University Admissions - I'm willing to answer any questions!

[MrsBright]

I have worked in Uni Admissions at several different Unis, RG and non-RG, for over 20 years and am very happy to answer any general questions about UCAS/Offers/F&I Decisions/Clearing/Adjustment etc.

very brave of you, MrsB, amusing that your credentials are questioned when anyone can claim anything on the net and what matters is whether your advice is good.

All advice on the internet should be checked out with other sources but what you are saying checks out with information we got from admissions staff (academic and non-academic, science and arts because we had advice from a lot of people. There can be differences between them but general advice is often the same).

I'd support coffewith1sugar too - we went to one open day where it was impossible to get a straight answer to a simple question (about a change to admission requirements that had been made that year). No general questions taken after the talk, long queues to ask and after waiting for ages my child still had to email. And while waiting in the queue you'd hear other questions being asked that were general so could, and should, have been covered by staff in the talk. The disorganisation was one of the reasons they didnt apply to that university.

Sometimes admissions staff pop up on the Student Room website, they get a better reception there.

alreadytaken
What sort of questions? Were they Uni specific or just general 'admissions process' questions?

Nothing wrong with asking someone their credentials! There are several regulars who are admissions tutors who regularly answer questions - they're happy to say what type of subject and institution they're from which gives readers an idea of how appropriate that advice is to their child. Vital given the huge diversity of responses from the sector.

It's therefore quite reasonable to ask the same of someone new who pops up. MrsB's advice has been fairly straightforward, although her advice regarding league tables and research isn't true of all subjects and institutions. So presumably she's from a post 92 university, but we don't know - knowing the context in which she gave that answer would have been useful.

Thanks for your insights, MrsB, I don't care what Unis or courses you've worked in because DC haven't narrowed down their preferences yet. There are so many medicine/Oxbridge threads on MN, it's nice to have a much more general overview and reminder of the basics.

A lot of these general questions are just that: general. So those of us actually doing the admissions & selections are rather more cautious (ethical?) than to say "Ask me anything"

And sometimes, the questions asked are just unanswerable: we don't know how many people we might admit if they don't meet their grades, to refer to one of the most frequenty asked questions.

A lot of general questions are answered by careful reading of the specific Department's (not just university's) website. And Mrs B's remark about research rankings not making a difference to the student experience is plain inaccurate for the humanities and social sciences (as well as revealing a lack of knowledge and/or respect about what academics do).

Blimey, this thread has a lot of snarky'ness in it.

I don't know what it is about the higher education topic in Mumsnet but it's not the friendliest of topics. i also find it strange that it's so biased towards the very top Uni's.

Rather than being so snippy to MrsBright why don't other posters simply point out where they disagree and offer their own points of view as I have seen them doing on other threads.

I don't agree with a few points made by MrsBright - but I think it's great that she has started this thread.

The HE threads on MN are skewed towards top universities because those are the universities that select rather than recruit students and, hence, where learning about how to position oneself/one's DC is most critical to a successful outcome.

And Mrs B's remark about research rankings not making a difference to the student experience is plain inaccurate for the humanities and social sciences (as well as revealing a lack of knowledge and/or respect about what academics do).

Research ranking is also highly relevant to the quality of the course in sciences. There are qualitative differences between courses at high, middle and low ranking institutions.

Part of the problem with giving simple straightforward answers to questions about admissions is that there are no simple straight answers much of the time. Things change from year to year and from department to department in ways which are unpredictable. One year we may be worried about over-offering the next we may struggle to fill all our places. Other parts of our faculty will be moving in the opposite direction. Some years we would take applicants who have narrowly missed their offer, the next we would not consider them at all. The things that stay the same, like minimum entrance requirements, are in the prospectus, everything else we are necessarily vague about because until the end of the UCAS process (in our case only a couple of weeks before we start teaching) we don't know how things will pan out.

Part of the problem with giving simple straightforward answers to questions about admissions is that there are no simple straight answers much of the time

This.

The fact is, practice does vary a lot between institutions and even between different courses within the same institution.

I used to work at an RG university in an admin role that included dealing with enquiries and applications to a particular postgraduate course. My department took a completely different approach to that whole area of work from the rest of our School, as far as I could make out, in that the academics were only too happy to leave as much as possible to me. The final decisions on offers were made by academics but they were relying on me and the central admin staff to do the detailed scrutiny of grades, English language competence and other bog standard stuff.

In the rest of my school, that detailed scrutiny of Master's applications was more likely to be done by academics but only because our postgraduate numbers were at a manageable level. It would have been a huge task to scrutinise applications closely for some of the big undergraduate programmes where there were hundreds of places to fill and thousands of applications.

