Starting year 13 2016

Dingit
I think DD has her predicted grades - she was asking the teachers before she chose which subject to drop.

I need to stay away from this thread, as I've just picked up on the Nottingham comments, and it does look nice. Mentioned it to Dd and got shrieked at, as the open day has been and gone, and she's not applying to somewhere she hasn't seen.

Have your Dc got their predicted grades? Dd is still waiting for hers although we can take a rough guess.

Nottingham is gorgeous Errol - quite hilly but lots of green space. No cows when I was there last

Would it be University Campus or Jubilee? I've been to both and UC is huge, whereas JC is much more compact but still nice - I loved the library at JC.

Dd would love it if there were Errol.
No, i'm sure it will still be the normal gangs of marauding teenage boys ( or are girls the marauders now?).

Make sure you find the beautiful lake at Reading University for your picnic Juggling. It is behind the halls of residence. Only university where I have seen a pool car for the use of students (if they have had a driving licence for over a year).

aging - yes, similar story with EEE which is my DD's thing. I'm not sure that all the eng courses at 'newer' unis are fully accredited, we haven't really looked at them.

Thanks for the feedback on Nottingham. So long as there aren't herds of cows freely roaming the campus...

Cows are important teta!

LOL at following the cows teta ..... where the grass is greener?!

Partially because the Vet. Side was Cow dominated and she loves Cows.Wheras Liverpool was more equine dominated and a bit more intimidating.
I do appreciate these are completely different reasons for choosing a university than the rest of you though..

I am loving that so many DC are liking Sheffield (I went to the Poly and had a ball, with many friends at the uni)

My dd said the same and really loved it.Its up there with Bristol for her I think.

Sorry just lurking on this thread as my DD was in this position last year.
aging - at the Nottingham Uni open day, she was told as long as she had good predicted grades (I think it was AAA) then they would would probably make her an unconditional offer for mechanical engineering if it was her first choice. It is worth your DD asking/emailing if they still have this policy this year. DH and I really liked Nottingham but DD less so. She really liked Leeds, Sheffield (fantastic new building for engineering), Manchester and Liverpool. We looked round several others too.

My dd is applying for mechanical engineering. There seems to be a big gap between the RG-type unis, who are asking for AAA or higher for mech eng, and the new unis, who are asking for quite a bit lower.

I haven't been to Nottingham, but dd has. It's on her 'maybe' list, so she can imagine herself going there. She says the campus is beautiful.

Similar for my DD, aging. Whats your's applying for? (I feel like I need a spreadsheet of who wants to do what where to keep track of this thread! ). I think Sheffield may be one of the places which would give a slightly lower offer if she does well on her EPQ (though I may well have got confused!)

Can I ask if anyone's been to Nottingham and if so any general impressions? It's the one place which DD is considering which she hasn't looked at.

Sheffield is one of my dd's choices too. Though it is one of her 'lower' ones. OK it's not really low, all of hers are high and higher. She was worried about what to put as an insurance choice, but I said there is no point applying to somewhere you don't want to go. So she will just have to get her predicted grades .

Thanks all, lots of encouraging stuff there! Particularly nice to hear about Reading and Swansea LittleHo as we haven't been to those yet - but they look and sound good on the website, and from what we've heard from friends. I'm a sucker for a nice pic or two!

That sounds like excellent progress, Juggling! Sheffield is definitely going to be one of my DD's 5.
So long as your DD has got her bases covered with places which offer lower, I reckon putting down an 'aspirational' choice if it's somewhere they really like is a 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' thing, unless the AS/predictions are well adrift of the standard offer. (some schools, so I've heard, will sometimes make a prediction at the upper end of likely if a student makes a case to them that they really want to apply to XXX and they'll put in more effort etc... and universities do admit people who didn't quite make the offer. So there might be some wriggle room).

That's interesting, Juggling - Sheffield require the lowest grades for the course DD wants to do, Leeds I think being highest!
And DD is including travelling we have done as a family on her PS, as well as her Work Experience in Y11 which tie in nicely as personal experience relating to what she has now decided to study!

dd has done a first draft of the PS and handed it in to school.

juggling I've been to a couple of those campuses - University of Reading is on a lovely big green campus. I was really impressed. It had pretty much everything a student would need. For some reason I was expecting it to be very urban but it was actually very green and open.

I seem to remember that Swansea was next to a lovely garden but the thing that sticks in my mind is that it has the most fantastic Egyptology museum that is open to members of the public. I know it is irrelevant to your dd's course but if you need something to do while she is wandering round the campus go and have a look. Not sure if you need to book for the museum.

DD finally spent a day methodically going through all the Uni's that do Zoology as she's been saying she wanted to do for ages and narrowed it down to first of all 8, and now this morning we think we have 5! The list even includes several I had my eye on, and looks great when she showed it to me on her UCAS site this morning. She could still change things of course, but still it's looking good to me - I could really see her having a great time at any of them!

We visited Sheffield the other weekend and DD really liked it there, we had a lovely day together - a couple of lecturers were very friendly (one helped us out when we got slightly lost) and DD was impressed by the department talk. We also bumped into friends there which was lovely too. So that one's down as our aspirational first choice. Getting the grades for that one may be slightly out of reach though - they all seem so very high now (DH said Sheffield offered him 3 C's for Chemistry a few years ago - in the 80's)
Does anyone know whether they are likely to make an offer that's slightly higher than predicted grades? We felt it is worth a try?

So, we also have several that are more solidly within reach, according to AS results and predictions for A2.

And one that we really like that has an interesting course with lots of exciting field trips, and is in a lovely part of the world, also rating highly on student satisfaction - and that has quite a generous offer. That's the Uni of South Wales.

3 we've visited and 2 we haven't yet, so that's something we need to work on - one not too far (Reading) the other a bit of a trek (Swansea)

DD also feels she could improve her personal statement to make it more personal which I'm glad to hear as I think it is a little dry in current draft!
Of course I want her to include some of the great things I feel we've done together over the years - all the lovely wildlife watching stuff. So perhaps some of that may get a brief mention!

Am feeling very glad to have got to this point after all the visits!
Hope things are beginning to come together for everyone else too?

Fingers crossed dingit! 🙂

Ono, all three of dds boyfriends started out as just friends

Good news just in, dds theory PE paper got remarked up to a C. Just waiting for them to make a decision on special consideration for the practical, but don't hold out much hope.

ono