To wish universities wouldn’t give out so many unconditional offers?

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Dd is in Year 13 and applying to university.

She’s reasonably bright but has never been super-academic or interested in school. She has decent but not stellar predicted grades and ok GCSEs. She probably could have done better if she’d worked harder.

She struggled to decide what course to apply for at university (she’s never been particularly devoted to any of her subjects - she’s not someone who would go away and do extra reading) but eventually settled on modern languages.

She sent off her application at the end of October - to unis along the lines of Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield etc.

Within a month she had heard back from all 5, with four making her unconditional-if-firm offers and one (probably the highest scoring in league tables of the 5) offering her a place for AAA or BBB if firmed.

I’m quite concerned that without the pressure of needing to get the grades to get her place, she isn’t going to have any great motivation to try in her A-levels this summer. She already didn’t do much work over the Christmas holiday.

AIBU for wishing universities would get rid of these bribing ‘unconditional-if-firm’ offers? If they need to get bums on seats, could they not just be lenient on Results Day and let in students who miss their offers?

I also don’t really understand why they’d be happy to take her even if she bombed in her A-levels - as long as they were her firm choice - but they might end up refusing to take her if it was her insurance choice and she only missed the offer by one grade. If they’re so keen on her application that they want her whatever her A-levels then why doesn’t that hold true if they’re her insurance?

I grew up in the US and all university offers are unconditional. Every university entrance exam is taken by Nov/Dec of the year before the student wants to enter so their coursework and marks up until that point are assessed. Offers are given in April.

Things have changed a bit. I'm a Yank with one DC in his first year at university and another in the process of selecting uni's to apply to for admission in fall of 2020.

The application process now has several time frames at most US universities. You can apply early decision, early action and regular decision. Applying early decision is binding. You cannot apply early decision to more than one uni (and they do check with each other) and if they accept you, you are obligated to go. Applying early action is non binding. Here's a pretty good explanation:

Early Decision vs Early Action

My son applied early action to all of his choices. His applications were done by August, his SAT's (standard admission tests) had been done in March and then he had his first quarter grades and letters of recommendation in mid November. He had all of his offers before Christmas, including merit aid/scholarship offers to compare. We were able to negotiate a larger merit aid offer from his first choice by showing them a more generous offer from his second choice. They matched it.

Had he applied regular decision he would have had until end of January to get everything in and then gotten his offers by May 1st.. If you are thinking of having your kids apply to uni in the US do not wait until January to apply. Universities here are also seeing a demographic drop in the number of applicants and are awarding more and more of their spots either early decision or early action. There were horror stories all over social media this spring about kids who procrastinated and applied regular decision to all of their choices and didn't get accepted at any of them because they were competing for a small number of seats still left after the earlier rounds.

I am happy to advise anyone who is thinking of having a DC apply here in the US. Reply here or PM me.