How do universities allocate places?

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Just that really. I'm expecting ds to be predicted AAB for A2 and that set me wondering about his chances of getting a place at a university with a typical offer of AAB.

Do they say, for example, we've got 500 applications for 100 places so we will take the 100 applicants with the highest predictions? Do they say we'll look at the 200 with the highest predictions and offer places to the 100 with the best personal statements? Do they offer places on a first come first served basis to those applying with predictions of AAB and higher, provided they have a good personal statement?

Or do they all have their own ways of doing things? Anybody know?

Yes, they do all have their own way of doing things. One thing that is certain, though, is that for most courses with 100 places far more than 100 offers will be made. This is because most courses can't be sure that the applicant will (a) accept the offer and (b) meet the offer criteria, if it's conditional, as most the offers will be. It might be as many as 500 offers to be sure of filling all 100 places, if all 500 of them meet the entry criteria.

It isn't first come first served. I have learned only recently, thanks to another HE thread, that UCAS requires all applicants who get in before the January deadline to be considered equally. So the places can't run out. Two children through UCAS and I hadn't known that before!

Some of them start handing out offers as soon as the applications begin to arrive. Others wait till they've got them all in and then decide. (This can be a long wait as they have till March or even later.)

Some of them interview or ask applicants to send in written work or complete a questionnaire. Most go just on the UCAS application.

I suspect that if you apply for a course with a standard offer of AAB and you are predicted AAB you might be a little lower in the pecking order than an applicant predicted AAA, but on the other hand the AAA candidate will probably be applying to other places with higher offers and may be more likely to accept one of those.

Good luck to your son!

Doh - of course they must make more offers than they have places

Not sure I follow though - if they have to give equal consideration to all applicants who meet the January deadline how can they do that if they start handing out offers as soon as applications begin to arrive?

Beats me, stonecircle! I suppose experience shows what the pattern of applications is likely to be and they just set to work offering on all the good ones straight away. The less strong ones probably wait longer.

stonecircle It's a mystery. There was a long thread that started this time last year. What I learned from that is there is no obvious logic.
Durham were by far the worst, most inconsistent and frustrating university.
My DS applied there as one of his 5. His BF also applied. Same subject, similar grade predictions. Both had grades predicted in excess of the typical offer.
DS got offered a place within 2 weeks. His BF did not hear a word until March when they offered him a different course entirely.

How do they know how many offers to make - it's an educated guess based on historic figures for acceptance rates and conversion rates. Sometimes it goes wrong and too many or too few students turn up, the university has to live with it.

They offer a different course,secret, because they have not accepted the candidate onto the initial course but feel you would be ok on the other one!!! Therefore a good student is at that university and not elsewhere. Oxford may ask a candidate to have a second interview at another college if they feel the candidate is worthy of studying at the university but the initial choice of college is full or has very few places.

I have never believed January applications are treated the same as early applications when some candidates are offered places by the end of October. It may well be some courses will have places left if they have been offering on an ongoing basis but the most places available to candidates is when UCAS opens, not when it closes. Some University courses do offer late, in March, to everyone. One then feels that all applicants have been considered together. Durham were January for my DD1 but Bristol were March. Leeds offered both DD1 and DD2 within 3 weeks. I think the timing might depend upon subject too. Universities are scrabbling after good linguists, for example, so are likely to offer quite early to people they want to stop them going elsewhere. Offers are not just down to A level predications. A very good personal statement will help secure a place, as will lots of A*s at GCSE. You can also secure a place by choosing a less popular university (with the AAA students) as quite a few are now giving unconditional offers for high calibre students to secure them at that university. My friends DS got one from Leicester for Geography. There are also differences in school references and the profile universities are looking for. For example, work experience could count a great deal for some subjects.

The best advice is to make sure the application meets the requirements of the course. Good schools will check the personal statement because there is a real back to writing these. Also applying to the right universities. Tailor the application to the course.

It must be different depending on the course, as for my dd1, Bristol offered early and Durham left it until April. The complete opposite to your dd MillyMollyMama.

