Applicants to study

The Privacy Notice for Applicants to Study should be read in conjunction with the overall Privacy Notice.

This section of the Privacy Notice applies to individuals from the point at which they apply to the University for admission through to accepting an offer to study and up to enrolment.

Within this document, the term ‘applicant’ refers to individuals who have submitted an application for admission to the University and individuals who have received or received and accepted an offer of a place from the University.

Once you become an enrolled student with the University your data will be processed in accordance with the privacy notices relating to Students.

Sources of Data

The personal data the University holds about you is obtained from a number of sources, including the following:

  • Information you have provided when making enquiries to the University or as part of recruitment events.
  • Information you have provided on your application form as part of the admissions process (including applications made via a third party such as UCAS or recruitment agencies).
  • Information from referees.
  • Information from Colleges where articulation allows for advanced entry into University of Stirling degree courses
  • Information you have provided to a third party noting your interest in the University of Stirling.

What Personal Data we process about you

A full description of the categories of personal data that we process about you can be found in Record of Processing Activities – Student Data (including applicants and alumni). Examples are name, gender, date of birth, contact details, education and training, applicant number, and information about your family, lifestyle and social circumstances.

Where you have provided it, information held may also include special categories of personal information, information on any criminal convictions you have declared and information on protected characteristics required to fulfil the University’s equality duties such as ethnicity and religious beliefs and health information.

Purposes of Processing

The University is required to process the personal data it collects about you for the purposes of administering the application process. This includes:

  • Communicating with you regarding the progress of your application
  • Providing information about your course
  • Providing information about the University and its facilities such as accommodation
  • Giving you information about what you need to know in advance of coming to University, for instance, how to enrol
  • When required, putting in place appropriate support prior to coming to the University
  • Providing useful information about the services or scholarships at the University in order to help you make an informed decision

Legal Basis for Processing Your Personal Data

The law provides a number of bases on which Data Controllers such as the University can legitimise their processing activities. As part of the recruitment, application and admissions process the University requires to process your personal data in a number of different ways and legitimise its processing activities on a variety of lawful bases. We have set out in our Legal Justification for Processing Student Records (including applicants and alumni) how we legitimise each processing activity. However, the majority of our processing activities in relation to your personal data will be on the following grounds:

To fulfil the Student Contract

If you choose to accept an offer to become a student of the University you are required to accept our student terms and conditions and this acceptance results in a contract being formed between you and the University. As part of the application process, the University is gathering the information needed prior to entering into that contract. Once you are a student, we process your personal data where this is necessary for the performance of the student contract between you and the University. Examples include processing personal data to deliver the educational programme to you, dealing with absence management and disciplinary actions, providing you with student accommodation and administering the financial aspects of studying e.g. payment of fees, grants, loans etc. If you do not provide us with this information and allow us to process it as envisaged in this document, we may not be able to deliver the requested service to you.

Compliance with a Legal Obligation

Sometimes we need to process your personal data to comply with a legal obligation on us. An example of this is monitoring compliance with equality legislation under the Equality Act 2010.

Sharing your personal data with other bodies

As part of the application process the University may disclose applicant's personal data to third parties, the main categories of bodies that we may disclose your personal data to are:-

  1. The Home Office - If you are planning to study at the University on a visa you must comply with the terms of your visa and with all the University's requirements arising from our duties and obligations as a Home Office sponsor licence holder. Where a student requires a visa, we share information with UKVI to raise a Confirmation of Acceptance which includes information about passport details, proposed study, English Language level and other information. The University is required to report to the Home Office details of students subject to immigration control who fail to enrol, who discontinue their studies, where their expected end date has changed or who fail to maintain contact with the University.
  2. Other Educational Institutions – if your proposed study involves another educational institution, we may need to transfer some of your personal data to that party.
  3. Our Service Providers – we use service providers to store or in some cases process personal data on our behalf. In particular the University uses a company called QS Enrolment Solutions Ltd to manage communications to enquirers and applicants to provide information to prospective students and to offer support during the enquiry and application process to help applicants make an informed choice.
  4. If we are under a duty to disclose your personal data to a third party in order to comply with any legal or regulatory request.

When we share your personal data with a third party as set out above or as referred to within our Record of Processing Activities – Student Data (including applicants and alumni), in some cases, in particular to our use of Cloud based facilities (for instance Office 365 used for file storage and Mailchimp used for communication) or in relation to overseas exchanges, these may involve a transfer of personal data to a recipient outside of the European Economic Area and located within a country that may not be viewed as having adequate data protection laws by the European Commission. All international transfers will be in accordance with applicable data protection laws including UK GDPR. We will make sure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your information and your rights under privacy law and apply the same high standards of privacy and security wherever we process your data.

Retention of your personal data

The University will store data relating to your application and are committed to treating data appropriately. The data retention schedules relating to admissions and student records provide information about how data is stored by Admissions and Access on behalf of the University. Where an item of your data no longer requires to be retained, we shall securely remove it from our systems. If you enrol as a student of the University, some items of your personal data will be retained on a permanent basis. This is in order to ensure that the University can maintain an appropriate permanent archive of degrees and credit awarded and provide services to graduates/former students such as for replacement degree certificates.

Contact details relating to applicant data

If you want further information about how your personal information is used as part of the admissions process or would like to request to correct, restrict or erase personal details you should contact: