Flexible grade offers

[1234Littleham]

Is this likely to be followed by other universities?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35550788

[boys3]

for the majority of recruiting universities I would imagine yes. For the truly selective ones no.

[What2]

I've just referenced this thread on another thread on negotiating offers (I can't remember the title and I'm on my phone). Good for Reading for having a transparent admissions policy.

[What2]

Boys There are plenty of stories (true ones!) where students have been admitted on courses at the very top Universities despite missing their offers.

[boys3]

what2 anecdotes do not translate into "plenty" of actual students though. Of course it happens but in percentage terms it is a very, very low proportion

[What2]

I just had a quick google..

Here is a timely quote in a BBC article on inflated predicted grades dated 4th Feb

Prof Michael Arthur, provost and president of University College London, said that his institution's standard offer is one A* grade and two As or three A grades, adding that last year, "we did drop down one grade for about 9% or so of students that we admitted".

9% is plenty isn't it.

[bruffin]

Boys
On resukts day this year i heard from friends abd dc friends of people missing offers and being accepted a lot of them RG.My ds was given an AAB offer to an RG when the standard offer is A*AA. He didnt go with it but had an AAA offer from else where and was accepted with ABB.

[disquit2]

Reading's policy is mostly to generate publicity.

In practice most universities outside the top 10 are taking grades lower than their published offers for the vast majority of subjects (leaving aside a few very-oversubscribed courses). Reading are simply admitting this upfront.

I don't think universities which are higher in the league tables will copythis, as they won't want to encourage students to be relaxed about dropping grades. In other words, while in practice even high ranked universities are taking 10% of students with one or more grade dropped, they don't want that percentage to be increased further - they want as many as possible coming in with the published grade offer.

Unconditionals and Reading's policy are primarily gimmicks to attract students, as is Bristol's contextual policy. (The latter gives lower offers to pupils from schools which are below average, many of which are not sufficiently low achieving to meet most universities' criteria for contextual offers.)

BTW I don't think Reading's policy is completely transparent, because in practice they are still going to have to take more than one grade dropped i.e. they haven't admitted what they will actually take in clearing.

[bruffin]

What counts as the top 10?

[disquit2]

Top ten is not sharply defined, but roughly top ten according to the overall university ranking in league tables. However it clearly depends on subject.

I.e. places such as Imperial are not dropping grade requirements or entering clearing for any subjects but other very highly regarded universities such as UCL (which is top ten overall) are (as stated above) allowing one dropped grade in some cases but not entering clearing. On the other hand, a lot of RG universities are in clearing for a number of subjects, and clearly accepting one or two grades down on their published offers for these subjects.

The AAB offer for that A*AA course is (I think) the lowest offer they will accept, and is an offer they sometimes give to people who are re-applying after missing grades.

[1234Littleham]

Thanks. Seems that you mostly think that these offers are a combination of quite clever marketing with some realism creeping in. It will be interesting to see if anyone else follows suit.