Likelihood of offers/rejection

[Donhill]

Hi,
My ds1 is my first dc applying for uni so this is my first experience of this since I applied to uni in the 1990s! He is predicted 3 As and an A in core maths. His GCSEs were all 7 and 8, except for one 5.

He wants to do a course that they run at Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham. When you look at their typical offers for the courses they say AAB or ABB. Which he should get.

But how likely is it he will get offered a place or rejected? Is there a way of telling the
likelihood of an offer/rejection? At the moment I’m just guessing he might get a place from comparing his predicted grades to the typical offers. But is that the only way of trying to work out if those are the right places to apply for? How do I know if he is aiming too high? Should we have an insurance place or generally go for places with lower typical offers?

Any help would be great!

If he’s predicted AAA, then courses with ABB are definitely not ‘aiming too high’. Except certain courses like medicine and certain unis like some of the London ones, Oxbridge etc, you tend to get an offer if your predicted grades match or are higher than the entry requirements.

I would recommend he applies for one choice with slightly lower entry requirements as that can be his insurance. But realistically, with an AAA prediction I wouldn’t apply anywhere lower than BBC because if it really did all fall apart and he ended up with far lower grades he would just look into clearing.

Can you say what degree he will be applying for? As if it is something v competitive like medicine or econ then much of what I’ve said is out the window

Comparing usual offer grades to predicted grades is where ds and I started, and that worked fine.

I believe you can find out percentages of applications given offers at each place but we didn't look at that as I felt it was a bit of a blunt instrument- who knows what the applications are like?

If anything it sounds as if he could go for somewhere with higher offers as well, but if the course he wants is at those universities, that's great. ABB is below his predictions so might be his insurance offer? All sounds good, I'm sure he will do well.

Thanks so much for your replies. That’s already really helpful. He wants to do international relations with modern language. He has done a language up to A level and should get an A in it, but would be starting a new language as part of the degree.

And actually I was looking yesterday and Bath also runs the course and if I remember right looks like the offers would be AAB so he might apply there too. Leeds is his first choice though.

The uniguide tells you what most people on the course’s A levels are, inc grades. Bear in mind that some may be contextual.

I can see for example that MFL & IR at Leeds although entry requirements are ABB that most students have AAB. This would indicate that it’s not quite as easy to get an offer as it would seem, but depending on how oversubscribed it is, PG of AAA should be ok.

The best way to find out is the horses mouth. Can you get to an open day? If you can, seek out the dept admissions and ask them how oversubscribed the course is, how many on average they turn down that meet the entry requirements etc. Generally people are happier to give this info F2F.