Feel more relaxed this time, with second child, as I have realised it is quite random and I have very little influence over the process. You are slightly at the mercy of your school, as they need to check applications and give references before they are submitted.

Some universities look at GCSE and AS scores etc before making an offer whilst others don't worry too much, using the offer as the filter in itself.

I have never believed January applications are treated the same as early applications when some candidates are offered places by the end of October

You may believe this, but it doesn't mean it's true. Unless you're an academic with several years' experience? Oh no, you're just talking about 2 individual applications ...

Such opinion stated as fact is really not helpful to all the nervous applicants doing it for the first time, and their parents.

Believe it or not, academics are actually quite experienced, expert, and knowledgeable. We use this experience, expertise and knowledge to help us select/offer to UCAS applicants we think - from the available evidence of UCAS forms and interviews (if we do interviews or other face to face selection procedures) - will be a good fit for our degree programmes.

We do know what we're doing, funnily enough we're quite clever people It's in our interests to offer places to as many good candidates as we can. We have to teach the students for 3-4 years, after all.

And more importantly, we want them to thrive, succeed, be interested and interesting and be enthused about what we are offering them. We want them to learn, and to grow. We want some of them to do so well that they stay on, to develop and extend knowledge by doing PhDs.

We want our graduates to go out & change the world. Seriously -- that's what I want all my students to do. So why would I limit the field I'm looking at?

The October/January impression is often because Oxbridge applications have to be in in October, which is a lot earlier than the UCAS cut off date in January. And Oxbridge applicants will generally have outstanding UCAS forms which will get them offers elsewhere.

And conversely, IME (20 years in the business, plus stints at several universities as Admissions Tutor), the less talented (in relative terms, of course!) tend to apply later. I don't know why. And I can assure anyone reading, that in the departments I've worked in, anyhow, applicants in January are just as likely to be offered a place as those in October, if they match our requirements and seem like a good fit for our programme. And because we actually teach our programme, we are pretty good judges of that fit.

UptheChimney. I said I didn't believe it. I did not state it as a fact!!! I am entitled to state my opinion, have a conversation with others who were also stating their person views, and I do not need to ask your permission to do this. Statistically it must be true that if a course routinely makes 100 offers and 30 of these are in October, then only 70 are left for later applicants. This fact cannot be disputed. If there is a huge influx of superbly qualified candidates, there are fewer places left to offer unless the number of offers are increased. You appear, UptheChimney, to get lesser qualified applicants who you know will apply late. I assume you are in a recruiting university. That is definitely not the case elsewhere!! I resent your superior tone and your nasty attitude to my post. You seem to think that you have all the answers but you may also have limited knowledge! By your insistence that you are clever, I assume you mean that I am not. You are patronising and rude!

All I think upthechimney meant was that of your remaining 70 offers she has to make, she knows that she is likely to only have 200 applicants, of which 150 won't have the right profile so will be declined, and the remaining 50 will be offered.
She will also have a 'maybe' pile from earlier applications, and come January when she knows she still needs to make a further20 offers, that maybe pile, plus the maybe pile from the later applications, will be looked at again.

We do a fair amount of complex statistical analysis with our application to offer to acceptance to enrolment rates; we involve a statistics professor, market analyst and management information analysts to come up with our rates which we feedinto our schools.

It is actually quite clever, and to be honest probably beyond the realms of most unless you are intrinsically involved in the process.

Goodness Upthechimney that was very harsh! Most of the people who post here are intelligent individuals and, I assume, able to distinguish between fact and personal experience.

It's great to have someone like Milly give us the benefit of their personal experience as a parent who has been through the process. It's also great to have the benefit of your professional experience (though I'm not sure we really need to be told how clever academics are and how they want the best for their students - I would expect that to be the case). As a parent going through the process for the first time I'm grateful for as much advice as possible - preferably advice delivered in a polite and non-confrontational manner!!!

