UCAS parent confusion!

[Mumof3France]

Hi,

Am looking for a heads up from parents educated (like me) in the UK who (unlike me) have stayed in the UK and brought up their families there.

As an outsider to the UK for the past 20 years, with children born and schooled in France, I am trying to identify the main changes to university admission since I began my own degree at Oxford in 1992.

I sense that some degrees have become massively competitive (especially STEM and law and anything else that looks likely to be able to be monetised so graduates can pay back their loans). At the same time, other degrees with less obvious vocational value, even in some traditionally good universities, have become much easier to access, to the extent that administrators may have to scrape around to get good bums on lecture theatre seats. Or at the very least, apply far less stringent criteria to the applications they receive for these less sought-after degrees.

The increase in demand for some courses translates to great pressure on candidates for those courses to achieve faultless A levels. With applications so high, it seems that getting into those courses has become a fairly pitiless numbers game, with little if any attention able to be paid to candidates as (thinking) individuals with potential. The emphasis on contextualised offers also means that those candidates are viewed more as products of a certain set of circumstances than as individuals.

The pressure felt by candidates means that they focus a lot on universities’ perceived ´prestige’, which makes me suspect many aim for those universities mainly for the brand or label. Which does seem a shame, intellectually speaking.

Finally, for the most competitive universities and courses we have a tilted playing field, with overseas applicants aplenty, ready to pay hugely over the UK odds for a place at Oxbridge or London. It seems clear that admissions criteria on some courses are looser for those candidates.

All in all, I see a system that makes me queasy. Please tell me if I am missing something or misinterpreting the information I am gleaning from across the Channel.

TIA!

How can your children claim Home student rates when you say you have lived in France for 20 years? Even if they went to school in England they have not lived in England 3 years before the start of their course. It’s more than having citizenship for eligibility.

UK citizens living in the EU at Brexit time are entitled, till 2028, to retain their pre-Brexit rights, which would have included being eligible for Home/EU fee status.

I see. I know of people getting home status via saying that they live at grandparents houses, getting free tuition in Scotland and reduced fees in England.

These are both upper class roles and regular people (whatever that means) have just as much access to them. Indeed there are actually WP schemes to ensure that the most disadvantaged can access them, BA E schemes and schemes for women. Most of these employers also sponsor the trainees through the postgraduate elements of these professions. Access has been widened with the likes of SQE and via apprenticeship. Reverse snobbery is just as irksome as snobbery.

Agreed, I did a Fine Art degree which I know most people think is pure rubbish, but I used it to go into a graduate scheme in Tech (most graduate programs only care that you get 2:1 or above, not what it’s in unless very specific for STEM), 6 years on I’m now on close to 6 figures, thanks to my ‘pointless degree.

Obviously if you want to be a doctor you’ll have to have a medical degree, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do anything with other ones, I remember so many people telling me mine was a waste when I was doing it, when it was mainly just a door opener for me and I wanted to spend 3 years doing something I enjoyed.

Actually Cambridge and Oxford do not have Overseas admissions targets. They have the same (early) application deadline for everyone and put all candidates in the same applications pool.

AFAIK all other ‘Russell Group +’ universities and many others have separate Home and Overseas admissions targets. Very competitive programmes don’t need to lower their standards to fill their Overseas places, but many won’t hesitate to do so.

Isn't your salary due to your master's degree in tech, rather than your "pointless" degree?

It is interesting that you make a mention of the fact of beig called elitist and then almost immediately look down your nose at some people's opinions. Perfectly demonstrating that you do believe that your opinion is of higher worth. Funny really.

Also, I read that you are just opening this as a conversation and that you are not affected by the UCAS system as none of your children are currently applying for uni. So why are you seemingly put out by MNetters opinions?

I never did a Masters degree in tech? Never stated I did? I did a Fine Art BA which I finished with a 2:1, I then did a 2 year graduate program with Tech Marketing with a large company, it didn’t give me any additinal qualifications, they just gave training essentially, I then went into management role and progressed upward. Didn’t mention a Masters Degree anywhere..

I am interested in the assumptions in some of them (that my children if they applied to UCAS would pay international fees - some commenters might do some research about the fee status until 2028 of British kids in the EU..

Guess it’s quite possible those posters hadn’t known that your kids are British seeing as at that point you hadn’t said they were. You’d said they were born in France and from saying you’ve been abroad for 20 years makes it sound like they’ve never lived in the uk. Of course from the fact you now say they’re British I’m guessing you’re a British/uk citizen and therefore they were entitled to and have citizenship but that wasn’t obvious from your post. So if people have mistakenly posted something not relevant I’m sure they were just trying to be helpful.

uCAS stats suggest that there is a slight upward trend in university applications. So if this is true I’m not sure it would be easier to get into less sought after degrees. You’d think they’d still be competitive.

But possibly the overall application figures are skewed towards people prioritising degree subjects where they think they’re more likely to walk into a job at the end of it. Is there a reluctance to do English literature in a cost of living crisis? Saying that nursing applications have fallen off a cliff!

Will be interesting to see what courses at what universities are in clearing in August. There were a lot of courses last year in clearing which normally aren’t and that was put down to a one off blip due to poor A level results and students not meeting their grades and being rejected. If the same courses are in clearing again this year maybe it wasn’t a blip.

@Mumof3France I started university in 1992 like you. My Cambridge offer (for a STEM subject) was AAA plus STEP, and this was before the days of A star, so expecting faultless grades for the top unis certainly isn't a new thing IME.

This is MN where a significant number of posters live in London and are on 6 figure salaries working as lawyers/barristers/bankers/other careers perceived as greedy

Dd1's best friend had an offer for maths at Cambridge for 2010 of AAA plus STEP (just after A*s were introduced) but didn't make the STEP offer. She went to Warwick instead and has done amazingly in her career so far.

It starts at primary with the SATs needed to get into a good class, then secondary with good GCSEs needed to get into a good college. We're turning our children into robots so that we can tick boxes and make charts and improve statistics. The love of learning has been lost.

No they don’t. The education is substandard and not worth spending money or time on. They need to be canned.

A graduate scheme isn’t a masters degree - it’s a training programme available to people with an undergraduate degree. You can access these with a degree in shoe shining - the point is grad schemes are generally degree subject agnostic

Shocking. Imagine being financially aspirational so you can look after your own family. So immoral.

It is entirely possible to be financially aspirational and not be a barrister/lawyer/banker/work in finance.

Of course it is! I would never think otherwise.