Do some top ranking universities discriminate (not give offers) because they are oxbridge applicants

[fairycakes333]

OK I know what I am saying will be highly controversial and debatable. It really has only come about got us thinking. My dd applied to Oxford declared her module UMS on her application this itself I assume would give a inkling to other universities she applied to that's she is Oxbridge applicant. She was rejected post interview. One of the other top uni she applied to who requires AAA subsequently also rejected her. She achieved all A's in all the modules with high UMS average. She took the rejection quite well was gutted but got over it as she felt the course is competive (not medicine by the way) anyways and there would be many applicants with her type of grades. However she has subsequently found out on student rooms that quite a few applicants have received offers with a lot lower AS grades as her and GCSE to this particular university and have applied after October 15th. Obviously she's a bit peeved but makes us wonder whether some of these top flight uni are marketing themselves as only wanting top students but in reality are only wanting those applicants that have a higher percentage of firming them, as I would expect that say someone who has achieved AACC would firm AAA as it would be their highest offer. Universities that are offering courses with high grades I'm assuming again would never be a Insurance so top uni would have to be quite sure who they choose to offer places and that they will firm them only makes sense, its as though they don't want to take the risk of giving too many offers to top students as many will have applied to other uni with similar oxbrigde entry requirements. My dd has already got a offer from RG uni AAA requirement she loves and is probably going to firm them although she is still waiting on another uni with A*AA requirement. So my question is do some of these top uni play a game of hyping themselves up as being super selective to boost their reputation. My dd wasn't the only good academic applicant who got rejected from this uni there has been quite a few on TSR same course. I don't want to say which uni don't want to out my dd but its a top 7 uni.

upthechimpneyulien oops sorry didn't mean to tread on your tail, I'm a very inquisitive person like to ask a lot of question obviously I'm rather dumb and ignorant so sorry if I have offended If you think I'm trying to blame others for my dd rejection that's fine you think what you want. I was only seeking bit of clarity and understanding to how decisions are made after all it isn't always transparent. Of course your a lot more intelligent then me that's why you have the job you have and I'm just miss average. I shall go and sit on my naughty corner.

Is it possible that those receiving lower offers where they don't have the right subject combo at A'level are being offered a place on a degree with a foundation year, rather than direct entry to the degree? This was quite common at my old place (e.g. those with 1 science A'level instead of 2).

At interview there can be all sorts of reasons for rejecting candidates (and I have interviewed hundreds of applicants over the years). In particular, one candidate was mouthing off to other applicants (in front of me, his interviewer), that he was not as impressed by our facilities compared to those at university X and if university X made him an offer, he'd be going there (so why would we want to teach him?). Others were more interested in the city's nightlife than the university, or showed that they had not researched their chosen profession particularly well. Others could not answer basic technical questions, or demonstrated a limited capacity for basic numeracy (important in the profession they would be entering) - this despite good AS grades, then there were the ones who overinflated their personal statements and would get caught out on questioning at interview and some were very arrogant or rude to staff and were therefore rejected.

Finally, there were the students who were not predicted the normal grades required for the course, but came across as pleasant, well motivated individuals who would do well on the course offered (despite marginally lesser grades), who had lots of relevant experience and who came across as the types of students who would be an absolute delight to teach. These students would often get lower than normal offers.

Offers are not simply about grades and political maneuvering with respect to whether the student is likely to "firm" with a university or not.

One think I did notice when DS applied last year was that there is absolutely no guarentee for getting five offers, even for the best candidates. Some got four offers and a rejection from Oxbridge, one boy even got into oxford and rejected from another institution after interview. There really is no way of telling when applying to the top institutions for competitive subjects.

If your daughter really feels hard done by has she considered taking a gap year and reapplying with grades? It is fairly common for people to do this if they don't get the offers they want first round.

Oh, and our interviews were VERY transparent. We graded candidates out of 5 on a number of key areas. Candidates who achieved a score above a certain amount were given offers, those whose scores were below were not. The same questions (within reason, based on their experience, personal statement etc) were asked to all candidates to ensure fairness.

I thought Cambridge was the place with the UMS obsession and Oxford went on GCSE/AS grades and TSA?

But the OP's DD only had an interview at Oxbridge, so the other universities were looking at all the other information and someof themdo reject very early in the process. I do think it is a growing problem that "obvious" candidates are rejected from the more competitive universities and, because they do not interview, they actually choose the students who want the nightlife, and not the more solid performers! I do believe you have a point, OP, but your DD has Warwick, so that is a good result.

