What I Built on UniApplyForMe This Month (March to April 2026)

It has been a productive month on UniApplyForMe. Four things shipped that are worth knowing about.

Bursary reminders

Missing a bursary deadline because you did not know it had opened is one of the most preventable problems in the application process. Students find a bursary, see it is not open yet, make a mental note to check back, and then forget. That bursary closes without them.

Bursaries that are not open yet now have a Remind Me button. Students enter their name and email, confirm via a verification email, and get notified automatically the moment the bursary opens. No manual checking. No relying on someone else to share it in time.

The 2027 EY CA Stream Bursary is one of the bursaries currently available for reminders.

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Faster load times

A large portion of UniApplyForMe traffic comes from students on mobile data. Slow pages are not just an inconvenience — they cost people real money and push them away before they have seen what is available. Performance has been on the list for a while. This month, we got into it properly.

Mobile

FCP: ~1 second
LCP: under 3 seconds

Desktop

FCP: ~0.3 seconds
LCP: under 3 seconds

There is still room to improve. We will keep at it.

Application status on university pages

When a student lands on a university page, the first question is always the same: Are applications open? That answer used to require reading through the page to find it. Now it is the first thing they see.

Every university page now shows a status pill at the top: Applications Open, Opening Soon, or Applications Closed. One glance and the student knows where they stand. Small change, real difference — especially for students applying to multiple institutions at the same time.

Vault: secure document collection

When I work directly with students through the assisted application process, I need to collect documents and personal information from them. ID copies, matric results, proof of income. Sensitive stuff that should not be floating around in email threads or Google Form submissions.

I built Vault to handle this properly. It generates a secure link I can share with a student. They submit everything in one place, their information stays controlled, and neither of us has to pretend that emailing ID documents is a reasonable way to operate. It is still early, but it is already a significantly better way of working.

Students trust UniApplyForMe with information that matters. The infrastructure around that information should reflect that trust.

Up next

• More bursary listings are getting the ‘Remind Me’ feature.
• Continued performance work across mobile and desktop
• Improving the university pages for first-time applicants who do not know where to start

If you have feedback on anything — the site, these features, or what you wish UniApplyForMe did that; it currently does not — I want to hear it.