Experience with " near miss grades " for uni, advice on what to do?

[Bagpuss555]

OK long story short, DD pretty sure she won't make AAA offer possibilities more likely be AAB or AAB, her condition didn't include equivalents. If on results day she gets rejected with those grades but the B is close to an A is it worth ringing up the uni to ask them to reconsider or maybe go for remark? Any success stories ? DD offer isn't from Oxbridge or top 5 uni. Any advice is appreciated, might be of help to others who may be of a similar dilemma.

If she looks on Track on results day and it says rejected, there's very little point calling them because the decision is made. If it says she's been accepted (even if she missed out on the grades), then yay! If it's not clear one way or the other, that's the time it's worth calling - mainly to find out what's going on!

Bear in mind, the unis have results already, and are in the process of deciding whether they want to/have space to accept anyone who has missed their grades. By Thursday morning, the decisions will largely already be made.

bagpuss it's quite normal for universities to reserve some spaces for international students (not surprising when you look at the difference in fees)

Out of curiosity I looked at dad's course - international students can still apply but it's full for UK applicants

Bagpuss - Scottish universities can be the opposite with places open to English students as they are paying higher fees, but closed to Scottish students.

I feel sick just thinking about it, DS has his heart set on where he wants to go, his firm choice is an RG with his insurance the former Poly, of the same city!
He has ASD so finds the unexpected difficult, clearing will be a challenge for him.

I have just advised DD1 to keep as busy as possible over the next 5 days. Unfortunately her part-time job has just finished but she has been out with friends all day celebrating 18th birthdays that she missed because of our holiday and is now at one of their houses baking!
She has been refusing to talk about results day but her boyfriend came for dinner last night and all they talked about was results day......
They are both very nervous and worried.

DD school says track starts around 7.30am ish, to be honest wouldn't mind it being midnight, we need to be put out of our misery this end
The plan now is, if DD is few marks off, straight to priority remark, no messing, worth a last shot to try and get DD in her firm, knowing dd she will only regret it later of "what if" if she doesn't. I'm hoping dd is going to hold it up and don't get too distraught on results day just in case she has to end up ringing uni.
persipan so basically DD should only ring uni if shes been put on hold, if shes going for remark then ring them too. But what if shes been rejected but shes going for a remark? Would the uni be obliged to hold her place until she gets the remark result? Or uni won't reconsider a remark grade at all, once rejected?
basildon & hells im guessing uni's are cash strapped because of lack of funding so thats why they have to recruit more higher fee paying students because government won't help. I suppose it makes business sense, but at the cost of home students
missdelmza good luck with your ds, I know how you feel its really hard when child only has 1 uni they want to go to.
hells we had that too, no talking about results day, we did well all throught the holidays. Then 3 days ago DD nerves kicked in she was getting teary, sad and depressed to how close things were getting, reality sinking in. She blurted her ffeelings out in the middle of dinner, I'm so glad I'm only ever going to go through this nightmare once in my life, never again, don't know how other mums can go through this multiple times without going through a nervous break down!!

Bagpuss - I've got to go through it again next year as DD2 is waiting for her AS results on Thursday too . Good luck to your DD on Thursday.

Yikes! So you have one waiting for AS and the other for A level results on Thursday. I think you might need all this!!

Thanks Bagpuss - will either be hitting the champagne or the brandy ....

Track will officially open at 8am but it might be available a bit before. Clearing phone lines for many universities will be open earlier; some are opening as early at 6am.

It seems odd that clearing lines will be open before track online, doesn't it? Although DD can pick up her results at 7am, assuming she doesn't meet her offer, then she won't know whether she has a place confirmed until track is up.

On the subject of re-marks, DS had his physics re marked last year and it went up by 18 UMS from A to A star. It was as though the original examiner has turned over 2 pages!

DD can't pick up her results till 9am. So hoping track will have told her before she gets her results. Last year it was chaotic for the A2 lot at dd school, dd could sense it when she was getting her AS there were more tears then joy let's say .

18ums!! Either the marker is incompetent or they missed pages out?? That scary!!. Im not feeling confident with history marking, last year at dd history AS class all of them ended up going for a remark because there was more than 20% of them with grades going up and so it triggered whole class free remark, dd's stayed the same though.

I think the marking schemes were very precise last year. However senior examiners can offer extra marks I think without the marking scheme if they think an answer is worth it. ( that my understanding)

Unis can hold a place if they want to if you are having a remark. You can also look at other unis if you have a insurance place, as you can ask your insurance place to release you and therefore go into clearing if you prefer. Not sure if they have to, but it does happen. Useful if you have played very safe with insurance, but not met your firm.

18 UMS, that's not even trying bare :) :) :)

DS1 had one paper uplifted by 45 (FORTY FIVE!!) UMS last year

Went from just scraping past an E up to being marginally, for that paper, shy of an A. He was fortunate in that even with the original mark he still had an A for the subject overall, the remark did push it back up to an A. I think that falls into the category of utterly incompetent marking, however fast track remarks are available, and if the grade goes up you do get the money back. Hopefully this year's marking will be a lot better than last year's. Fingers crossed for all those DCs awaiting results on Thursday.

she doesn't think she will look as competitive as her counterparts if admission has to compare her with another near miss candidate since she's hasn't done a EPQ or extra curricular like Duke of Edinburgh.

