RGS Higher Education Handbook

Higher Education Evening 2024 Guide

Our Higher Education Evening Guide  is now available for download.

For a quick-start introduction to the Careers programme, please see these presentations produced by the Careers Department, including including last year's Higher Education Convention, applying for apprenticeships, applying to US universities, Mike Nicholson, Director of Undergraduate Admissions & Outreach at University of Cambridge on How to Make Yourselves Excellent University Candidates; and many other talks on a wide variety of career areas.

This handbook is designed to provide students at Reigate Grammar School and their parents with information and advice about going on to Higher Education. The handbook was created and is maintained by Mr Reid, and its content was written by Mr Reid and Mr Buzzacott. If you have a question about its content, please contact Mr Buzzacott, and if you have a question about the handbook itself (e.g. if a link doesn’t work) please contact Mr Reid.

No guide to higher education can hope to be comprehensive, and this handbook is no different; students and parents will need to do their own research. This handbook is simply an attempt to put as much useful information as possible in one easily accessible location. If you notice anything important that’s missing, or you think of something that ought to be included, please contact Mr Reid.



Not all of our students will choose to go to university, and we aim to offer those students the same level of support that we offer to those that do. However, it is worth bearing in mind that only a handful of our students every year choose not to go to university, and therefore our experience is limited. AllAboutSchoolLeavers and NotGoingToUni are the best places for students to start looking for ideas.

Degree Apprenticeships and Sponsored Degrees

The Good Schools Guide has produced a guide to Degree Apprenticeships and a good list of Degree Apprenticeship opportunities.

Degree Apprenticeships are aimed mainly at school leavers. Students can choose these in addition to their five university choices, but they apply to companies directly, not through UCAS. They are a combination of work-based learning and studying for a degree, and students finish with a degree, considerable work experience, and often no debt.

Student Finance

With regards to their chosen apprenticeship, students should research pay and whether tuition fees are paid, particularly as students studying degree apprenticeships are not eligible for student loans.

Degree apprenticeships are very different from a typical university experience; students are often at university when other students are not, and they are likely to miss out on the social side of university life to a significant degree. A full list of companies involved is available from GOV.UK in their press release, but the main sectors covered so far are:

The types of apprenticeships that RGS students are most likely to be interested in are Level 4‑6 (Foundation to Bachelors level) courses. In 2015 the number of students who started Higher or Degree Apprenticeships was around 1100, compared with nearly 202 000 who started degree courses. However, the number of applicants and the number of opportunities are both growing, partly because of high university fees, partly because employers are increasingly seeing the value of training their staff from age 18, and partly because of the Apprenticeship Levy, which companies have to pay, but which they receive an even bigger rebate for if they commit to creating high-quality apprenticeships.

It is very important that students look closely at which university is providing the degree, exactly which qualification they will graduate with, and how time spent studying and working is split up. The degree apprenticeships programme is new (nobody has yet completed a degree apprenticeship), and whilst many of them look like excellent opportunities and guarantee a job at the end, we don't know how transferrable the qualifications achieved will be.

Sponsored Degrees

Sponsored degrees are school leaver schemes which focus on the fact that students get a degree as part of the programme. Students are often treated as full employees of the company, and receive a salary. The programmes are usually linked to a particular university, and university fees are often paid. Students will sometimes be guaranteed a job at the end of their degree with the company sponsoring them.

There is a huge variety in how sponsored degrees work. In some cases students spend most of their time at the company, perhaps spending one day per week at university, or attending university in week-long sessions; and in other cases the experience is fairly similar to a normal university experience, with large amounts of work experience during the holiday periods. Students must check very carefully what they are signing-up for.

AllAboutSchoolLeavers has more information about sponsored degrees and NotGoingToUni lists many available courses.

Our guide to degree apprenticeships and sponsored degrees has lots more information.

School Leaver Schemes

Hundreds of companies across the UK run school leaver schemes, including prestigious companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, BDO and EY (previously known as Ernst & Young).

The Milkround website’s school leaver section lists more school leaver schemes in one place than any other website, and the Pure Potential website offers lots of advice regarding school leaver schemes, including pages that dispel some myths and explain the pros and cons.

The Careers Department provides advice and guidance on courses and universities, and guides students through the applications process. If students or parents have any questions they should contact the Careers Department via the links below. The careers department is also on Twitter: @RGSCareers.

There is a huge amount of help and information available in our online Higher Education Handbook: https://t.co/NYR66exm3Q

— RGSCareers (@RGSCareers) March 14, 2018

Who’s Who

Mr Buzzacott is the Head of Careers, and he is assisted by Ms Anderson, Mr Nicholson, Miss Vaughan, Mr Ward and Mr Reid. Mrs Budden is our Oxbridge Coordinator and Ms Wilson is the department’s Administrative Assistant.