Why is UCAS waiving the fee?
How will it work?
To deliver this initiative for the 2025 cycle we would appreciate your help to encourage your eligible students to declare they have been in receipt of free school meals and support the process in the adviser portal.
Eligible students will need to:
- declare they are in receipt of free school meals in the ‘More about you’ section of the application
- choose to ‘Pay Centre’ when they ‘Pay and Submit’ their application from 3 September 2024
If you would like to support your student’s declaration to receive the fee waiver, please check your payment options in the Adviser Portal:
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If your school/centre sets the application payment preference to ‘Invoice the school’ no action needs to be taken at this time.
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If your school/centre sets the application fee payment option to ‘All your applicants will pay online by credit or debit card’ settings will need to be changed before 3 September 2024 when pay/submit goes live for the 2025 cycle.
Access ‘Centre Management’ in the adviser portal and tick the box to set your application fee payment method to the third option, which is:
Some applicants will pay online by card, UCAS will provide an invoice for remaining applicants (the invoice is to be paid by your centre)
This will ensure that those students who are eligible, do not need to pay to submit their application and those students who currently pay by card can continue to do so. UCAS will provide an invoice for any remaining non-FSM applicants.
This will ensure that those students who are eligible do not need to pay to submit their application.
We want to ensure students across the UK are aware of this new scheme, so that all eligible applicants can benefit from the fee waiver. Please share this guidance with your colleagues.
Adviser Guide 2025
For more detailed guidance on the fee waiver process for free school meal students, as well as lots of helpful advice and information about supporting and managing your students' applications, download the Adviser Guide.
Download the guide
Next steps
We want to ensure students across the UK are aware of this new scheme, so that all eligible applicants can benefit from the fee waiver.
We’re currently refining the verification process, which will be a simple tick box in the adviser portal.
Supporting documents for 2025 applications will reflect the new initiative and be sent to you before the end of June.
Frequently asked questions
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Who is eligible to have the application fee waived?
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How is the information about free school meals used?
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Will the answers to the FSM question be verified?
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Why is the fee only being waived for FSM applicants – we have other applicants struggling who could benefit?
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Will all staff be able to give agreement to the FSM question in the Portal or will it be controlled by a specific permission?
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Why do we have to select ‘some applicants pay by card and some by invoice’? This could mean we get a lot of applicants choosing incorrect payment option when reviewing and submitting their application to our school or college?
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What do we do if we accidentally agree that the applicant gets FSM when they don’t and send the application?
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For students who’ve taken a gap year (or are choosing to reapply) and are applying through our centre, do we still need to agree their FSM status?
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Rather than changing the payment option now, could we wait until we have an FSM student applying, then change to invoice and card so that we only get that one student selecting invoice?
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If an applicant starts at a school in year 12, but attended a previous school where they were in receipt of FSM, how does the current school help this student?
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Does the FSM fee waiver apply for conservatoire applicants?
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We don’t have evidence in college to show a student has been in receipt of FSM, what can we do?