UCAS forms sent - just the waiting game now !

[snowyowl70]

My super organised DD1 has had email today to say her forms/reference have been received and should be at her chosen Unis in the next 48 hrs !!!!! So the waiting begins - to those seasoned parents who have done this before can you remember how long they had to wait for their first responses ? At least 2 out of her 5 may call her for interview (MFL) so am guessing these might be fairly on the ball ?

Needmoresleep Economics seems vile. Sorry about the rejection and apologies too but the thread is so long: could you recap on what offers your DS has, and where they are in his order of preference? Is he so disillusioned that a gap year is the only good option?

needmoresleep as far as chez nous is concerned there is no problem with reapplying post Alevels. Indeed it's common since we reject so many. Often applicants come back with good grades, a better PS and a gap year full of useful shizzle!

Thx wordfactory. Rationally I know lots of people have gap years for these sorts of reasons and we knew there could be a problem. Not least because DS went into the process with an unexpectedly poor result in one AS paper which can be improved on. He wants to do a Masters so had hoped to go straight on to University. What we did not fully understand was how competitive, or indeed how drawn out, the process is. I would love to hear some stories about how it all works out in the end.

DS was rejected by his first (Cambridge - always a long shot) and accepted by his fifth. However the latter have been making a number of low offers apparently in a bid to expand their department, with rumours that the course is also being revamped to make it less rigorous.

Then a five month wait on nos 2, 3, and 4. The latest is a rejection by No 4. No 3 appear to have given out an awful lot of places already. No 2 would be fantastic. However really tough.

I assume he must have been seen as a reasonable candidate to have been kept waiting so long.

The weird thing for me is why would you offer a place in another faculty. (I assume the other faculty has not filled their places and so was looking in envy at their economics colleagues and asked if they could approach a few.) Your PS is supposed to show how committed you are to your subject and in DS' case this is true. Not something I have seen even on student room. It conjures up the image of a lecture room full of students all wishing they were learning something else.

Wow, needsmore your DS seems to be suffering at least as much as the medics! I had no idea economics was so mean in the application process. I have no wisdom here, just wanted to commiserate with you over the waiting process. One things for sure though, - it can't go on much longer - you will know from everyone soon.

On the Bristol phone call topic - my DD had a call from a student at the weekend too ( subject bioChem ). That's the only one of her places which has added that personal touch although she's also been having very pleasant chats with the admissions team at York and gets lots of updates from a couple of other places too. They're all trying really hard to get her to pick them!

And if York are offering early ( which they did for DD2 this year) - its very different from 3 years ago when they were DD1's last offer - she reminded me on then phone that they made her the offer this week 3 years ago. So maybe it's true that they are going early to give them a better chance of being picked?

But I think law at York does interviews, oddly, which slows the process (I think that's what you said your DD1 did?). Other subjects for quite a number of years have whizzed back for good applicants almost by return. It sends a good vibe.

Needsmoresleep if it's any comfort and No. 2 happens to be Durham then I know at least one straight A* very, very strong applicant still waiting for economics and for whom it was always his first choice. A very tough wait.

On the medic front, most strong applicants for that too will have a couple of offers in the bag by January. Isn't it only a small number of schools which defer their offers until March?

Well remembered venture - but it's English for her UG degree - about to move to law. So no interview for that - just months of waiting around for the offer!

Needmoresleep I don 't know of courses of use to Gap Year economics students, but DS1, who is an economist has found that knowledge of of business databases, applications ... even advanced Excel has been very useful (e.g. one of his jobs during a GES internship was working on a very large Excel spreadsheet of the UK economy ... ).

Oh ok Beck, well that's a bit different from the norm then, but the trend has definitely been early offers for strong candidates, of which your DD must have been one.

Completely off thread,and apologies but interested ( I also have a DD applying for law masters): how can she go straight into a law masters programme from eng lit?

Needmoresleep - One of my daughters' friends applied for a very competitive English course last year and was turned down by the one she had her heart set on, as the university was very oversubscribed by top students. She had A* predictions, so she was really disappointed. Rather than go somewhere else, she took a year out (did lots of English related things) and applied to exactly the same course / same university with her known grades. She has just been offered an unconditional place.

Thank you. And I recognise it is a first world problem.

The problem with economics is, unlike medicine, is that they don't interview, and many, if not most, candidates seem to have 3 A* predictions and more. Marginal differences on paper then make a huge difference. The feedback people are getting appears to be quite bland, effectively that there are lots of very strong candidates out there.

DS has enough second language to qualify for a course elsewhere in Europe, however European institutions seem to approach economics in a more business orientated fashion and not offer the same rigorous pure economics courses. The UK courses have huge appeal internationally and the Universities offering it are racing up international league tables. However this means the competition gets tougher year on year.

Two things.

1. Given here are no interviews why does the process then take so long. The engineering people manage to push out their offers quickly, even though one of DS's friends ended up with an offer requiring high grades in FIVE A levels.

