To complain to uni

[Nursingnew]

Hi,
New poster and account here so sorry if I've posted in the wrong section.
But I'm applying to nursing this year and applied to a uni and had an interview for it. They gave me an offer but for a different course for healthcare studies because I didn't meet the entry requirements.
If I didn't meet their requirements shouldn't they have rejected me before and not make me prepare for a nursing interview to give me another course

I think you will do fine OP. You will learn how to handle rejection. It doesn't change who you are or what you are worth. You have also learnt that organisations are sometimes illogical and stupid. Also valuable if you end up working in the NHS

This was just a back up. What grades do you need for your current firm choice?

@Chocolatelover45 - I don't know what you mean by research is irrelevant to nursing? It's an evidence based practice.

@CheddarGorgeous Thank-you it's a learning curve and i hope to work for the NHS in the future and give back to the system.

@PurpleDaisies BBB i think i can get it if i work hard and put my head down . My predicted grades are low due to facing issues in my private life . However, i believe i can step it up this year and hopefully start my nursing course at the end of this year.

Dd applied for 5 unis for a similar healthcare, was predicted higher grades than needed, got 5 interviews. She got 4 offers and the rejection was from the lowest regarded uni of the 5 for her course and came out confident from the interview. No idea why they didn't want her but she is very happy where she is.
She thinks she got a bit cocky by that interview

@bruffin congratulations to her anyways.
Is she enjoying her course (if she has started)?

cheddar yeah cos academics have shed loads of time to interview people they have zero intention on offering a place to.
Most of them will be interviewing in addition to a heavy teaching and research workload. Interviewing for the sake of it does not happen.

NursingnewShe's in her second year, absolutely loving it and on an erasmus in Belgium atm.

@SueEllenMishke I didn't say "for the sake of it" I said in order to hook students into other, undersubscribed courses.

It absolutely happens. The reality is that there are more university places than there are students to fill them, particularly for some unis/courses. Department heads have recruitment targets, we are in the middle of a demographic downturn and EU student recruitment is getting harder, understandably.

Basically, as admissions and clearing stats attest to, for a large number of students it's a buyer's market.

Some of them acted like chavs

Nice attitude to others there!

But you know, maybe in spite of your lack of qualifications, the university wanted to give you an opportunity. But that your performance at interview - while good - wasn’t good enough to overcome the lack of qualifications.

And actually it’s also part of your responsibility to ensure you have the correct entry qualifications when you apply.

Take some responsibility, OP!

If you’re17 then you may not yet realise that sometimes you can fail an interview because of something subjective like what you’ve said/ the way you behave, but to avoid challenges you’ll be told it was something objective like grades.

Whatever the reason, it’s happened now and complaining will achieve nothing. You have another offer anyway so I’d just let this go if I were you.

@Nursingnew often universities interview if a person is borderline on the requirements as others have mentioned to see if it's possible to offer a place. This often depends on having a very strong interview and passing the tests very well. You may have potentially not have done as well on the tests as you feel, or may have not impressed at interview, often it's worth asking for feedback. Also they will often interview as they can be more flexible about entry requirements if you have relevant experience for an example worked as a health care worker or carer.
If you dont end up gaining a place I would suggest apply through clearing over the summer as often universities lower they're entry requirements to fill places and may be more flexible, or potentially consider doing a foundation year as this can negate not feeding entry requirements.

I agree with PP about working on your attitude especially regarding how to receive and act towards other people. Also universities will interview considerably more candidates then they have spaces as nursing is a very space limited course. It's also worth making sure your distain about them being a "bad" university does not become apparent in your mannerisms towards the university, as many universities have different strengths and may suit people differently. Being a RG does not always equal being good or the best option. And if that's how your judging a institution as bad it's a very old fashioned and bias view which may have been apparent at interview. Often ex metropolitan universities can be stronger for vocational courses such as nursing, while RG often tend to be much stronger in traditional subjects like medicine, history, english, psychology, geography.

Hmm cheddar it’s not always that simple IME. The nursing course I am involved has an enormous number of applications per place, but the course ends up in clearing because many do not meet the entry requirements. They meet them on paper, so make it to interview, but the course has to meet NMC standards so there are additional requirements. There is no other course immediately offered to unsuccessful candidates (there are FdScs that are employer-sponsored only), but there are access courses at a partner institution that may be suggested. However, this involves a separate admissions team and process. For some unsuccessful candidates the option to simply transfer the application, which will have taken a long time to prepare, to another course instead of starting a whole new application might be quite attractive, but that isn’t currently an option in this case

Agree with @Chocolatelover45 on everything other then the nursing not requiring research, as nursing is vocational in nature it does require research and practice and policy is based on research. But I can understand the gist that it's not as research based as traditional subjects which RG's excell ats.
Otherwise the comparison of RG to other universities is pretty spot on and accurate.

Ds wanted to do engineering at Bristol, theyxwrote to him said he hadn't got an offer but would he come in for an interview on a similar course. He did and they gave him an offer, I know they do that a lot for that course as I have spoken to other MNs about it. They also do contextual offers

That's annoying op. If you wanted to do the child studies you would have applied for it. My dd applied at northumbria and got.offered that course... it seems.like a way for unis to boost there intake of random courses. Agreed people who get through arent what you would expect for health professional course, and they wonder why drop out rates are so high... good luck in the offer your waiting for..

@IvinghoeBeacon I'm not saying every single university does it for every single course but many do try to cross sell.

cheddar I am well aware how university applications work.
Universities will only interview an applicant if they would consider offering them a place. They may reject them and offer an alternative but if they had no intention of considering them they'd just get rejected before the interview....they may also suggest an alternative at that stage too.
Anything else is unethical, not to mention time consuming.

Nursing is oversubscribed. They would not interview unnecessarily.

No I didn’t say you did and I wasn’t actually disagreeing with you. My point was that with professional courses which have regulating bodies who validate the course and which often provide registration on completion, the lower limit on entry requirements is usually much more fixed than with other courses. Most admissions teams in this case are overrun with trying to get candidates for the course they have applied for - it’s a much more onerous task than many other university admissions processes

What I actually said was that it wasn’t quite as simple as that in the case of nursing courses IME. Telling the OP “this is what has happened” doesn’t actually reflect how nursing admissions works in my quite lengthy experience of university nursing courses.

@bruffin yes exactly , wanted to go into childrens nursing is not the same as doing a degree in childhood studies.
Thankyou.

@bellalou1234 yes exactly , wanted to go into childrens nursing is not the same as doing a degree in childhood studies.
Thank-you.

Child nursing is the most competitive, though I’m sure you are aware already

@Angelf1sh yes , Thank-you, i just didn't think of it at the time because the interviewer was signing praises to me and we had an in depth discussion at the end.