DD struggling to decide which offer to firm - advice please

[pastaofplenty]

DD has so far received 4 out of 5 offers.

She is still waiting for Edinburgh but is trying to get an idea of who to firm in either scenario (she does or doesn't get Edinburgh offer)

At present she is re-evaluating the courses and modules carefully and is happy with all five of her city/student destinations. She has also looked at varying costs, travel etc...

She is unable to go to all offer days (lives in EU) although we are planning informal visits to cities.

So far she has offers from KCL, Sheffield, Newcastle and Glasgow.

Her current thinking is to turn down Newcastle (based on distance and lower subject ranking) but that still leaves her with 3 (potentially 4) to chose from.

She has applied for an Arts/Humanities degree and all five universities are in the top 20 for her subject choice.

Her offers are very similar - A*AA through to AAA

So can you advice on:

1. Should she choose on reputation alone (i.e: whole university reputation)?

1. Should she choose on subject ranking and/or modules available?

1. In which order would you "rank" these five universities reputationally?

Sorry if this sounds very vague - I thought she had decided on her "top two" but an achievable offer from Kings along with higher one from Glasgow and a slow response from Edinburgh is leaving her with too much time to think!!

If it helps she is swayed by Scotland as it offers a 4 year masters degree - should this outweigh the other English universities? She is keen to do postgraduate study and wonders whether her first university choice will have a bearing on where she can apply for this.

Right - too many questions - I'll go now :)

Having gone through this process with two DDs, I think she should go and visit the universities.

Both of mine took an immediate dislike to a university when visiting. They were sought after places, but my DDs just didn't feel they would be as happy there as other places they'd been to.

It's a huge descision to make without visiting.

Thanks everyone

Zinxie - I think London certainly appeals, she is pretty independent and the opportunities for work (during her degree and after) would be higher. This is important as she has the advantage of being billingual so would perhaps find more oppportunities for employment with her English/French skills. London appeals as she is into music and several friends are also planning to be there.

Sheffield is attractive because of the course modules and the university's proactive attitude to keeping her informed (open days, booklets, etc..) Not sure if this is just good marketing though ;) She has also heard good things about the city and is swayed (in small part) to it being the closest to home (two hrs away)

Edinburgh appeals in many similar ways to London - vibrant, good music and cultural scene, capital city, beautiful etc..

She has visited all the cities before (except Sheffield) but will be visiting there in April.

I know several students at Sheffield Uni and all are having a ball! It is also a cheap place to live. My DD would have applied there but they didn't do her chosen course.

If a person likes and enjoys Sheffield, it's fortunate, because living costs are cheaper there, and as you know, a fair number of people go on to make a life in the city of their university, and Sheffield property is affordable.

London doesn't offer much that isn't pricey!

The visit in April will decide if Sheffield is in or out!

Edinburgh is better value than london too.

Truth is, you can't beat london, for diversity, stimulus, opportunity, culture.

Sheffield is a great place to be a student. Student accomodation is very good.

Hi Purplepenguin86. It was in their Higher Education Supplement of about 2 weeks ago. The article was about what universities major recruiters like to recruit from. It mentioned 10 universities and said that although 30 more are on the milk round, the top 10 were favoured. It was not just for law, it was a whole range of employers. I have no idea if the supplement is on line and I have now thrown it away or I could quote it verbatim. I am absolutely certain that many courses at many universities are excellent, but this information does go some way to explain why some universities are highly selective and others are recruiting. It also explains why some make lower offers than others or are harder to get into, requiring pre tests for example.

I would go for Edinburgh first, Glasgow second in that scenario. If she doesn't get the Edinburgh offer, then I'd go Glasgow firm, Sheffield second. I may be irrationally prejudiced against London but I don't think its advantages outweigh its many (mainly cost-of-living related) disadvantages.

Found this - bit of a different list though Milly

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/10213652/Graduate-jobs-top-12-universities-for-getting-a-job.html?frame=2631967

I don't know how to post links but going from Littlehams link above to The Telegraph I went to an article published just today headed "UK firms promise a bright future for graduates" here it says - "all the big graduate recruiters will consider good degree-holders from any university, but the majority only actively target students at 30 or so. The 10 most often cited by employers in 2014/15 were Manchester,Nottingham,Warwick,Cambridge,Oxford,Durham,Bristol,Imperial College London,University College London and Leeds".
Hope this helps those who are interested.

The full report is called "The Graduate Market in 2015" and can be found here - www.highfliers.co.uk/ link at the bottom of the page.

Table 5.8 on Page 33 lists the top 25 "Universities Targeted by the Largest Number of Top Employers in 2014-2015".

In this report it has:

14. Edinburgh
15. Sheffield
16. Newcastle
17. King's
18. Glasgow

All pretty close and all good..

