I'm a university admissions tutor (make decisions about who to give offers to).. AMA

[JoshChan]

One of my DD's uni choices was ABB (or BBB I can't remember) in the prospectus. They offered her a conditional but asking for higher grades. Is this normal? It seemed weird that they could do that. It meant, in effect she has no lower/backup choice, insurance offer.

Do you ever view a non selective state school as a contextual application?
Yes and no. On its own, that wouldn't be enough for a "contextual offer" to be made unless the school was among the bottom performing schools in the UK (in terms of applications to HE or A-level grades awarded) or the student is from an area of low participation.
However, we would recognise that this applicant hasn't had the opportunities that students from the poshest schools have had so we'd take into account the fact they might not be grade 8 violin or have volunteered at a newt orphanage in Outer Mongolia.

Is it common to accept students that have just missed their conditional offer requirements?
On courses which aren't over-subscribed, yes. We call these "near miss" students. On courses which are over-subscribed, they are very very unlikely to take "near miss" students.

They offered her a conditional but asking for higher grades. Is this normal? It seemed weird that they could do that. It meant, in effect she has no lower/backup choice, insurance offer.
I'd be tempted to discuss this with the university actually. We're regulated under commercial law and everything we put out in the prospectus has to be accurate otherwise it's false advertising. My guess would be that the university will say "It's our typical offer" meaning there is wiggle room for them to make lower and higher offers. However, this is worth flagging because your DD has been left in a precarious situation and students (rightly) make choices based on grade tariff that they find out online.
I suspect what's happened is that they've received an unanticipated number of applications and can afford to be picky so are pushing students hard. Not nice for your DD. I'm sorry this has happened.

This is really interesting.

How do you find out where your child's school stands as far as applications to HE go? Or whether your area is an area of low participation?

Just for interests sake...

Thank you for your quick answer! I probably should have pushed her to follow it up when she received it. Now, exams are done but I know it put extra stress on her to do well as she only had high grade offers.

Madly crossing fingers that she gets decent grades, as her 1st choice uni did indicate on the offer day that they are slightly flexible regarding results. She did apply for the Integrated Masters Biomedical Science 4yr course but could (hopefully) get a place for the normal 3yr degree with slightly lower grades. Thanks again 👍

How do you find out where your child's school stands as far as applications to HE go? Or whether your area is an area of low participation?

We have a list!

Here's the list of low-performing schools from Bristol's website. I don't work at Bristol.

Here's where you can see whether your area's a low participation neighbourhood

Madly crossing fingers that she gets decent grades, as her 1st choice uni did indicate on the offer day that they are slightly flexible regarding results. She did apply for the Integrated Masters Biomedical Science 4yr course but could (hopefully) get a place for the normal 3yr degree with slightly lower grades
Everything crossed for her

Interesting. Thank you. Off to see if there is a Welsh equivalent list :)

Wales

Thank you.

Do you have many applications from Scottish students?

Do you typically ask for Advanced Highers as well as Highers? Some English Unis ask for 5 Highers and 3 Advanced Highers at A grade. This would far exceed normal A Level requirements and total 333 UCAS points! My view is that this disadvantages Scottish applications.

What do you think of the different exam boards? For example, do you rate a WJEC grade differently to an AQA?

Thanks for doing this AMA - is very interesting,

And my children's school is on that list. While the local FE college isn't.
Interesting....

Thank you for that :)

Thanks for starting the thread Josh.
I have a DC in Year 12 so we are just doing the Open Days for the first time now. We haven't been given his official predictions yet. He's aiming for an RG. Some tutors have told us of the predicted grades are good they aren't too worried about volunteering etc. Which made him feel better as no opportunities for newt orphanages here. I got the impression they would barely read his personal statement. It's for Geography so not an unpopular course by any means.

Can you explain to me how an offer of 'unconditional if firm choice' would work if he wanted that Uni as an insurance? Would the offer be unconditional if firm or AAB (for example) for anything else? I just wondered if not accepting a confirmed place as first choice meant that Uni was out of the running or if there was a two fold offer? ( not explaining this very clearly).

And bonus question! There are lots of different league tables. Which ones should I pay attention to?

JoshChan Thanks for this - really interesting! My postcode is on the POLAR3 list as a 1, which might mean my oldest could get a contextual offer - is that correct (plus the school is on the list you posted!)? However the new POLAR4 measure shows our postcode as a 5, so I assume my younger child wouldn't?

Any idea how this POLAR measure can shift by so much? Our area has 'improved' but I wonder if it has now been lumped in with neighbouring more affluent areas, or whether POLAR is totally postcode specific?

Thanks so much Op.
I'm really old and in my day we had fewer people at uni but free tuition and grants - I got a full grant. Only a handful from my school went to uni. A small number again went to polytechnic.
Do you think we should go back to that? Or do you think a tweak of current system is preferable? If so, how would you tweak it.

This is going back 5/6 years ago

Some of DC friends were encouraged to do EXTENDED PROJECT (I think it was called) at school

Were they worth doing?

Do you have many applications from Scottish students?
Not at all.