Thanks milly I was beggining to feel I shouldn't be asking or quizzing. I knew that people would think I was being some kind of a sore loser and my questions seemed to infer that I am rather bitter and angry, umm thats further from the truth rather I'm a bit confused. I married a Englishman im not a British person the country I come from university entrance is all about achieving a certain amount of point's not achieving the points means rejection have to repeat the year until you get the score so to speak and that's it basically they don't care what other things you have done its all to do with reaching the magic score so that they feel you have the right academic attainment to succeed on that course. It a dog eat dog type country I come from academics is everything and kids are pressured to get the grades rejection is the norm over there. Kids repeating years until there nearing 20 to get to uni.

I was only seeking bit of clarity and understanding to how decisions are made after all it isn't always transparent.

If you had simply asked about the usual processes of admissions & selections, then people would have answered you helpfully.

Instead, you title your thread in such a way as to accuse university staff of unethical behaviour and bad faith.

You then go on to assume that your DD's rejection by non-Oxbridge was because somehow those interviewing her were discriminating against her because she'd applied to Oxbridge.

1. We don't see the other places an applicant has put on their UCAS form
2. Most university staff act ethically & professionally
3. We want the best students for our courses, who will thrive & be happy in the course
4. The plural of anecdote is not data

Every university knows when they receive pre mid October applications that the candidate is also applying to Oxbridge. The deadline is a giveaway and so is the quality of the candidate's profile! Of course, most university staff are doing their best and are totally honest but many schools are aware of seriously good candidates being rejected from universities other than Oxbridge, in November. This means that not all applications have been received before the candidate is rejected. I think the strength of feeling here is somewhat unhelpful and, you are correct, OP, selection is not transparent and there is no feedback. Neither was the OP accusatory, it was an enquiry. Funny how some people are very touchy about this though!

OP, you clearly are not a sore loser I think some posters can't read and are a bit over eager to put others down.

I have three DC currently at uni and another going in September (hopefully)
It's interesting how the goalposts keep changing - fee increases, grade inflation, AAB cap, ABB cap, no cap, stopping January modules and the latest twist is the rapid increase in unconditional offers being made to students yet to sit their exams. I keep thinking I understand it and then they change the rules.

This year is going to be very interesting with the removal of the caps. It's going to make it even harder for some universities to predict their numbers.
Im sure it makes 'firmers' even more attractive.

Unistats says that there has been a 10% decrease in medical students this year from last year. That's a big drop. you would think there would have to be a reason for such a change.

It's obvious to me that we need to change to a system where students apply to universities AFTER receiving their results. It would be so much fairer and would save everyone so much money, time and guesswork. I also think it would be a lot less stressful for students.

BTW it's hard to imagine that most students do not go to 'Oxbridge' and other 'top universities' when you read MN. There are always pages and pages of angst'y posters discussing their super academic DC and very little from the parents of the less than stellar students. I can never fathom out why. TSR is the same.

Ps, OP, I laughed when you said Top 7 uni - am I right in thinking it 's 7th

It's interesting how the goalposts keep changing - fee increases, grade inflation, AAB cap, ABB cap, no cap, stopping January modules and the latest twist is the rapid increase in unconditional offers being made to students yet to sit their exams. I keep thinking I understand it and then they change the rules

Most of these things are in response to Government changes to the ways that universities are positioned in government policy, funding, and reporting practices.

There's an election in May. People may want to think about the growing pattern of direct interference by Government into the HE system. It used to be one of the best in the world, and the fact that it is, is down to university staff, fighting against the best efforts of the government to wreck the system.

Whilst sympathising with the "why has this happened to my DC" I do struggle with Oxbridge candidates being unfairly treated when I stop and think as to what the logic might be.

About 75% of Oxbridge applications are unsuccessful, in most of the STEM subjects (for Cambridge at least), the percentage unsuccessful is even higher than that. What logic would therefore exist to rule out such candidates on the basis that they may have applied to Oxbridge when the majority of them won't actually be going to Oxbridge?

Given the numbers applying do admissions tutors / staff really have the time to ponder on whether a candidate may have applied to Oxbridge, and the ready availability of a crystal ball to tell which will get an Oxbridge offer and quite possibly therefore not make their particular institution a firm choice and to be dismissed out of hand accordingly? Whisper it, but some Oxbridge candidates, perish the thought, might actually have another Uni as their ideal first choice.

