Originally published 2018, updated July 2026
I’m often asked how exactly SST’s enrolment process works, and it’s a fair question, because there’s more going on behind the scenes than most people expect. So I thought it was time to explain it properly, from the moment enrolment opens to the moment your course place is confirmed.
As a general rule, roughly a third of each new intake studies with us from outside the UK, from New Zealand to Nova Scotia, so fairness across time zones has always mattered to us. Because we take students strictly in the order they enrol, we have to make sure that fairness holds true wherever in the world you happen to be, not just for those of us here in the UK.
Why Enrolment Opens at 10am Your Time, Not Ours
This is the part people find most surprising: enrolment does not open at a single fixed moment in the UK. It opens for you at 10am your own local time, whichever time zone you are in. That has been true of our enrolment process for years, and it remains one of the fairest ways we know to give every student, wherever they are based, an equal chance at a place.
How Our Enrolment Portal Works Today
The way we deliver that fairness has changed for the better. In the past, it relied on a fairly elaborate system: a cookie hidden inside an enrolment email that read the date and time on your computer and quietly unlocked a special enrolment page once your own 10am arrived. It worked, but it also meant hunting for the right email at the right moment, which was not always straightforward if you were juggling time zones, browser tabs, and a bit of enrolment day nerves.
We have since simplified things considerably. The Enrolment Portal now lives permanently in the main menu of our website, so there is no email link to search for and nothing that expires. It reads the date and time from your own browser, so course listings and enrol now buttons appear automatically the moment it turns 10am wherever you are, and the page refreshes itself, so you do not need to keep reloading to check.
Although you no longer need to express your interest in order to get an invite to enrolment, it’s a still a really good idea. When you register your interest, we’ll send you a course brochure and lots of detailed information about the courses, studying from a distance and how we support you throughout your creative journey. You’ll also get exclusive access to artist interviews and graduate stories.
Exclusive interviews with leading textile artists. Read them all here.
Following 10am Around the World
Because of this, enrolment day is really more of an enrolment 24 hours for us. The first place to reach 10am is usually New Zealand, around 12 hours ahead of the UK depending on daylight saving. From there it moves through Australia’s three time zones, on to Saudi Arabia three hours ahead, and much of Europe an hour ahead, before it finally reaches 10am here in the UK. After that, the day rolls on across the Atlantic to Canada and the United States, with the furthest reaches of Canada seeing their 10am up to nine hours after ours.
What Happens After You Apply
Once your enrolment application is in, our team gets to work. We put every application into time order and then confirm each place with our payment provider, Stripe, which now also allows students to pay by Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal, as well as by card, whichever suits you best.
It is entirely normal for students to enrol on more than one course. We only count students rather than course places against our numbers, but out of courtesy we will always check with you first, just in case you meant to enrol on one course rather than two.
Because we keep our cohorts small enough for every student to get proper one to one attention from their tutor, places on each course are limited.
As the list grows longer, things naturally slow down while we wait to hear back from anyone we need to check details with.
When You’ll Hear From Us
Once enrolment closes, we let everyone know whether they have secured a place, and for those who have, we share their course start date.
That’s always my favourite part. After a genuinely busy stretch, hearing how excited our new students are to begin never gets old. For many, it is the start of an entirely new creative chapter, and sometimes the beginning of a career, or simply a love affair with textiles that will bring them joy for years to come. It remains a privilege to help our students get there, and by the time one enrolment finishes, we are already looking forward to welcoming the next.
We look forward to meeting our new students.
Gail
Ready to Register Your Interest?
If you have not yet registered your interest in a course, take a look at the courses we currently have available. sofst.org/register-your-interest
