Privacy notice for applicants

What information does the university collect?

Information held about you may include:

• Your name, contact information such as address, email address and telephone number, as well as your date of birth, country of domicile and your nationality. If you are an overseas student, we also collect information about your passport and visa.
• Information relating to your education and employment history, the school(s), sixth form college(s) and other colleges or universities you have attended and places where you have worked, the courses you have completed, dates of study and examination results.
• Information used to contact you or your next of kin in case of an emergency.
• Information about your family or personal circumstances, and both academic and extracurricular interests, for example where this is relevant to the assessment of your suitability to receive a bursary.
• Financial information collected for the purposes of administering fees and charges, loans, grants, studentships and financial support.
• If you enrol as a student, your data will be processed in accordance with the student privacy notice.

The university also needs to collect and process personal ‘special categories of data’ including:

• your health and disabilities, to provide support and enable access to university services and to determine course suitability
• gender preference
• previous criminal convictions, before a place can be offered on certain programmes.

You can access the data we have about you by logging into Student View and viewing the information you have submitted.

If you need to update your personal data at any point prior to enrolment you can call us on 01273 646444 or send us a message.

Why do we collect your data?

We collect and process your information in order to process your application, assess your suitability to attend one of our courses, and communicate with you about decisions on your application, and about preparing for university.

We also have a duty to report to statutory authorities on data such as the qualifications our applicants enter university with.

We may collect your personal data in a number of ways, for example:

• When you apply to study with us and complete application forms via the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), an international recruitment agent or feeder college or when you complete other admissions processes and procedures. See also UCAS privacy policy.
• From third parties, for example from your previous or current school, sixth form college, university or employers who may provide a reference about you or who may sponsor your studies.

How your data is held?

Your personal data is held within our university records database and accessed by staff within the admissions department in Academic Registry and by admissions staff within the academic school. It will also be held within Student CRM which is the system used to send our communications to applicants and facilitate bookings for applicant days and will be accessed by the university staff that manage these processes and systems.

Once you have received an offer from us, your data is added to some additional systems used to send you news and information about being a student, opportunities to meet your fellow students, and preparing for university. Further information at Privacy notice for prospective students.

How we track our emails

Our emails may contain a single pixel to tell us whether our emails are opened, which device is used to view the email and verify any clicks through to links within the email.

We may use this information for purposes including determining which of our emails are more interesting to prospective students and to ensure our emails are optimized for different devices.

The pixel will be deleted when you delete the email. If you do not wish the pixel to be downloaded to your device, you can disable image loading in your email client.

Who has access to data?

The university may share your data with a number of internal departments as part of the normal processing of your application. This may include:

• If you tell us about a disability, this information is shared with the Disability and Learning Support team, who contact you to find out about your support needs.
• If you are an international applicant we will share data with our international student support team so they can invite you to additional events/activities during the enrolment period.
• If you have applied for a place in university managed accommodation we may share data about the status of your application with the accommodation services.
• If you are from a group that is considered to be under-represented in Higher Education, we will share your data with colleagues directly concerned with widening participation at the university.

The university may disclose certain personal information to external organisations to carry out our legal responsibilities, functions and manage our operations or because you asked us to. These may include:

• Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
• Relevant government departments (eg Home Office, including UK Visas and Immigration, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Department of Health. Department of Education)
• Office for Students (OFS)
• Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS)
• Office for Fair Access (OFFA)
• Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA)
• Student Loans Company (SLC) and other loan and grant providers e.g. US Federal Loans, Canadian Loans, Channel Islands Government
• Relevant professional or statutory regulatory bodies and other course accrediting organisations, which could include representatives of course delivery partners on interview panels
• University of Sussex if you are a BSMS student – See BSMS - Privacy policy 
• Local authorities to administer council tax and for electoral registration
• Health trusts or private companies contracted to provide occupational health assessments
• The police and other law enforcement agencies
• Auditors
• Your sponsors or international agent, where a contract exists
• The providers of any external learning or training placements
• Library services, including access to online resources and dyslexia support
• Third parties who work with us to provide student accommodation
• Your parents/guardian if you are under 18 years old.

We will not normally disclose any other personal information about you to other external organisations without your consent unless it is in your vital interests to do so (for example an emergency situation).

How long we will keep your data?

The university keeps personal data for as long as it is needed for the purpose for which it was originally collected. We will normally keep applicant data for one year after the end of the recruitment cycle in which you applied, though if you become a student your data will be kept according to the institutional retention schedule (.xlsx).

Whether providing personal data is a statutory or contractual requirement and the consequences for failing to provide the data

We are processing your data as part of the contract we have with you.

The existence of automated decision making, including profiling, information about the logic involved, including the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject

We will not use your personal data for automated decision making or profiling about you as an individual.

Privacy notices

Changes to this notice

We keep our privacy notices under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated in February 2021.

Other privacy notices

We do our utmost to protect your privacy. Please be aware that other privacy notices exist within the university in respect of data held, including but not limited, to activities in relation to your enquiries, application, current students, alumni and use of our website.