DDs dreams in tatters

^^mwahahahaha

Or, as my dd, who's reading philosophy, says gloomily when considering her future employment "Why do you want fries with that?"

Tell her to start practising "would you like fries with that?"

Bummer.

Dd wants to do physio at Cardiff . 18% of applicants get offers

Hard numbers cap because it's funded by the NHS.

The fees for students from the UK and European Union are paid by the Welsh Government - who commission around 90 trainee physiotherapists each year - and you will also be eligible for a non means-tested bursary of £1,000 and possibly up to a further £5,000 in means-tested bursaries.

That Which link is interesting
Dd wants to do physio at Cardiff . 18% of applicants get offers

Oh it'll be considerably different in 10 years time to how it is today!

Of course she'd get an offer
Why do you think that....its not what they said at the open day

See here 87% of applicants to the MEng course get offers

*mine

As you can tell, I wasn't 80s .

So basically right grades in right subjects and unless you are after medicine etc you should get a full clutch of offers. Shall be filing that one away for 10 years' time when in reach that stage

But most of us went through the system in the 80s/90s/00s complete with stats on how universities had x applications for every place and sixth form tutors who pushed the personal statement and having something to fill it with.

Well, for a start off for most of the 1980s there weren't any personal statements. In passing, does anyone know when they arrived? I suspect with the merger of UCCA and PCAS in the early 1990s, but I don't know. I have a copy of my UCCA form so I can tell you precisely what the form contained then.

If you think about it, the way the application process works means that the system is in balance with five applications per place, because there are five slots on the form. There are vast numbers of courses at Oxbridge which have nothing like five applicants per place, because fewer people make speculative applications there (most applicants are qualified). There are more than five qualified applicants per place for some RG courses but, as someone has said upthread, sadly a lot of applicants are not remotely qualified, so the number of courses which need to do more than make offers to everyone that has the right predicted grades is smaller than you think. And as of the last few years, the consequences of over-recruiting have been softened, so there really is no reason to not make offers to qualified applicants. There are departments so over-subscribed that they need to make finer judgements, but they are very rare (and, returning to the root of this debate, I'd be astounded if CS outside the obvious four places is amongst them).

D of E is not worth that much apparently, some universities disregard it.

Are there any universities which don't disregard it? As Bertrand says, super-curriculars might be relevant (especially if you've missed your offer by a grade and someone's deciding on Wednesday morning before results Thursday whether to let you in) but the rest? When would it be considered?

I'm sure it doesn't need saying, but extra curricular things, unless they are absolutely relevant to the course, carry no weight at all. And rightly so.

I think that they may be quite keen to get girls onto computer science courses. Surely a combination of approaches would be a good idea: apply this year including Warwick (can you apt for the BSc and MEng?) along with a variety of other universities including a couple of safe bets. See what offers she gets and choose a firm and insurance from them. Then review in light of A2 grades and reapply with a gap year if that works better than her taking the place she gets. Do look carefully at whether deferred entry is discouraged.

And definitely look at building resilience.

Well I don't think we think that

But most of us went through the system in the 80s/90s/00s complete with stats on how universities had x applications for every place and sixth form tutors who pushed the personal statement and having something to fill it with. In my era, most of my friends didn't get six offers (or five given Oxbridge was always more hit and miss ) even if straight A students.

We were taught to think it was very much like a job application - you had to sell yourself.

D of E is not worth that much apparently, some universities disregard it.

pneumo!

I must say I didn't realise that it was no longer so competitive to get an offer.

And it never was, for the vast majority of courses. It's only in MN land that admissions tutors are sat up at three in the morning pondering the relative merits of Silver DofE and Grade VII trumpet.

Glad my ignorance helped bring out some clarifications on the changes.

Making a fool of myself so others don't have to since 2007.

I thought it was a lottery, even if you met the published requirements

Hence, I suspect, the over-concern.

If you apply for courses where you comfortably meet the published criteria, including the "most successful candidates..." stuff you will get an offer or an offer of an interview (medicine or wildly over-subscribed stuff at Oxbridge excluded). If you apply sensibly there is absolutely no reason why you won't get five offers/interviews, as most well-advised candidates do. Were it a lottery then well-prepared candidates would routinely be turned down; they aren't.

A department which rejected students who were predicted the standard offer would do so at its diversity peril, too, unless it could very clearly articulate the criteria it was using. If it has some other objective criteria, it should publish it. If it doesn't have objective criteria, what is it using to make decisions? That's why claims that there are secret handshakes for getting offers are not credible: a department that did this (which would be hard, given central admissions doing most of the work) would be challenged.

Do you meet the published criteria? Then you'll get an offer. That's pretty much the end of the conversation.

AAA is bloody good and she will have plenty of choice. Celebrate her good grades and help her to find a good university, there are plenty out there who will snap her up.

I would be encouraging my child to look at all the options as you never know what life is going to throw at you. There is always more than one option in this kind of circumstance and you should encourage her to understand this.
Working hard and doing the best she can do is important but having a back up plan in case things don't work out exactly as you hope is also important, as well as understanding it's not the be all and end all of things if life throws you a curve ball.
I am a perfect example of this I got glandular fever whilst doing my a-levels and meant I effectively slept through a chunk of crucial time as I was very ill. I had to resit some exams which was a hard decision BUT I did well and ended up going to a fab highly rated university. Unfortunately I was struck down with a lifelong disease (which I now know has links with GF) in my second year, I had to take a bit of a break in my studies whilst I adjusted and had some aggressive treatment.... I went back to it and ultimately did very well. Life threw me some serious curve balls and I had to learn to adjust to non perfect circumstances very quickly but once qualified I was the youngest in my year group to be offered a directorship and became an international expert in my specialism. The route to how I got here really didn't matter in fact it probably helped with my success as I learnt a lot on the way that made me stronger.

Things have changed since a whole pile of family went through it 4 years ago.

There have been substantial changes to student funding since 4 years ago. Crucially, there is no penalty on "over" recruitment.

So there is no competition for places such that almost identical students have to be decided between?

Two good students who meet the entry requirements? Offer to them both. Nice problem to have.

For CS at a mainstream RG university I bet that almost all their admissions are done centrally; certainly that's true generally. Everyone who meets a fairly coarse set of requirements given by the department to the central admissions team will be made an offer, and if they meet the offer, fine. The only exceptions will be courses that are wildly over-subscribed (CS isn't one of them, generally) or where there is a hard cap on numbers (NHS funded stuff, for example). The only time when the overall application might come into play would be when offers are missed and someone has to decide if they're worth having even having missed their main offer.

Thanks for the explanation (I didn't mean just four years ago, some were a year or two before. I remember that year was brutal).

Gosh. So sort the grades and subjects and most people will be offered. How things change

I agree with Pneumo (and wonder if we work at same place?).

Think you are over reacting somewhat, obv not all applicants are given an offer but the predicted grads and AS results are just one of several things considered (including rec, personal statement and interview poss too). If all the rest fit then the d is no reason not to offer, normally the standard offer for the course that will either be met or not.