The Allocation Process – Undergraduates

STATEMENT - Delay to Undergraduate College Allocation Process 2024

We apologise for the delay in issuing preliminary college allocations. 

Following some issues with how the process worked last year, we made some changes to the allocation process this year, to minimise the number of students needing to be reallocated at a later date.

We understand that waiting for your preliminary allocation can be frustrating, however we need to ensure that the process is able to run successfully and that we are able to maximise the number of students being allocated to one of their top selections.

Testing of the new system has taken longer than initially anticipated due to a number of technical issues, resulting in a delay in issuing preliminary allocations.

We can confirm that we'll let you know your preliminary allocation in the week commencing 20th May 2024 once final testing is complete.

Offer holders will receive a confirmation email once the allocation process has completed.

We're very sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused, and want to offer assurance that you'll receive your preliminary college allocation in the week commencing 20th May 2024.

2024 Entry

Once you have received an academic offer from Durham you will have the opportunity to rank your college preferences. 

Your college preferences and college allocation have no reflection on your academic application to Durham.

Steps to Take

• Receive your academic offer from Durham
• Receive communication with a link to the UG Applicant Portal
• Rank all 16 college preferences - from 1 as your first to 16 as your final preference

Your college preferences are considered as part of the allocation process. We do our best to try and allocate you a place in your preferred college, although this cannot be guaranteed.

You can alter your preferences at any point up until the allocation process begins. We will consider your latest ranked preferences.

The allocation process is to due to commence in the week commencing 20th May 2024.

If you receive an academic offer to study at Durham after the allocation process has begun, you will have a 14 day deadline from when your offer was made to rank your preferences. As soon as you complete this, the process will allocate you the next working day.

The allocation process takes into account:

• Your ranked college preferences
• The number of students from each department

These two factors are considered to finalise a college allocation. For details on how we allocate students to colleges see here.

Your college allocation is preliminary. If your place at Durham is confirmed, your final college allocation will be confirmed shortly after.

After you have received your preliminary college allocation, you will be contacted to apply for University accommodation. All new first year undergraduates will be guaranteed an offer of accommodation from the University, providing you submit the Undergraduate Accommodation Form by Friday 12 July 2024.

If you do not apply for accommodation by the deadline you will not be guaranteed to receive an offer of accommodation from the University.

See here for further information on applying for University accommodation.

The University will try to make sure that you are kept with your original preliminary college allocation but it should be understood that this may not be possible in all cases. For details on college confirmation following A-Level Results please see here.