For this reason, the institution as a whole was trying very hard to centralise admissions and get as many offers as possible decided by admissions staff, not academics. I don't know how far they succeeded, but we got circulars about this which indicated that the senior management wanted to go down that road as far as possible to save money and speed the admissions process up. I had the impression that for many UG courses the academics would never have seen many of the applications at all, let alone read the personal statements.

The fact is, practice does vary a lot between institutions and even between different courses within the same institution.

I used to work at an RG university in an admin role that included dealing with enquiries and applications to a particular postgraduate course. My department took a completely different approach to that whole area of work from the rest of our School, as far as I could make out, in that the academics were only too happy to leave as much as possible to me. The final decisions on offers were made by academics but they were relying on me and the central admin staff to do the detailed scrutiny of grades, English language competence and other bog standard stuff.

In the rest of my school, that detailed scrutiny of Master's applications was more likely to be done by academics but only because our postgraduate numbers were at a manageable level. It would have been a huge task to scrutinise applications closely for some of the big undergraduate programmes where there were hundreds of places to fill and thousands of applications.

For this reason, the institution as a whole was trying very hard to centralise admissions and get as many offers as possible decided by admissions staff, not academics. I don't know how far they succeeded, but we got circulars about this which indicated that the senior management wanted to go down that road as far as possible to save money and speed the admissions process up. I had the impression that for many UG courses the academics would never have seen many of the applications at all, let alone read the personal statements.

Mrs bright these were some of the questions dd and some parents asked but the lectures/staff couldn't answer on open/offer day.
How competitive is the course? ratio of applicants to offers? What % of applicants gets offers? (not all uni publish them some do some don't )
Are application scored?/Weighted? Ie certain subjects given better score weighting than others?
Is the PS graded scored/graded?. (some uni's do some don't say on their prospectus/website.
How are missed offers treated? What process is used? Is the app looked again from fresh? Or because its been scored they will take the highest in that order to fill any spaces they have left.
Do the uni take equivelant grades?
If one misses the grades by one. Eg offer was AAA but got AAA is that the same as AAB? (some uni's by their response would look at AAA as being better than AA*B as they don't rate B grades in anything if the course is competitve)
Do you take near miss if they are a insurance rather than a firm applicant.
Some of you may think these are silly questions to ask. But I can see why dd plus some parents asked as they are not always readily available. Knowing some would be important to making a firm or insurance. Some of these questions to this day dd has had no email responses. DD didn't ring the admission office as she is wells awares they are very busy processing application so don't want to disturb take away their time.
But in general terms from what our experience but mostly dd's have been, regarding specific admission questions, because the application is centralised. Lecturers/staff at these open days can't answer as it never filters down to them to know what's going on. Hence we go on these threads even if the advice is generalised or a glimpse, insight, opinions from admission staff it can all be helpful, even if different uni's use different methods at least it's a insight if anything tells us how hard your job is. We appreciate the lengths you go to, to make your decisions.

Seeing as it was my question that MrsB was answering when she made the remark about the research rankings, can I open my question up to the rest of you in HE

Which would you advise for a vocational subject a top 10 institution in the subject table even if it means bottom quartile of the overall tables or those with the highest research ranking?

Looking at the rae 2008 results is it the number of 4* or the total submitted including unclassified. The 2014 ref table I have seen has the grades divided into impact and output and environment and I have no idea how to interpret them.

Not an issue we've faced, eatyourveg, but I would imagine it depends a lot on what the subject is. If you were looking at something very hands on, like events management or graphic design or music technology, industry links would probably be one of the key things to look for - where do the graduates go to work afterwards, do they get help to find placements/internships during the course, do practitioners come in to work with the students? You'd need to find that out from the department, if it isn't already on the website.

If it's a vocational subject that is also an academic subject, e.g. medicine, law, psychology, the academic factors would remain very important, I'd say.

No good passing any of the info on to ds to help him decide how to whittle down his choices if I can't explain what it means

We really need an academic to confirm about the REF, but my impression is what counts is the overall result and don't worry about the individual elements. Any institution that's done well overall in a particular subject and put lots of staff in for assessment is probably pretty good. If they only put a small proportion of their researchers in, that raises questions about what the rest of the staff are doing. It might just mean that they have a lot of staff at the early stage of their careers, but it might also mean they have a lot who are not doing much research or not doing really top notch research.

There were lots of tables and commentary (Guardian, Times Higher Educational Supplement) at the time the results came out (late last year?). I looked at the websites of various institutions to see how they'd done, and surprise surprise they'd all* done amazingly well!

*by their own account

eatyourveg - Vocational subject

Depends on the specific subject, but can I suggest that you don't assume that a 'top' Uni will always be the best place to go. The 'newer' Unis all have their specialities and as ex-Polys they were set up to provide vocational degrees, therefore they often excel in areas that RG Unis (for instance) don't.