Step away from the thread Chimney we know from experience this is one we cannot win with facts and the rules of UCAS. Perhaps there are departments and even whole universities out there who routinely break the very clear rules under which UCAS operates, good luck to them, I'm sure there are penalties if they get caught. I have been in both a recruiting and a selecting environment and I know that we followed the UCAS rules (and UCCA before that) in both situations, all students were treated in the same way irrespective of when they applied. I speak to colleagues in other universities and they tell similar stories.

Upthechinmey - out of interest, in your experience, what's the most over subscribed course you've ever come accross??

I dont mean subject, I mean, in a hypothetical situation, if a course is listed on UCAS as having 80 places and the tutors make 300 conditional offers suppose, for example, 200 of those conditional offers meet the grade and accept the place - where does that leave the univ when it has to accommodate 200 students when tutors were expecting 80???

I think the admissions process is amazingly complex (for univs not students) and am genuinely interested in how the logistics work.

Fairy - the university HAS to honour those offers. The dept concerned will spend the weeks up to the start running around like a headless chicken re jigging academic timetables, the facilities dept will go ballistic as they will have to find extra rooms from somewhere, and the VC will be very cross as if the extra 180 fall within the number control his university will have a big chunk of funding clawed back.

Thanks for the reply titchy - I suppose it must happen every year but not in such great numbers that it causes mayhem!!!!!

I imagine stress levels go through the roof - makes me greatful for my simply low level job. Turn up, work hard, go home, get paid!!!!!!! No stress.

But apart from in Oxbridge and a handful of other courses the ratio of offers to acceptances will not be that high.

As an example - Warwick maths (I don't work there but have their data open in front of me). This is considered in the top 5 in the UK, maybe even top 3, but students would choose Oxbridge over Warwick. They make offers to about 70-75% of applicants but only 20% accept. The remainder either accept Oxbridge offers or go for courses with lower entrance grades (no STEP papers) instead. The admissions people at Warwick know from experience roughly how many are going to accept and make offers accordingly.

It might occasionally happen that the acceptance rate jumps by 20 or 25%, but over 200% is extreme and really doesn't happen. Generally departments can cope with a jump of 20% in the short-term and in the medium term they hire extra staff.

The most oversubscribed degree programme I know of is at postgraduate level. The Doctorate in Clinical Psychology is funded by the NHS and successful applicants get all their fees paid and a good salary (Band 6) for three years.

UCL has 40 places and typically gets about 1000 applications.

KCL has 20 places and typically gets over 800 applications.

It's not quite as bad elsewhere but demand far, far outstrips supply.

I don't know if there are any undergraduate programmes with that level of oversubscription.

We had 90 student one year when we expected 60, we had to grin and bear it.

Come on, AllMimsy, you can't tease us like that. What postgrad course is it?

The DClinPsy, lijkk, the one I gave some stats for. Sorry if that wasn't clear!

The Master's programme I used to work for got probably about 6 times as many applications as there were places, and that was bad enough.

Titchy and fairy - I've just been speaking to someone in a university facilities dept. in this situation. They have over recruited (never known a year like it), as they got more Insurance candidates than they were expecting (due to harsher exams possibly).

They are now making students share rooms & are shipping in bunk beds!!

Oh Doh, Mimsy, thanks & my fault. You wouldn't believe I have pg degree myself, would you?

Been following this thread with interest and I think Chimney gave good, honest, advice. Further up the thread I was thinking it would be a real advantage to get UCAS applications in early. However, there is logic in the advice that later applications (but submitted before the January deadline) are given equal consideration. I would think it's the highly qualified, organised candidates that submit early and get the early offers and the ones with "not-so-good" AS grades that dither about where to apply. I'm unsure how my DS will cope with AS/A2 and although we will investigate courses in advance, I anticipate he may well be a last minute applicant and very glad that he'll most likely be given equal consideration (if he meets the entry requirements). As Chimney said admissions tutors are used to crunching the numbers of offers and want candidates who will thrive, whether they applied immediately or later within the application period.