support thread for those of us who have DC submitting UCAS applications in the next few months

[mumoverseas]

Thought we should all get together and calm each other down/mop fevered brows/hand around glasses of wine etc. We've seen other go through it over the past few months and it will be our turn soon.

DS has just got his AS results which were not too bad. AAAB. The B suprised him as it was for maths and we'd expected a B for french which he had not studied for a few years as sat his GCSE early. He says he will re-sit one of the maths modules and one of French ones to get a higher A

He (we!) has been considering various Unis over recent months and has visited 4.
PS is all in hand as is extended project (whatever all that is about) but time is creeping by and not long now til his mid Oct deadline (one of his choices is Oxbridge)

There has been so much in the papers over recent days about the lack of places at University at the moment and stories of how so many good students did not get places as they didn't put 'insurance' choices.

How is everyone else coping and how do we get our children to make realistic choices?

Bump

interesting chat with the people at Bath yesterday - becasue they are a mainly maths and science university, they're not expecting to be as badly hit either in the individual departments or overall by the cuts as a more humanities/arts type university. So other than potential fee increases, students shouldn't be affected much by funding cuts - the professor I spoke to said that he was losing admin staff rather than teaching staff.

So something to bear in mind for future applicants.

Hi pohl - glad I'm not the only one whose DC not already in the system !
Mine is waiting for teacher references .
I'm thinking of starting a thread asking for tips on how to achieve some Christmas cheer when as far as I can see it's going to be yet another festive season of nagging about coursework ( Chemistry ) and revising for resits and f**ing mocks .

woo, offer from Bath in the post this morning - A* A B plus STEP . Much jumping around and shrieking .

SV Congratulations!!
Is Bath her first choice?

It was, not sure now though as the course has a lot of compulsory modules, where some fo the others have more free choice. But she loves the city and the campus, and everyone has assured her that university stats is a lot more interesting than A level stats.

But yes, I think Bath is probably still her first choice.

I think it's really intersting to see what factors come up once you start looking closely at the courses and the locations.
Eg DS had Bristol as his first choice for a long time, but he's been back to the uni recently and said he prefers Southampton now as the facilities are more modern, and the accomodation is closer to the Department.

Bath is a beautiful city and campus. (It's v close to where we live)

hello all, congratulations on recent offers.
we are still waiting on Durham..........

Hope you don't have to wait too much longer for Durham, MOS.

DD2 has offers from 4 of her 5 now (still waiting for Leicester) - however after the initial euphoria she has realised she can only accept two.

So she is now in a quandary, as her favourite (UEA) has asked for AAB, and she's not sure she can make the second A (she would have to resit at least 1 of her AS modules & do a lot better than she's currently doing.)

So does she go for the ambitious option - UEA (wanting AAB), with Lancaster (ABB) as backup?

Or the safe option - Lancaster with Oxford Brookes (BBB) or Keele (320 points + BC) as backup?

Is it right that applicants have until 5th May to decide which offers to accept?

It looks like we'll be spending February & March on Uni visits again.

Seimum if your DD's offers are all in by 31 March 2011 then the deadline for making choices is the 5th of May.

DD2's choices keep moving around, she's still waiting for Bath (well done to Shrinking Violet's DD for her offer!) but I think York has risen up her choices after our trip to Southampton last week. We are going to York and Nottingham in february.

If you have an insurance offer for somewhere that you genuinely wouldn't mind going to and are likely to make then I would think its ok to go for somewhere ambitious as first choice.

Thanks Webwiz

My DD1 is in her 3rd year at York, if you want any info.

Thanks Seimum I'll ask DD2 - we are visiting York in the feb half term and staying overnight so we can do some shopping as well. I'm afraid Southampton failed on the city itself for DD2 (that and a few things in the maths department) I think York is more up her street!

Hi All

nothing more to report here - still onw offer and one rejeciton and three in the 'maybe' pile

Just thought I'd join in on the York talk... my DD really likes it there. we stopped by in the summer just for her to have a first look and it went straight into the top five. (I'm very happy with that as I went there, albeit 30 years ago). But I'm hoping she'll have the chance to visit the Englsih dept when (being optimistic here!) they finally make her that offer...

ooh webwiz, what was wrong with the Southampton Maths dept? DD hasn't visited there yet, but has only heard good things from Maths friends who've been (the arty humanities lot didn't like it, but Maths and science people did)

still waiting..............

Creeping in here to add in a thumbs up for York-agree that it is a lovely little town and nice campus and good set of Students with drinking culture not as severe as other Northern towns.

ShrinkingViolet it was just that their intake was mostly people who had put them second and had missed their offer at Cambridge/Warwick/Bath/Durham etc and so they seemed to have accidentally ended up with lots of good students. I think DD2 would prefer somewhere where she was with people who had actively chosen the university and really wanted to go there. It was absolutely freezing and the coffee in the cafe was terrible so that may have coloured our view

DD2 has 5 exams in Jan so she is putting university thoughts on hold for now (I think I need to put it on hold as well!).

MOS fingers crossed still.

webwhiz DS also has quite a few exams in January so hopefully we will be doing the same. Fingers crossed he will get time to study in the madhouse where we live

DD seems to have a lot of exams in January (and her school don't do study leave for Jan exams either, so she's started negotiating with teachers as to which classes she can skip, and which ones she can do her own revision during), but two are resits to get the maths up to an A*.

Another offer on UCAS today - Birmingham, who want ABB which seems ot be lower than their standard offer (must be down to my fanatstic openeing sentence for her PS ).

Thanks for the S'hampton feedback, I've passed it on. I think Exeter will be similar (i.e. didn't get the Oxbridge grades) - it was way back when anyway, and still seems to be one of the "standard places one applies to".

DS visited Soton in the winter on an open day, and wasn't too impressed. Later on he got the chance to spend a week there in July and loved it.

Given that it's in the top 20 of the league tables I've seen, it seems a little harsh to be referring to the Uni as getting good students "by accident"

shrinking well done on latest offer.
DS has 5 exams in January, 2 re-sits to bump up one of his AS grades and 3 A2s.

DS went to a law open day at Southampton in the summer and really liked it there. Think its his first choice at the moment but still waiting to hear from one.
My old senior partner from my old firm of solicitors went to Southampton so clearly didn't do him any harm

I wasn't referring to the university FrumpintheFrost just the Maths department. I know its a very nice highly ranked university

Sorry, perhaps i was being oversensitive.

Its ok FrumpyintheFrost we do end up with a sense of loyalty to the universities our DCs attend .

He's not there yet, here's hoping the Jan exams go well.
Was thinking that maybe I should name change again to grumpy in the frost