1. It appears that non EU passport holders, in the same class, and perhaps living in the same street (this is London) are finding it easier to get offers. From an individual perspective this seems unfair. OK they pay more, but given these are EU based institutions would it not make sense to at least allow EU applicants to apply for the higher fee non-ringfenced places

.

Who knows why it takes them so long? To take over five months in some cases to say yes or no seems ridiculous.

I know for engineering that they need a certain (high) proportion of EU & non EU high paying students to prop up the course financially. These highly trained engineers then qualify and take their skills back home. A bit short sighted. Meanwhile, we are left in this fight for a dwindling amount of spaces & it seems that medicine, economics and engineering are the worst ones.

Given here are no interviews why does the process then take so long. The engineering people manage to push out their offers quickly, even though one of DS's friends ended up with an offer requiring high grades in FIVE A levels.

Ds is still waiting to hear from 3 for engineering. He has interview with one next week, and heard nothing from 2 others. He had offer day at Southampton on Wednesday and will be happy with that. The offer he does have is based on 3 A levels.

"I know for engineering that they need a certain (high) proportion of EU & non EU high paying students to prop up the course financially. These highly trained engineers then qualify and take their skills back home. A bit short sighted. Meanwhile, we are left in this fight for a dwindling amount of spaces & it seems that medicine, economics and engineering are the worst ones."

Where do you get your figures from? Fees charged to EU students aren't higher (EU law would prevent this). Fees from non EU students are higher but it is an exaggeration to say that these students form a high proportion. As you say, these students effectively subsidise the UK students; without them it's possible that the fee cap in subjects like engineering could be higher than 9k, just to make the courses feasible without increasing the government contributions to fees.

Numbers in engineering are no longer capped and there is not a fight for a dwindling number of spaces. Southampton, for example, took 25% more engineering students last year than it did in the previous year. Both EU and non EU numbers increased but overall there were more spaces available for qualified UK students after the caps on students above AAB/ABB were lifted by HEFCE in 2012. (All engineering students taken by Southampton would have been above those levels.)

Littleham, EU students count as home students with same access to grants etc. This, I suspect, is one reason why competition for popular UK courses has increased so dramatically. Plenty of European students speak English, and international employability is likely to increase with an English language tertiary education. Not many of our students have sufficiently strong second languages. Plus the structure and content of courses elsewhere in Europe is often less appealing. (This certainly seems to be the case with Italians, and those from newer EU countries.)

My understanding is that somewhere like the LSE has an undergraduate ratio of 70% overseas and 30% EU. On the really popular course I assume the proportion of UK students could be down to 15% or so. I don't then know what happens with contextualisation. LSE has, I think, quite a high proportion of private school children, in part because the high cost of living in London deters others. They contextualise. However do they do this just with UK students or with home/EU students? The former would seem unfair, especially if it meant that a UK student had less chance of a place than, say a similar student from a high performing Parisian lycee, simply because within the minority group of UK students they were relatively advantaged. However contextualising students from across Europe would seem a tough order.

(A genuine question. My sense is that all the huffing and puffing on MN and elsewhere about the proportions of private school pupils going to top universities is obscuring a bigger question about whether UK students are being squeezed out of top courses because of the increasing competition from overseas. Not least I assume that as a result of various initiatives by individual schools plus general demographics, the proportions of non EU passport holders in private school sixth forms is increasing faster than the rate at which the same schools Oxbridge success rates are improving. It is quite possible that the overseas students are making up a bigger proportion of the headline successes and "home" students are finding it tougher.)

And Bruffin, I guess we hang on in there. Somehow an interview would seem fairer. I note that DS' friends who want to study engineering seem to be scattering far and wide. There seems to be quite a wide spread of courses which enjoy good reputations, often in traditional manufacturing areas. Southampton sounds good. My impression is that the South coast seems to be booming employment wise as firms (engineering, finance and general manufacturing) relocate from high cost London towards ports with good transport connections and a better quality of life.

Needmore I am sorry to hear of the rejection, I hope he is coping, it must be hard for him. In DD1s very competitive year, the year before the most competitive pre fees hike, a few of her friends got no offers or missed required grades ( when they couldn't be flexible even if you missed by 1UMS mark.) they all reapplied with achieved grades or predicted grades for retakes (and with just the gap year activities of working in pub / trip to South America) and generally did better than they had in the previous year in terms of getting on the more popular courses. It was generally felt that their achieved grades carried more weight and there was no prejudice as a result of being rejected the year before. One of DDs friends though performed out of his socks to get AAA and assumed he had a chance of UCL for Economics but was rejected but his AS and especially GCSE scores were pretty dire, and at that time UCL were very keen on a run of As at GCSE.