Do you typically ask for Advanced Highers as well as Highers? Some English Unis ask for 5 Highers and 3 Advanced Highers at A grade. This would far exceed normal A Level requirements and total 333 UCAS points! My view is that this disadvantages Scottish applications.
We ask for three advanced highers. I agree, it does disadvantage Scottish students but the tariffs are set centrally

I got the impression they would barely read his personal statement. It's for Geography so not an unpopular course by any means
For some reason last year there was a massive downsurge in applications to Geography degrees and I think Geography departments started sweating a little bit

Can you explain to me how an offer of 'unconditional if firm choice' would work if he wanted that Uni as an insurance? Would the offer be unconditional if firm or AAB (for example) for anything else? I just wondered if not accepting a confirmed place as first choice meant that Uni was out of the running or if there was a two fold offer? ( not explaining this very clearly).
I think I know what you mean. If he put it as "Insurance" it'd become a conditional offer. But if he chooses it as "Firm" then it's unconditional. Does that answer your question? I'd ask the university for clarification of this though. I hate "unconditional if firm" offers, they seem very manipulative to me.

There are lots of different league tables. Which ones should I pay attention to?
In honesty, none of them They are all very flawed and look at different measures. I wouldn't sweat the details and focus on the overall picture instead. For example...don't think like "Oxford were in 2nd place in 2016 but then went down to 7th in 2017 then back up to 4th in 2018" but, rather "Oxford are consistently in the top 10 so that's good". Have a look at historical data and focus on those universities that hover in the top 15-20 across the board.
There can be lots of reasons a course very suddenly drops down the league tables one year and some universities are great at somethings and not so great at others, so it's important to get that overall picture.

My postcode is on the POLAR3 list as a 1, which might mean my oldest could get a contextual offer - is that correct (plus the school is on the list you posted!)? However the new POLAR4 measure shows our postcode as a 5, so I assume my younger child wouldn't?
I think so, yes. Worth checking with the university though.

Any idea how this POLAR measure can shift by so much? Our area has 'improved' but I wonder if it has now been lumped in with neighbouring more affluent areas, or whether POLAR is totally postcode specific?
I have no idea how it's all worked out but I do worry about this, especially in areas of London where rich and poor areas are so close together.

I'm really old and in my day we had fewer people at uni but free tuition and grants - I got a full grant. Only a handful from my school went to uni. A small number again went to polytechnic.
Do you think we should go back to that? Or do you think a tweak of current system is preferable? If so, how would you tweak it
It's a minefield. I don't think you can just tweak the HE sector in isolation. In an ideal world, we'd overhaul the whole education sector (do away with fee-paying and selective schools for one) but that's unlikely to happen.

So, yes, I think we should go back to a model where we have the very academic institutions (RG basically) which should only be allowed to take in privately-educated student proportionate with the number of students who are actually privately educated (about 8%) and offer financial support to students from lower socio-economic groups.

Then we should have polytechnics which offer a great education, but one which is much more applied and useful!

At the moment, I think working class students are getting a raw deal. They (we!) are being sold a dream of going to university without much concern for which university and where they'll ultimately end up. Mass education has done nothing to improve relative inequality, it's improved overall "mobility" to some extent but the gap between rich and poor/ powerful and powerless, as fostered by HE, is the same.

OP it's very kind of you to open yourself up to MN, but I'm a little worried that people are going to extrapolate and apply what you've said here to all universities and all subjects.

For instance you've said several times that you wouldn't expect a comprehensive school kid to have grade 8 violin or voluntary work in Outer Mongolia. You're sort of implying there that:
a) you'd expect to see that in a private schools kid,
b) that you actually check the school's status when you trawl through applications
c) that these things help
d) everyone reads the PS
e) most offers are made centrally - ie not by an academic!

In reality very few admissions tutors read the PS and none expect to see grade 8 violin (unless for a music degree), regardless of type of school attended.

I also don't know any admissions tutors who see whether applicants have gone to state or private school, or check what POLAR postcode they live in, or check their BME - NONE of that should EVER be looked at.

A very small number of HEIs offer contextual offers - but these will be pre-flagged before they get seen by an Admissions Tutor.

Hope you don't mind me posting that.

PS POLAR3 and 4 is based on the number of 18 year olds going to university in that postcode, divided by the number of child benefit recipients. It is NOT a measure of deprivation, it is at best a proxy, and a poor one at that. In London there are hardly any quintile 1 POLAR postcodes, but there are large swathes of poverty.

OP - I notice you (like me) say university - does uni make you wince?

Interesting thread. I'm not in the UK so just wondering what RG and BME stand for?

Agree with you, @titchy - I have been Admissions at Oxbridge, RG and finally post-92, and it's all slightly different, even without the different systems. I've left quite recently, but something that I found distasteful at my RG institution was the active anti-private education stance, always done with a chuckle and the tacit nudge nudge wink wink that privately educated candidates were obviously dim and spoon-fed. Quite disappointing to discover that supposedly intelligent individuals subscribed so openly to lazy stereotypes and groupthink, but at least the rosy-tinted spectacles came off quickly

I was once physically assaulted (punched in the face) by a mother, for daring to suggest that her dd would settle in more quickly if she lived in rather than commuting for a two hour drive each day - sadly, I'd already given the daughter an offer

Thank you for this thread, OP.

I'm currently in university and would love to do a post-grad abroad somewhere in Europe. When you are looking at admitting a foreign student from a different educational system (Brazil, in this case), how do you factor the grades, seeing as the exams would likely be very different?

RG is Russell group. They're a group of very research active universities, but they have great PR, so they have now become synonymous with 'elite' universities.... BME is Black and Minority Ethnicity.

Qualifications from abroad are looked up for their equivalency. Level 3 foreign quals often have tariff points now. Others can be looked up using NARIC.