Graduate Prospectus Copy Call for September 2026 prospectus moved forward

The copy call process for the 2026/27 Graduate Prospectus will take place earlier than usual this year. The window for colleagues to complete the exercise will run from Monday 19^th May to Friday 18^th July 2025. This is around two months earlier than normal. 

Why?   

The decision has been made to move the exercise forward to allow the Graduate Prospectus to be published earlier, aiming at late August rather than in October. This will bring us in line with other leading universities and increase student recruitment, by targeting highly qualified candidates active early in the cycle and giving more time for conversion. 

What are the benefits?  

By publishing the Graduate Prospectus earlier, the new course page links will have longer to climb the search rankings and to gain interest from applicants, which provides more organic traffic to the webpages and generates more organic leads. The VPEE team trialled this by launching the postgraduate advertising campaign six weeks earlier in 2024 and generated an additional 2500 leads, and the earlier launch of the prospectus will be even more impactful.  Given that the change requires no expenditure, it is as an extremely cost-effective way to potentially maximise or increase student recruitment. 

In addition, moving the exercise earlier also carries operational benefits for several teams involved with the implementation of CourseLoop, the new Curriculum Information Management (CIM) system. CourseLoop testing and training is expected to take place throughout September, October and November with the system going live in early December. Therefore, it will be easier for these teams to run and participate in essential testing and training if colleagues do not need to dedicate their time to the copy call, which will have instead already have concluded. 

Additional information 

While this may cause some disruption to usual resourcing schedules, the benefits are clear and the change is backed by Katja Lamping, Director of Student Recruitment, as well as by multiple Faculties who requested the date be moved forward.  

The change is being discussed and planned for via a recently established working group, made up of representatives from all impacted stakeholder teams.  

It is also worth noting that there is no change to the copy call exercise itself; just the window in which it is completed. An exception to this is that entry requirements will no longer appear in the copy call process (see below). The new process for this will be communicated shortly. 

Next steps 

The VPEE Marcomms team will meet with Faculty staff involved with the copy call exercise to run through the process and signpost to where support will be available. There will also be the usual copy call kick-off workshop, followed by regular check-ins throughout the copy call window. 

Once the exercise is complete in mid-July, guidance will be issued in relation to the follow-up actions required from teams. This will also be discussed at working group meetings in May and July. 

In the meantime, please click here to access the FAQs for more information. 

Contact details for further information: vpee.publications@ucl.ac.uk