There are lots of internship opportunities at UK banks etc that would possibly improve the strength of an application so worth applying and doing some targeted letters at individuals (look up conferance attendees, that sort of thing) DH's bank would only do it via the official scheme and had a very fair selection process so old boy networks not a requirement, that isn't uncommon now.

However I would have thought some experience of a developing economy might be useful, perhaps via a charity that does local enterprise schemes, some micro economics? Or via a UK company that operates manufacturing factories in a developing economy. I would of course have that perspective and perhaps the courses your DS is applying for would not value that experience but it might be worth asking and it would certainly not be as competitive to get an opportunity. Not that the manufacturing areas or villages that are in need of help establishing SMEs are going to be the environment a "gap yah" student usually seeks out but as you can imagine I know a few students who have done it. Another possibility would be helping an academic who is doing research in those economies? Again might be worth a few speculative letters?

Yorks offers for English definitely went out early this year.....

Hardly any of this will be paid of course but I am sure that some experience working for a UK company like Currys or John Lewis to save up will also strengthen an application. Those sorts of activities funded by bank of mum and dad tend to impress academics less.

And once you have had a gap year job with companies like that and proved yourself they will often take you back in the uni holidays which is useful, they seem to be understanding about coming and going.

Some nice ideas. Thanks.

The standard internships seem to be as competitive as University places, and time consuming to apply to. More interesting to do something slihtly off-beat but still relevant.

Also I have no idea if they are any good for Economics but a continuing ed course might be of use? Birkbeck in RL or Oxford Continuing Education or OU etc. online

Gerrit - Sorry I meant international rather than EU students. My dh recruits engineers / & has now started sponsoring UK engineers through university. There has been a dire shortage in past years, so he will be glad to hear that more UK students are getting places. That would be seriously good news. In the past international students have taken large numbers of university places (according to him & he is involved with universities a lot). He has tried recruiting international students as well, but there have been lots of problems with visas so they have had to return home.

By the way, Southampton is a really good engineering university.

DH is an engineer - and a visiting professor at one of the best engineering universities in the UK. That university has no problem in recruiting good UK students. However, engineering employers have difficulty in recruiting good engineering graduates as so many are creamed off to the City because of their Maths skills!

We shall blame the City then!

What proportion of his places are given to UK students?

Littleham's husband is probably right. Its not that these Universities have problems recruiting good UK students but that good UK students have problems getting places, certainly on the most popular courses.

These courses have Europe wide and International appeal. In some cases it is easier for an International student to get a place. Universities certainly seem to like the International students who have done sixth form at academic schools in the UK. EU students legally have to be given equal treatment with UK students. Some of this is fine. The demand from strong students from across the world is almost certainly helping keep our leading Universities towards the top of world rankings. The arms race, in terms of grades required, is keeping ambitious UK sixth formers pinned to their desks, as they realise they need to compete with the world's best in order to gain places at top institutions. (Look at the explosive growth in AS and A2 Easter revision courses - the i newspaper had an article yesterday.)

The losers might include employers looking for a steady stream off graduates who then find these graduates are looking to go home whether to Italy or Korea, or have simply seen the UK as a stepping stone to a Masters in the US.

(UK Undergraduate degrees are simpler to apply to, courses are often more specialist and only take three years, and international fees can be significantly cheaper than those for world ranked US institutions.)

And perhaps those UK students or their schools who are not aware of the extent to which the bar has been raised for the top ranked maths based courses. At a recent talk at the LSE the Director spoke of his concern about the diminishing proportion of non-London, non-private school, non-Southern UK students they were able to attract. He suggested they were considering adding a second, less quantitative economics degree that more UK students would be qualified to apply for. Trouble is that the quantitative degrees are in such high demand because they open the doors to equally quantitative post-grad or Masters degrees.

To me something needs to be done about the education system so all secondary school can deliver students to the right standards in maths, thus reducing the need for "contextualisation" amongst the UK cohort, and allowing all UK applicants equal chance to compete with overseas/EU students whose secondary systems have traditionally taught maths well.

In my experience in Engineering there has been a huge increase in applications for home students over about the last 5 or 6 years. Before that we struggled to fill our home student quota, now we are very oversubscribed; we could fill the home student places several times over. The consequence is that entry qualifications have increased dramatically as we moved from recruitment (students accepted if they met the minimum required entry standard) to selection (setting a level of qualification at which to make offers so that the final number of students coming is as close to the quota as possible). This means we are now rejecting students who would have been accepted a decade ago.

At the same time there has been a dramatic increase in applications from very well qualified and motivated EU students, who directly compete for places with home students and who have to be treated in the same way as home students. Overseas students (non-EU) are separate, they do not deprive home/EU students of places.

We have increased the target number of home students and intend to keep doing so, but this is not really under our control, and the limiting factor is ultimately resources - size of labs, lecture theatres and tutorial rooms.

The job market for our graduates is more buoyant than I can ever remember it, many of our final year students have multiple offers from good engineering companies. We are turning away companies looking for interns because we have run out of students.