Hi OP, It's been a couple of years since I was an admissions tutor but please tell her not to worry about her lack of extra curricular stuff. I can promise you that no admissions tutor is ever going to decide on whether to condone a missed grade because they've done DoE or anything else not related to the actual degree! It's going to be totally and utterly irrelevant unless it connects in some obvious way to her subject. In these situations I used to go back to the personal statement to look for evidence of interest in the actual subject and to the reference to see what the school had to say unless it was a top private school in which case referees all make their applicants sound like the second coming of Jesus crossed with Einstein and I would just ignore them. If she is clear about why she wants to study her chosen subject at her chosen institution then she should have a good chance.

Thanks headofthehives dd looked at the updated website of her firm uni about remarks on results day, It says she is to email them if she's having a remark, they will tell her what to do and keep her place till 31st August for remark results. But there maybe a chance/risk that if results of remark, that meets condition of the offer arrives after the 31st they may offer a unconditional, deffered entry instead. DD says if that happens she will have a gap year Hope she's going to be doing something constructive if that happens . DD says her degree subject doesn't appear in clearing only from ex poly, it's too popular, oversubscribed, especially from Russell group uni. So looks like retakes, gap year or fall in love with insurance. I would prefer the latter. But knowing dd she probably won't choose the simplest option.

fatherrebool thanks for your reassurance, it took me so long to write the above one, I missed reading yours before I posted. Its nice to know she's not hindered by not doing extra curricular stuff. She says school reference for her was rather generic nothing exciting, she got to read hers before she hit the ucas application button. She thinks the teacher got a bit fed up doing a 100+ school references.

bagpuss a year would go quickly and she might be happier in the long run. It might help her gain valuable work experience to help after graduation.
I rather hoped my DD would fall in love with her insurance after all it's the same vocational degree, but she's still cross and regretting not getting into her firm. This summer she has debated whether to ring up her firm and try and switch, but realises she has made friends at her uni so the decision is not that simple.

headofthehives is your dd at uni already, but wanting to switch course? That must have been a very hard decision to make. Does she want to do a completely different course at different uni or same course different uni?

bagpuss she wanted to do the same course but at a different uni. It's vocational. It leads to the same thing. She just wanted it to be at a more prestigious uni like her friends from school. I think she feels quite out of it especially when she meets up with them. Young people do pick up on the rankings and it's quite a big thing with them. She feels she gets looked down upon.

it's messy to switch but it can be done. (Unis don't like you to know this) I don't think she will switch as she has a house that she has signed a contract for and in reality I don't think there is much to be gained personally because it's the same course.

However you will have to decide on the day whether the insurance choice is acceptable if it comes to that. I do know of a couple that have left uni after the first year, and gone to other unis to do other courses . I think looking at my DDs fb it's more common that we would like to think!

If other admissions tutors are like me or the people I know who've done the job, I'd look at personal statement much more closely than the reference, so don't worry about that. A (credible) glowing reference might make the difference as would an obviously carefully worded one (of the "X has made considerable improvements over the last year and there have been hardly any repetitions of the previous year's unfortunate arson incidents" variety). But mostly we want to see if a potential student has shown some interest in the subject.

Again, speaking personally, if an applicant got AAB instead of A*AA then as long as the B wasn't in the degree subject I'd have taken them like a shot.

Ds dropped a couple of grades last year, but was still granted his place - for the Masters program too, not even downgraded to a Bachelors. He has said recently that he's not sure he'd get in this year on those same grades though, as his Uni has moved up the league tables to very near the top and is now asking for even higher grades and it's a popular subject. He got a First in his first year though, so exam results at A level don't always tell the whole story. Whether or not some Unis will allow for that though is a bit of a lottery.

headofthehives that is a difficult one. If she can go straight into 2nd year on a straight swap transfer without much hassle, its worth considering . Its the housing contract that would be the most difficult, finding someone to take over her contract, but according to friends of ours who had to do similar thing, they said it wasn't that bad especially if uni is in a city location they did manage to get new tenants via social network or through uni. If she is really really unhappy at this current uni then leaving, going to where she really wants to go to is probably best thing to do. Must be so hard for her Theres no right and wrong, I think ultimately she will make it work out with whatever she decides. She sounds like someone with her head screwed on, cautious but sensible.

But its true what you say there's many kids that swap and change for various reasons more than is talked about. A friend of ours few years back was at Warwick didn't achieve 40% in her 1st year she was kicked off course basically, she ended up going to leicester uni doing a different degree altogether and paying 9k fees rather than 3k when she was at warwick she was in the last year of 3k fees. We know someone who changed to a different uni because they hated living in the area the uni is located in, partly because he'd been mugged twice on his nights out.

I know what you mean about kids choosing uni on percieved prestigiousness . We have a dd here thats the same. Definatley league tables, media and gossip has played a part in giving her this perception that certain uni have quality edge about them and will open more doors. Maybe it's true, but this kind of only the best will do is making their decision making process, rigid and inflexible of changes. The pressure to attain the high grades is making them feel extra anxious, being a perfectionist and fearing failing, or making little mistakes, this can't be good for ones, self esteem. We keep having to tell dd its ok to make mistakes part of learning is making them. What will be will be. Just hope she can learn to forgive herself if she doesn't get into her firm choice on Thursday I know what she's like, she will blame herself

Another positive missed grade story:

Ds is just going into his third year. Two years ago his Track still hadn't been updated on results day - nothing there at all. He checked his grades online so knew he had not got the grades required. He had been told by his firm choice uni that if Track wasn't updated then he should call them - they would be waiting to speak to him. He called and indeed they were waiting for him - they couldn't offer him a place on his original course but offered him a close alternative which he accepted. All done and dusted by 8.30am and he is thoroughly enjoying the course.