Privacy notice for applicants

Your Personal Data

The University of Glasgow will be what’s known as the ‘Controller’ of the personal data you provide to us as part of the application process for study at the University. This privacy notice will explain how The University of Glasgow will process your personal data.

Why we need it

We need to collect your basic personal data in order to facilitate and manage your application for study at the University of Glasgow. We will not collect any personal data from you that we do not need in order to provide and oversee this service to you.

Legal basis for processing your data

We must have a legal basis for processing all personal data. The processing described in the section above is necessary for the performance of the student contract or it is in the legitimate interests of the University and of the data subject (you). 

What we do with it

All the personal data is processed by University staff in the United Kingdom:

  • Your data will be processed by University staff whose roles include pre-registration duties.
  • Your data will be processed in order to assess your application for admission, consider you for fee discounts/funding and in order to inform you of updates to your application status.
  • In addition, we will also send you additional communications covering areas we believe to be of interest and importance to you while making your decision to study at the University of Glasgow. This is to fulfil our pre-contractual obligation of informing you of all relevant information pertaining to study at the University throughout your application journey until registration. You can opt out of these additional communications at any time. For full details can be found at External Relations privacy notices
  • Your data will only be processed for purposes relevant to the administering your application and will not be shared with any third parties with the following limited exceptions:
    1. If your application is submitted through a University of Glasgow approved agent, and you have entered the required Agent Code in the Source of Information page, then your data will be shared with this agent.
    2. If you have supplied a referees contact details within the form on submission we will contact them with limited information about you to request they submit a reference.   If you have uploaded a reference we may contact the referee to clarify information.  We may ask a referee to verify information you have provided to us where relevant.
    3. In cases where University staff responsible for admissions decisions are not satisfied that an academic document is genuine, we will check the authenticity of the academic document with either the awarding body or the UK National Academic Recognition Information Centre (UK NARIC). In such cases, and in order to verify authenticity only a copy of the actual academic document will be shared.
    4. All language test results are verified online using the test provider’s document ID number.  For some test providers, your date of birth will also be used in order to verify your language test scores.
    5. If you require a Tier 4 student visa to study in the UK, then your data will be shared with UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) in order to create a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies (CAS).
    6. We may provide such information (including copies of the documents provided by you) to the applicable UK or Scottish governmental authority (for example, UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) or Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)) as may be requested under applicable legislation.
    7. We may provide access to such information (including copies of the documents provided by you) to our external auditors when relevant.
    8. We may provide your contact details to external organisations who collate postal mailings for the University.  These postal mailings will be related to your application specifically from the University of Glasgow and the external organisation will not store your data.
    9. If your application is to an International Masters programme then your data will be shared with the relevant partner institutions listed on the programme pages
    10. If you have applied for an online programme taught in partnership with Wiley Education Service we will share your details with Wiley Education Service.  Wiley Education Service will only use your data for the purposes of your application and study to the University of Glasgow.
    11. We may provide your basic personal data to Uniquest, who act on our behalf to manage enquiries, to nurture and track from application stage to enrolment, contacting students directly UniQuest will process your data in order to contact you, advise regarding your application, and communicate information regarding the University. We contract with UniQuest to act as data processors on our behalf. They only perform activities explicitly expressed by us. UniQuest will process your data in accordance with GDPR and their data privacy statement: UniQuestdata privacy statement.
    12. We may invite you to participate in surveys during the application process for quality monitoring purposes. Your participation is optional and voluntary. We will aggregate and anonymise the survey responses to improve our recruitment and admissions services. Our surveys will be managed through www.qualtrics.com

      View Qualtrics privacy policy

Automated decision making processes

We do not use automated decision-making, except in cases where it is necessary to process deferral requests. To manage offer deferrals, the University may use an automation to process your personal data. Automated deferral processing uses algorithms or computer programs to make decisions without human intervention. Relevant data for processing your offer deferral will be held in UiPath Automation Cloud which encrypts data using AES 256 encryption. Data stored on UiPath Automation Cloud will be deleted after 120 days by an automated process.

In some limited cases we may use profiling in order to comply with government regulations for example around the Scottish Government widening access requirements.

What are your rights?

You can request access to the information we process about you at any time. If at any point you believe that the information we process relating to you is incorrect, you can request to see this information and to have it corrected. You also have the right to request data portability.

Complaints

If at any point you believe that the information we process relating to you is incorrect, you can request to see this information and have it corrected or deleted. You also have the right to data portability. If you wish to exercise these rights, please contact dp@gla.ac.uk.

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact our Data Protection Officer who will investigate the matter.  Our Data Protection Officer can be contacted at dataprotectionofficer@glasgow.ac.uk.

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).