Thread 19 - Corona Cohort, Enrolling on Year 13, hopefully NOT unlucky for some

[OrangeCinnamonCocktail]

Place holder

Well done to @ProggyMats Dd. That is amazing.
I keep getting adverts for bursaries and degree apprenticeships in cybersecurity from GCHQ. They sound great. Has anyone dug deeper?

DS just knocked Durham and Edinburgh out of contention. Still leaves us with 7 excellent choices, all at about the same grades. It's very hard! I wish we had made it to Bath because that's the tricky one.

So, Cambridge aside we have York and Birmingham both offering sort of combined soc and political science degrees, Sheffield with a Quants soc sci degree , Exeter with flexible honours, Glasgow with its social history and Public policy degree and then Bath with its top ranking placement year social policy degree . It has such excellent rankings from everywhere and superb grad prospects...but it's expensive, hard to get to for us, and DS isn't applying to any other pure Social Policy degrees.

They basically all want AAB/ABB too!

Sounds like Exeter is a bit of an outlier Piggy, it is quite public school and even further than Bath! How does he feel about city v campus?

Yes, I agree about Exeter but the course is great (the sociology modules, he can throw in some economics, and he likes politics in the degree : he doesn't get that at Bath) are genuinely interesting and has a placement year. It may well be the next to go, though. DH is less keen on him being somewhere hard to get to.

I think, on the whole, campus is preferred. Sheffield is lurking about for the Quants focus and because it would be a good insurance. We'll see how we like that on Open Day.

The Durham Open Day was today. Students are now given the opportunity / asked to order their colleges of choice.

Just got flu jabs and got DS done. I had to pay for him, but probably worth it, we really want a healthy winter!

@Oblomov21

The Durham Open Day was today. Students are now given the opportunity / asked to order their colleges of choice.

I'm confused. Open day for 2022?

Feeling relieved here. This time last week nothing had been done. He has now got a chunk of PS, has decided which entrance exams to sit, UCAS all complete apart from personal statement with 3 slots filled and will go off soon with 2 more to be added from a selection of 4 at later date before January.

Also has decided to drop an A level and which one , that decision was causing a lot of stress previously.

When do they have to apply to university by? Is it January? (Not oxbridge I know they are much earlier)

I've said before that Ds2 doesn't tell me anything, whether he's started PS, whether he's looked at other universities online etc. He only wants to go to Sussex at the moment, but I think he will put others down on application. We are booked for the open day in 2 weeks. We won't visit any others anyway. Ds1 only visited our 2 nearest UEA and Essex.

Normally Jan 15th, although they moved it a bit last year to maybe end Jan.

Yes NCTDN, the virtual open day for Durham for 2022 entry was today.

Ok thanks @Piggywaspushed I thought it was Jan. Ds1 has done all this, but needed lots of help, I can't remember dates though.

@Oblomov21 dd went to a tour but what do they mean about ranking colleges? Ready for putting them on the application?

NCT this is new, released yesterday on the open day. Durham have released a statement : 2 changes to their application process. Firstly they don't guarantee accommodation. Secondly they now ask applicants to put their colleges in order of choice.

[image removed by MNHQ at poster's request]

Sorry wrong picture. You don't want to read about Roaccutane !

NCT this is new, released yesterday on the open day. Durham have released a statement : 2 changes to their application process. Firstly they don't guarantee accommodation. Secondly they now ask applicants to put their colleges in order of choice.

@Oblomov21 thank you for that. It's a bit worrying that the accommodation is now not guaranteed, although having seen the MN thread for Durham I know why.

Because of the TAGs this year, many more Durham offer-holders made their grades than normal. In order to accommodate them all, Durham have had to reallocate some students to a different college from the one they were promised back in the Spring.

I guess this change is to cover them in case such a situation ever occurs again.

The other strategy they used was to offer students of some subjects £5000 to defer to 2022. I foresee a lot of FOI requests going in to find out how many places for those courses are actually still left for the current Year 13s…

I know @MidLifeCrisis007 has been dealing with all of this!

Not guaranteeing accommodation to freshers is a dealbreaker for me!

Did I see somewhere that Bristol has issues with accommodation too? Are there any other unis that are struggling to accommodate first years?

I was just thinking that Piggy, especially when Durham seem to make decisions so late. I wonder if it will put many people off.

Didn't Exeter also offer the financial incentive to defer?

And Leeds I think - Exeter for medicine students and Leeds for law.

@BlueMarigold

Did I see somewhere that Bristol has issues with accommodation too? Are there any other unis that are struggling to accommodate first years?

Yes, allegedly this year and last year so me students were accommodated outside Bristol, in 2020 just over the border in Wales and in 2021 in Bath.

I think the universities will be much more cautious about over-recruiting this year, just hope they are not seeing it as an opportunity to expand student numbers with on line lectures and no need to guarantee accommodation.

There is loads of private student accommodation in Bristol, so I am sure it is always possible to get accommodation in Bristol.