JCQ and ofqual gcse grade warnings...

I doubt your DS would be applying to these courses, needmoresleep.

But that was my point. The standard offer may be AAA, but many candidates with AAA or better are being rejected. (DC was predicted AAAAA yet failed to gain a place at three of his top four choices.)

I don't think that they are taking weaker candidates. They may be taking some candidates with weaker grades. A specific example is the son of our fishmonger's assistant who benefited from a LSE outreach programme aimed at his poorly performing East London school. His GCSE/A grades were probably not stellar, but he has gone on to do research at another top London University, so I think it can be assumed that he was "good enough".

For the rest, it all depends on a paper sift. Given there may be 13 or more candidates for every place, most offering top grades, very small variations may make all the difference. Playing around with GCSE grades wont help.

I really do not see how the fact the standard offer is A*AA leads to a conclusion that there would be no British students on some of the more competitive courses if discrimination were not applied. DH got into Oxford on a EE offer (and a scholarship). No one, but no one has ever suggested this would imply he was less intelligent than his peers.

No-one is arguing that the British system is poor. The point is merely that some London courses are particularly attractive to certain sorts of EU candidates - ones with grades that are the equivalent of 5 A* - when the standard A-level offer is 3 As.

Hmmm. There are an awful lot of expats in Central London and there is a minority who clearly think that much about their home countries is better than in the UK. However few would try to argue that the British education system is so poor or that English kids so dim, that there are some courses that no UK students would be qualified for.

My point is that some courses are now so competitive that everyone struggles. And that anecdotally different groups put it down to discrimination of some form or other.

It is a University's interest to:
a. Not break the law
b. Select the students who will contribute most.

The amount of direct Government funding going into top Universities is now such a small proportion of the overall total that there is a limit to the extent Government wishes (assuming they too wished to break European law) would influence admissions policy.

There are courses at some London universities that are so popular with EU candidates of such high calibre that they would have no UK A-level students at all on them were discrimination selection criteria not applied.

Summerends, my impression partly gleaned from hearing the Director of a top flight University talk, was that the main priority is to maintain the world ranking. This is done by recruiting both the best academics and the best students that you can. Yes a desire to unearth some rough diamonds from poor performing state schools, who have the potential to do well and who will provide diversity. But beyond that they seem to be looking for straight intellectual horsepower.

If the French boy were cleverer and thus likely to contribute more I assume he would selected. The number of British students as a proportion of the student body is now quite low in places like Imperial and LSE.

Aside from Oxbridge I dont think many interview, especially for the quantitative subjects. Instead they seem to focus on UMS scores.

As far as I can tell, and purely anecdotally parents of state educated kids feel they are disadvantaged, parents of private school kids feel their children are increasingly discriminated against, and EU parents feel the bar is set higher for their children.

Leaving aside a suggestion that this is because Universities are filling seats with non EU rich but thick. (I suspect instead that international students will be very bright and very hardworking and set quite a fast pace which the others will need to keep up with. ) Instead I suspect that demand for EU places on top courses has risen dramatically. Fees mean that UK students have got more savvy about evaluating value for money whilst the internet and the increasing dominance of English means students elsewhere in the EU increasingly look to the UK for tertiary education, especially in quasi vocational subjects like engineering, finance and economics.

Places seem harder to get not because others are being considered more favourably but because demand has risen.

In parallel demand is sky rocketing at top US colleges. Its a tough world for these kids.

So to get back to the point. Anything on a paper application that suggests weakness is likely to hamper an application for a competitive course simply because there will be better candidates out there.

summerends
non PC it may be but true it certainly is
money talks
kids arrive from the gulf and the far east with fat wallets and thick brains
and the fact that the kids of top Chinese communist party members choose to go through ivy league incognito speaks volumes

BUT
more to the point : at the C/D boundary - algorithms rule "computer says no"

Needmoresleep I can understand that logic for universities that don't interview or request additional exams but it does n't make sense for those who get filtered by interview and STEP or whatever aptitude test.
Also this lack of equivalence between at least some European exams and A levels occurred as far back as the era of old style A levels.

Summerends, I am not sure it is as simple as that. Predictions for English students applying to the very popular courses, the sort of courses that appeal to upper class Parisians will normally exceed the standard AAA offer. (I'm thinking of Engineering or Economics at Oxbridge/London.) For whatever reason Universities seem reluctant to demand beyond this, though Cambridge is moving to AA*A offers for some courses and, along with Warwick, Bath and a small number of other Universities, demands STEP for maths and engineering courses. We know of one boy facing a demanding 5 A level offer from Imperial but that is the exception.