Instead of just 'rankings' you/your child need to look closely at the course content at each possible Uni. Which optional units/modules would they choose - and why? Make sure they look at the detail of all three/four years of the course, not just the first year, and that they take into account the value of any placements or study abroad. The graduate employment rate for some of the 'newer' Unis is in many cases higher than that for other Unis, and often because of this sort of 'within degree' experience.

coffeewith1sugar

Obviously I can't answer questions specific to that Uni, but I can tell you that the 'statistics' stuff is a) difficult for any Uni to answer and b) not always helpful. Whatever the applications/offers/places ratios are, it doesn't tell you if your child will get a place, or if the course there will be more enjoyable than one elsewhere. However 'top' the Uni is, its still perfectly possible for any student to be thoroughly miserable there.

Also, statistics also only tell you what happened last year - it wont be able to tell you what might happen this year as no-one has a crystal ball in regard to the number or ability of applicants who might apply, and therefore what any future 'get in' ratio or any other statistic might look like.

'Missing grades'/leniency - as I explain up-thread a bit, this is impossible for any Uni to predict this as they can't ever predict the actual number of Firms fulfilling their offers in August in any given year. And obviously no Uni is going to tell you at an Open Day that actually you will get in with lower grades than they are asking for.

Equivalent grades - this is a tricky one. Partly its 'every Uni does this differently' but its also 'every course does this differently'. At my current Uni for instance we make 'Alternative conditions' offers for Social Science courses - ie. the text of the offer includes both a grade requirement offer and an alternative points offer. If they get either, they have fulfilled the offer. Some Unis will insist on literally ABB (or whatever) and not accept ABC because they want consistent academic performance over 3 subjects, not just 'good at one'. My advice to those with whacky predicted grades is always to either go for Unis asking for points rather than grades, or to apply to Uni after* they've got their grades, as achieved grades are always preferable to predicted/maybe grades.

I have taken note of your 'questions asked' - it is important that at Open Days etc we do try to answer individual questions where possible so thanks for the heads-up.

coffeewith1sugar - Is the PS graded scored/graded?

Sorry, missed this bit!

Many Unis will have an 'Admissions Statement' or 'Admissions Criteria' for each course published on their website which details exactly what weightings etc they give to qualifications vs. PS, and elements within that. Often they have course specific 'helpful hints' as well about what they actually look for in a PS for that course. If this isnt on their website, then email the Dept and ask for it. Most Unis are now far more consciously open and transparent than they once were about this sort of thing so don't be afraid to ask.

"Which would you advise for a vocational subject a top 10 institution in the subject table even if it means bottom quartile of the overall tables or those with the highest research ranking?"

I don't mean to "advise", and I don't know anything about 'top 10', but I do work (research) in a vocational (academic) dept. About half of our faculty are on 70% teaching contracts, they don't go into REF. Many of our staff are very busy practising the vocation, they are on the coalface of vocational practice, not research. So the number left over as great candidates for REF isn't huge.

ps: we have fantastically high student satisfaction rates :)

Mrs bright I take my hat off to you, really appreciate the time and effort you make to respond to some of these hard pressing questions that has resulted in you recieving some stick, but can see that your doing your best to be objective and try to give us useful advice in helping us parents and students going through the uni process. At the end of the day your just being honest with your opinion on what you think of the info thats out there It got you into hot water. But at least your willing to listen and take notes.

Regarding those stats, ratio type questions asked on open days, I agree they are meaningless on their own regarding wether if the degree/uni is best fit for the student, but from what I gather they are probably more frequently asked at top end uni courses. These stats somewhat help students put into perspective how competitive the course is. Especially degrees with high entry requirements. Stats that show the uni give out more rejections than offers, might indicate to the student wether they have a realistic application when looking at their gcse/AS grades etc holistically given that the competition is high, they may decide it would be a wasted application as they don't look strong on paper so apply somewhere less competitive/popular/prestigious uni.

No more questions then?

Why do you think league tables/REF don't say anything about the course?

Of course, they're not always easy to interpret - but they shouldn't be ignored. Especially when this is something that concerns people's futures.

A friend's daughter is going through purgatory with her application. She applied to do a hard-to-get-into course. Received 4 rejections but first-choice uni strung her along. She was told she would have a decision 3 weeks after interview (in Dec), then 5 weeks, the by end of March, etc. Nothing doing. Because she is going travelling next week and wanted to be sorted, she applied for a different course and got offered a place. She withdrew from UCAS, and lo and behold, first-choice uni phones up and says they want her after all. She explains she has withdrawn from UCAS and uni says they can reinstate her. When correspondence comes through, it turns out the offer is subject to UCAS reinstating the application. Can you please advise on whether a withdrawn application can be reinstated? My googling suggests not. And I am not sure why UCAS needs to be involved in the offer if the uni has now decided they want her. Surely if she's in their list, that's what matters?