TSR? well on the lies, damned lies and statistics continuum it could well be some distance on from statistics in this instance.

We know that more offers than anticipated places are made. Let's take Durham, a regular choice for conspiracy theories, although, on an overall level, not ranked 7th by any of the three league tables (in alphabetical order it is 5th, 8th and 6th in the current tables) so possibly not the culprit in this instance :). A range of very popular courses and roughly 3-4 offers made for every potential place available, although a few outliers - I was a bit surprised that in the last cycle for which Durham have published data 97% of applicants for Archeology received an offer, and 91% for Engineering, although there may well be very good reasons for this . It is not as if such Unis are making limited numbers of initial offers, but there is a good sized pool of well qualified candidates, and some will therefore unfortunately not make the cut for whatever reason.

Whilst anecdote pains me I do have to wonder whether over processed (by schools) and formulaic PSs do trip up some candidates, who might otherwise seem to tick all the academic boxes. anecdote alert Certainly having sat in on a talk at one elite end open day the director of admissions named a fairly well known boarding school (not in the Eton, Winchester level of public recognition) and stated bluntly that it appeared that the school told all DCs wanting to do subject X to apply to this university and include a,b.c.d,e,f,g.h ... in their very formulaic PSs. The inference being that many then ended up in the reject, rather than the offer, pile.

Whilst it might be annoying not knowing why an application was unsuccessful, having an offer in the bag from somewhere as well regarded as Warwick is an outcome that the OP's DD is still hopefully very pleased with.

No, we don't discriminate against those who have applied to Oxbridge. That would be utterly ridiculous.

We have an early applicant visit in December we expect most of those applicants to have applied to Oxbridge and/or medicine. They are very good applicants and we try hard to show them that we are a good option. Rejecting them would be completely pointless. I don't understand what people believe we could possibly gain from rejecting a whole set of good applicants. It is not that unusual to speak to applicants who have Oxbridge offers who have decided to go somewhere else.

This is going to be long post sorry people milly that is exactly what I'm kinda saying if admissions is so transparent and act fairly as they say they do how come some applicants good ones get rejected before jan deadline aren't they suppose to give equal considerations?
upthechimneywhy do you assume that just because dd got rejected means we have a chip on our shoulder. Seriously are we not allowed to question or be enlightened to what goes on in the background. I think u got read wrong my dd was only interviewed at Oxbridge all her other choices didn't require it. I know what your saying That really we should trust you with your decisions as your a proffesional blah blah blah. Yes on the whole I do but as a mum and tax payer and university is predominately funded by the tax payer I should be allowed to question or raise questions that maybe controversial after all university admission aren't regulated you are hiring and firing as you please within admission policies guidelines but seriously they aren't set in stone as there are grey areas you could use and abused and im not accusing you so dont take it personally or any other admissions people here. But i guess u will anyways cos im thick and ignorant you are far superior and have a higher order of thinking for me to understand. For starters your not going to get penalised for making wrong decisions you are somewhat self regulated. Its a lot public money spent on uni and its becoming more of a business open to corruption, us public folks where suppose to trust MP's and look what happened?? Banks?? Acting on there own interest. Pokeymont highlights alot of good points, you blame the government great your allowed to blame tom, dick or harry and we suppose to trust you that that is the case. Whereas if I question something u don't like I'm lumped in the" sore loser" category and need to grow up you. But if you really trully listen to some of the contributers here there are many mums and students alike that have some disallusionment (cant spell im thick!) with the process we are the ones that have gone through the process and come through the other side and this has been our experiences and we are not all are Oxbridge applicants either. My dd has AAA offer from durham it will be her firm. There is only 4 universities in uk that offer her course advertised at A*AA. Her offer from Durham is higher ranking than the uni I am questioning we are very happy and proud parents no bitterness here I'm afraid. So please go figure im not blaming my dd rejection from this uni on admission and them not being professional and being incompetent but more merely enquring anomalies and the bigger picture. And I agree too that there needs to be more transparency there needs to be more changes to this system if it was more black and white I wouldn't be having this conversation.

