UCAS engineering data masterclass to share what we’ve learned about the tools available this year while looking to analyse it.
You may already know that you can access engineering data using MS Power BI at discipline level on the UCAS website. If not, let me excite you.
You can quickly and easily produce headline tables and charts filtering UCAS applications and acceptances profiles for engineering, drilling down into a host of variables including the cohort’s gender, age and where they are from.
Below are EPC’s engineering focused instructions, coupled with a brief video tutorial to walk you through visually.
Don’t worry, an analysis will follow. In the meantime, if you discover any more UCAS self-service details, options or top tips, please do post a comment below.
And if you’d like to be involved in the development of the interactive data analysis tools planned for EPC online, please contact us. Before you get started, click to watch this 12 minute guide.
Masterclass step-by-step guide
1. Go to UCAS.com and scroll down to Data and Analysis. Select Undergraduate statistics and reports and then End of cycle data resources. Alternatively, go directly via this link.
2. By selecting either Acceptances, Applications or Offers you can filter acceptances and main scheme applications, offers and offer rates for engineering.
Top tip: These all seem to lead to the same place, where there is a check box to choose from again in the top right hand corner.
Top tip: You can filter the chart by engineering but for better detail in linked charts and tables, leave the filter on all and click on the engineering colour in the key or in the chart itself.
3. Once you’ve homed in on engineering, you can filter or drill down by
- Domicile
- Age group
- Gender
Top tip: We couldn’t find an export or copy functionality, so if you want to copy a whole crosstab into another document or report, you may need to resort to the downloadable datasets (see 7. Below).
4. By selecting Unconditional offers you can view unconditional offers (18-year-olds) by type of offer (direct unconditional, conditional unconditional, other unconditional or conditional component) and proportion.
Top tip: This includes English, Welsh and Northern Irish applicants only.
5. Technical notes and definitions are available above in the help section of the dashboard.
Top tip: You won’t get far this year without deciding whether to identify engineering using JACS3 – available at discipline (detailed subject, sometimes known as subject line) level which is available for 2007-2020 – or its replacement subject coding scheme, HECoS (detailed subject, sometimes known as CAH3, which is available for 2019-20 only. These aren’t comparable and the latest HESA data is only available by HECoS. If you want to know the details, a quick engineering guide and an unofficial engineering mapping spreadsheet is available here.
6. If all of this is too much, EPC members can download the headline applications and acceptances data from the EPC website.
Top tip: This is a password protected members page. If you are an EPC member and don’t know your password, please contact us.
7. Or, if you’ve got the bug, even more data is available (for home students) if you’re prepared to download some datasets. A full list of datasets, variables and combinations available can be found here.
Top tip: This is also your reference guide if you want to understand which of the many datasets you need to download to undertake your own analysis.
8. Using the datasets, you can filter applications (including applications type) and acceptances (including acceptance route) by engineering by:
- Ethnicity
- Disability
- POLAR4
- IMD
- UK region
- Provider region
- School type
Top tip: If you want to access headline engineering data on all (not UK only) select provider region.
But not by combinations of those together. Those you can analyse multivariately are:
- Domicile
- Gender
- Age group
Top tip: This dataset is one of several which exceeds MS Excel’s row limits making rookie analysis tricky. Remember, for a basic look at distributions, you don’t need to download the dataset as it can be explored via the UCAS website.
Top tip: It’s pretty quick and easy to use the online UCAS tool to check your subject totals tally back to the published figures. Note though that some of the overall totals across all subjects published by UCAS vary a little between their outputs, probably due to their rounding policy.
8. You can also consider main scheme offers by discipline, and unconditional offers for engineering as a whole.
9. There is other data at all-subject level you might find useful including Clearing plus, 18-year-old population estimates, post-result grade increases, and entry rates.
10. Phew! Well done for getting to the end. Any queries? Do feel free to contact us.
