Turned down by Oxford, no other offers yet

[IslandIsla]

My cousin applied to a range of Unis for English based courses, and just heard she hasn't been accepted by Oxford. She's feeling a little dispondent as she hasn't got any offers from her other choices yet either, whereas many of her friends have had offers already. I'm a bit out of the loop since its over 10 yrs since I applied to uni, but I was wondering if the lack of offers could be because other universities were waiting for Oxford to make a decision?

Thanks all for any insight

One thing I will say is that English courses are massively competitive. If she applied to Oxford, chances are that she will have other high-flying institutions on her form and they will be hugely over-subscribed for English. She will just have to wait and see, I'm afraid. It is relatively early days yet. The closing date for UCAS applications isn't until January 15th.

If you are not applying to oxford or Cambridge or for medicine or veterinary studies your application doesn't need to be in until sometime in January. The other universities are probably not sending out any offers until all applications are in. Nothing to worry about.

lots of places don't make offers till they have all the applications in. DD1 is still waiting to hear from a couple of hers.

"I was wondering if the lack of offers could be because other universities were waiting for Oxford to make a decision?"

No. Each university's admissions are independent and they don't communicate with each other.

It's much more likely the places she has applied to don't send their offers this early.

My ds has applied to 5 unis and been accepted at all 5.

2 of them are RG.

Just wait and see

If she was good enough to be considered for Oxford (assume she was interviewed) then she should have a good chance at others. However the others will not know whether or not she was rejected from Oxford

Islandisla it is early and those universities who haven't given decisions yet will probably do so in the new year. Your cousin can look on a website called the student room (TSR) and there will be a thread for English applicants and a list of universities who have begun to give out offers. Tell your cousin to keep going and not worry. He/she might like to make sure to look round the department and have a chat with the English admissions tutor at the other unis about how the course is run as this will help he/she with her choices later on.

Thanks very much for your messages. My cousin & her mum were chatting about this at Christmas and I thought I'd ask the experts! I remember when I applied through UCAS (98) one of my friends got a really low offer from Exeter which seemed to be because she had also applied to Oxford. Maybe things have changed or that wasn't even the case a decade ago!

I have no doubt she will get some good offers as she is an excellent student (although I am not sure of her predicted grades), but it is hard for her to see her friends getting offers and her to just get the one rejection so far. She is at the local comp so there is a lot of variety in the courses/unis applied for amongst her friends.

Thanks all!

As others have said, still early days. DS applied in October and although he has had a few offers he is still waiting to hear from his favourite choice who apparently often don't make offers until as late as March

English is masively competitive and the closing date for all applications is 15th January (annoyingly a number of my tutor group have still not pressed pay and send and got their going!). Some universities may be waiting for all applications to come in before making offers so they can consider them on their relative merit, especially where they are taking into account students who have foreign languages (preferred up to at least GCSE for english students) vs those without.

The deadline for Uni Offers to be accepted/declined is March 31st, so there's plenty of time. Many Uni's look at applications in batches so it may just be that she's group for a later review. Awful time though, we're going through the same, and with the fee increases for 2012 pressure to gain a place for this cycle is now horrific.

The unis don't know who else you have applied to but obviously as you have to apply for Oxford in October they can guess that early applications also applied to Oxbridge. This year courses for most things are more oversubscribed than ever - fees rise puttin people off gap year and the spill over from last year. English is hugely popular. My DD also did not get into Oxford after her interview and is waiting for 2 other offers to come through (she has been made 2 by her least favourites) she got a card yeasterday from Bristol to say they were delaying until applications were received and then they would make offers.
It is stressful and dispiriting with Jan/Feb exams imminent.

The deadline for submitting applications is 15th January. So the decisions will be expected after. Nevertheless there may be few people who have offers for some particular reason, including taken A levels -or other. In my son's case answers had arrived after the dealine 2 years ago.

Some Unis interview after 15th January.

I've had three children apply through UCAS in the past four years, all for similarly oversubscribed courses to English. The variation in the time scale for replies is huge. My three happened to get identical grades at GCSE and AS and identical predictions at A2, applied to almost identical universities (including Oxford/ Cambridge) for the same sort of courses and each got replies at very different times from their siblings. I can't fathom whether this makes the decisions utterly random or incredibly sophisticated....