Applicants getting rejected will be rejected because something in their application doesn't sit well with whichever uni is assessing. It's far, far more likely to be the school ref, or the ps, or the grades at whichever level than the fact of a suspected application to Oxford or Cambridge. Heaps and heaps of kids get offers from Oxford or Cambridge and Durham, Bristol, UCL, Imperial etc. The stats for those accepted to multiple top unis I bet far outweigh those rejected by one or some.

pokeymont clever lady it is 7th depending on which league table but I can't remember whether my info came from 2014 of 2015 one??. It was only a few months I read on another thread that Exeter was giving AAA offers higher than advertised what's that all about? What's with the sudden grade inflation what purpose would this serve? My dd friend went to KCL open day last month and they said, that for her course because of the huge numbers of high calibre applicants they won't be giving offers to kids predicted AAB which is the advertised requirements for that course. Great isn't it to anyone that hadn't gone to the open day and applied who was predicted AAB wasted choice having goal post shifted without warning.

You talk a lot about AS grades, but predicted grades are very important too.

Fairy cakes, re KCL, that's not moving the goalposts, that's just laying out the facts that there are 100 places on a course, probably dictated by the size of the biggest room in the department, and 400 potential students who have applied with AAA and above. Of course applicants with AAB won't get a look in. It's like school catchment areas. Even if you live in catchment of a heavily oversubscribed school you may not get in. Same principle.

You sound unnecessarily and quite unreasonably bitter.

BTW university staff pay a fuckload of tax. I don't know what being a taxpayer has to do with anything. I'm subsidising your DC to attend school through my taxes, and for your hospital appointments. I don't resent that one little bit.

I think that whatever admissions staff write on this thread the OP won't change her viewpoint that her daughter was rejected in favour of weaker candidates, even when there is no firm evidence that this was the case.

And I agree too that there needs to be more transparency there needs to be more changes to this system if it was more black and white I wouldn't be having this conversation.

A system cannot be black and white because places are offered based on the whole application. Academics can decide on the basis of the whole application that a candidate with AABB at AS is more deserving of a place than a candidate with AAAA (perhaps in different subjects). They have to have this freedom because GCSE/AS grades are not the only predictor of university performance. Note that STEM subjects often do have very transparent policies e.g. Warwick maths offers to all candidates with the required grade profile but this is only possible because they are not very over-subscribed. (In practice only a percentage of those with offers accept and go there, giving the right number of students on the course.)

University education is not a service in the usual sense and students are not customers: it is a two way relationship, in which academics have to be able to use their professional judgement to decide which students are most suited to the course, and in which academics should also be (and are) allowed to throw students out if they are not progressing adequately. Prospective students don't have an automatic right to a place just because they are predicted the minimum grades required by the course or because their parents are paying tax. In over-subscribed courses small differences between candidates' applications make the difference between getting an offer or not. Of course there are "wrong" decisions made in the sense that well qualified candidates have to be rejected but this is life: if you have 100 places and 1500 applications you have to make choices.

fairycakes - you raise an important issue about the discrepancy between advertised grade requirements and the predicted grades that actually enable a candidate to get an offer. This is a very grey area indeed and I am aware of significant bargaining and some not very honest tactics used by candidates to get the highest possible grade predictions.

Millymolly - every applicant applying pre mid October is not necessarily an oxbridge candidate. The conservatoire deadline is earlier than the oxbridge one - my DD may apply to oxbridge (probably not the way things are going) but she will definitely apply to conservatoires. She will do her applications at the same time, to get it over and done with. Other people may be just super organised or super nervy. Or both.

Some schools also have an early submission policy ; preferring to get everyone's application in by October so that U6 isn't dominated by the process.

I am aware of significant bargaining and some not very honest tactics used by candidates to get the highest possible grade predictions.

I have to say, I never quite understand this. An offer does not equal a place and if candidates are offered a place based on grades they are highly unlikely to achieve, it does no-one any favours, least of all the student who subsequently doesn't get a place on their desired course when they've failed to hit the grades in the offer.

The course I used to teach on was highly competitive (not medicine) and they did not take "near misses" because there were enough students with the (very high) grades required. Sometimes, at the offer stage, if it was felt that a candidate would be a good match for the course/would do well at the chosen career/had lots of relevant experience, but was not predicted the grades in our standard offer, the offer would be lowered to accommodate them and in these cases, higher grade predictions would have actually been detrimental to them (because with higher grade predictions, they wouldn't have received an adjusted, lower offer). Some students assume that an offer = a place and this is really not the case at all.