My best guess is that they don't want to raise the bar too high for those coming from weaker schools yet dont want to delve too deeply into the business of contextualisation

Instead Universities like Cambridge and LSE are turning down lots of very well qualified students with 3 or 4A* predictions. In contrast it may be that for French or International Bac they are using the exam system to sift candidates. Hence tougher offers.

They might be discriminating against EU students, but this would be illegal and students could appeal. However higher offers is not proof of this. Not when they are rejecting British candidates with 4xA* predictions or better.

Needmoresleep there does seem to be a lack of parity for EU students because the offers demand relatively higher marks in their final exams compared to A levels. Not dissimilar to the problems experienced by IB students for some courses.
Talkin your above phrase is pretty offensive to hard working overseas Asians who have won competitive university places independently of whether they pay more.

Takinpeace

Out of interest
what was the exam title and what was the exam board?

In the last ten years of teaching RM (using Edexcel, OCR and AQA) its always been 40% on the test.

Universities tend to have pupils from a particular year group all applying at the same time so they can apply the same expectations to them quite easily.

Employers don't. And if a kid from the class of 2009 has a grade B in maths then they might well get preference over the one from 2014 who has a C.

Bonsoir your bit of the UK (Paris) seems to follow quite different rules to the rest. In particular I am surprised at the implication from your posts that French students take GCSEs. I also assume that those entering UK Universities without GCSEs do so because they have different qualifications altogether. This is quite different from a student who has studied for GCSE and come out with rotten grades.

Where you are wrong is that it is harder for a French student to get offered a place than an English one. This would be illegal under EU law. What might happen is that French students are not getting the contextualised offers that some British students from poor performing state schools may be given. However it should not be any harder for a Parisian bankers son to get a place than the son of an equivalent London banker.

From your posts over the past few years it is clear that Parisians will only consider a very small number of highly regarded British Universities. British students, even at top schools, would expect to cast their net wider. I understand this may be because the French educational system is so much better than the British. However Universities are looking for potential.

GCSE grades will matter for some very over subscribed courses. Universities have to treat all EU candidates equally. They only have so much to go on. Ergo if one of two otherwise equal candidates has weak GCSE grades, they probably wont get the place.

They are not given priority over UK and EU students.
ROTFLPMPL
Thick but rich Chinese brings in £40k in fees versus middling UK brings in £5000

LIZS - overseas students (not EU students, who are in the same competitive pool as EU students) are in a different "quota", if you like. They are not given priority over UK and EU students.

It is quite significantly harder for EU students to get places at top universities on certain sorts of courses than it is for British students.

isitmylibrarybook

Many of the less selective universities already pay relatively little heed to GCSEs. Providing an applicant has the requisite number of passes, they usually receive an offer which they either make or don't make.

The difficulty arises for applicants to the most selective universities, where there are always far more applicants than places. Where applicants have equally stellar AS results, admissions tutors sometimes fall back on GCSEs...and when they're not considered reliable...the henious A* offer!

Bonsoir , do you believe that o/s students often paying substantially larger fees are given parity in entry requirements with UK students.

I posted on AIBU ' To think that in the last two years , some schools have increased entry requirements for sixth form entry'. One grammar school I was looking at for DD2 now requires five A grades at GCSE, which is significantly higher than two years ago. I am wondering with these 'warnings', whether some schools are going to have to rethink their admission criteria for sixth form.

shooting that's a good positive story .

I'm not quite sure how things will pan out now, in the absence of AS levels. No doubt some schools will still get their students to sit them and then these will be forwarded with a university application, even though they won't count officially towards A2 (which presumably won't be called that any more).

Or, as I say, we will see an increase in the A* offer as insurance for the universities IYSWIM.

Boney
The course summary I have from when DD chose her subject stated that it was a chunk of marks on the made items, a chunk of marks on the portfolio and a written paper worth 20 marks about the background to the made items.

That turned out to be a 30 mark paper about world trade.

The options summary I had for DS showed that it was 30% for the item, 40% for writing about the item and 30% writing about world trade.
The whole point of DT subjects is that they should be practical, not moralising about palm oil.

bonsoir
am in touch with university admissions people who are not as dim as people on this thread seem to think
but are you in touch with employers and technical college and 2000 group universities and their requirements?
How many C and D grade students do you coach?
Sorry but I believe you are utterly out of touch with the C/D issue.

But Bonsoir UCAS is two years away for this cohort.

Right now these kids have to secure places in sixth forms and colleges.

Seriously, I think because you help a handful of kids in Paris sort out their UCAS forms, really doesn't make you an expert here.

Shooting pigeons I really don't want to argue with you because I've already stated my understanding of the regulations.