Where is York on the list? My dd prefers this course / city / university over her Bristol offer. It is difficult for them to know what factor to prioritise.

Full list:

1. Manchester
2. Nottingham
3. Warwick
4. Cambridge
5. Oxford
6. Durham
7. Bristol
8. Imperial College London
9. University College London

10. Leeds 11. Bath 12. London School of Economics 13. Birmingham 14. Edinburgh 15. Loughborough 16. Sheffield 17. Southampton 18. Exeter 19. Newcastle 20. King's 21. York 22. Cardiff 23. Strathclyde 24. Glasgow 25. Leicester

I don't understand why some universities are so much higher than others with exactly the same entry requirements. What is going on? I'd be grateful if someone could explain it.

I'm a bit shocked at the order in that list, I mean all great Unis but surprised that Nottingham and Manchester trump some with much higher grade requirements and big international reputations like Imperial, LSE, Oxbridge etc.

Whether or not the course has a work placement option can also be relevant, and may be why Loughborough is in there at no 15 - as we (I work for one of the employers polled for this report) have quite a lot of placement students, and we hire some of the best ones back as graduates.

The report also makes mention of the increasing relevance of some kind of work experience:

"Nearly half the recruiters who took part in the research repeated their warnings from previous years – that graduates who have had no previous work experience at all are unlikely to be successful during the selection process and have little or no chance of receiving a job offer for their organisations’ graduate programmes."

It may partly be that Manchester is a huge uni (since it merged with UMIST - a merger of 2 large unis).

I would really not go for a Scottish uni for the MA status, as a couple of people have said, it's often considered as equivalent to a BA (just as an Oxford MA is also really a BA + a few quid). I do admissions for postgrad courses and people with those MAs tend to have to do the standard MA/Msc that the 3 year BA/Bsc students would need. So you're really adding a year of undergrad study (+ fees and costs) without any real benefit (except for the benefit of a year of uni life). It might be worth it if you really want to go to a Scottish uni (I have nieces at St Andrews and Edinburgh, they didn't mind the idea of an extra year and more fees) but not for any perceived academic benefit from the MA.

BSP's list is not "the Best Universities" but "Universities Targeted by the Largest Number of Top Employers".
Imagine that going to a milkround presentation costs your company £50,000. If the University of Small has 5,000 graduates then it costs £10 per graduate to reach your audience. If the University of Big has 25,000 graduates then the cost is only £2 per graduate.
Manchester has a huge intake so that's why it is top of the list - more bang for your buck.

Surely go for Scotland if tuition free - if she gets a maintenance loan in England she will have to pay it back, after all.

Tuition's only free to Scottish residents.

Thanks for those explanations. It makes a bit more sense now.

Cathyandclaire - that list is universities targeted by 'top employers'. Machester runs a lot of degrees/courses in conjunction with big recruiters (e.g. KPMG). That is why it's top. Nobody actually thinks it's a better university than say Cambridge, and it doesn't necessarily have higher employment rates than other universities either (the one in Scotland linked to the oil industry have the highest employment rates).

If I were her I would wait for Edinburgh but have KCL as my second choice after that. I am also from an EU country and ended up going to a University of London college. My reasoning was no matter where in the world I ended up as an adult everyone has heard of London (the city) whereas other universities that were just as good say, York or Durham there's no gaurantee of employers knowing about reputation. Whereas I think people just assume the university of a capital city is good.

My dd was in the bizarre position of wanting Edinburgh first and KCL as her second choice then getting a much lower offer from Edinburgh than KCL! So her first and second choices looked very odd.........

Presumably it will be skewed by the number of subjects offered, and the number of employers in different fields. Engineering firms won't be recruiting from LSE. Firms looking for product design graduates will head straight for Northumbria not Oxford. Firms with lower entry salaries may find it is not cost effective to recrtuit from the big name Universities. Lots of variables.

If you wanted to go into Investment Banking, Kings would look like a good bet.

www.linkedin.com/edu/rankings/gb/undergraduate-investment-banking?trk=edu-rankings-flt-ctg-dd

Having been a milk round recruiter (the name given to the employer visits to university campuses for presentations / interviews) it isn't just the cost effectiveness, existing links etc. but prosaic things such as having a Leeds office with someone who is trained and willing to visit a university, give an engaging presentation and interview (we all had to have attended a week's course to be an assessor). Those campus interviews were only a sift and we held similar first interviews in our main regional HQs. Then it was an overnight stay and full day assessment board with further psychometric assessments, role plays, management exercises and further interviews with the candidates who had made it through the first round. All this is now preceded by online psychometric testing and telephone interviews as well as a paper sift.

Always remember newspaper articles are rarely written by people who know what they are talking about so you are dependent on the mate they asked the quality of their research.