Exeter offers : incompetent or arrogant?

[TalkinPeace]

DD submitted her form last October
Exeter have still not had the courtesy to send an offer (the other four Unis all have)
when phoned they said

• no offers have been issued (bollocks as DDs friends have theirs)
• offers will be made by end of December (bollocks as its now late march)
• offers will be made right after the UCAS cut off date (bollocks as it was in January)
• offers will be made by the end of March ........

Exeter are arrogant liars
the word needs to go round

What subject is that for?

Ds's offer from Exeter was the last of his to come and it arrived in Feb.

Can the school chase it up?

When I applied to Exeter theirs was the last to come through, this is going back nearly a decade though!

Not that this helps, but my DD had a query about her exam grades from Exeter on the day she submitted her UCAS form (she claimed to have got English Literature twice, but no English Language ...). They made an offer within the fortnight, probably October/early November.

what subject is your DD applying for? I know a friend of my DD's has had an offer for Economics.

TiP, hang on in there. DD had no offers till four days ago then, suddenly got two. At the same time two years ago DS was waiting on three of his choices. Exeter is far from the only offender. LSE led the way in a series of emails promising decisions which then never happened.

The system is awful. Poor DD was having to cope with her friends making plans for next year, plus had three sets of coursework to complete, and a sense that it might all be in vain. Rejections after interview seem worse, as it suggests they did not like you.

Just three more months then we are done!

no offers have been issued (bollocks as DDs friends have theirs)

But this is completely irrelevant unless friends were applying for the same subject: different subjects have different procedures for making decisions, and completely different timescales.

Exeter have still not had the courtesy to send an offer.

Seriously? And you are accusing them of being arrogant.... does she have an automatic right to an offer?

I am surprised that she hasn't had an offer because the course she is applying to isn't usually over-subscribed, but maybe they had a lot of applications this year and are waiting for the last minute to select? Or maybe the person mainly responsible for this course in the admissions team is ill/has left and this is why decisions are running late. I would tend to suspect an issue with the admission team responsible more than any other explanation. In general Exeter is short of science students, so they really cannot afford to turn prospective students away by being "arrogant". Different story for humanities where they are higher up the pecking order.

Bear in mind that academics don't have much to do with the admissions team so incompetence of the latter doesn't say anything about the former, nor anything about the quality of the course.

Exeter are arrogant liars
the word needs to go round

Anecdote does not equal fact.

One experience does not equal practice by a whole institution, which probably deals with 10s of thousands of applications each year.

Your post is inflammatory & unreasonable.

If Exeter is a real preference for her I would just urge her to remember this will not be personal. As a pp said, you don't know what they are dealing with behind the scenes. If she wants to go then this should not put her off IMO. If she doesn't then what's to stop her removing them from her application and firming where she does want to go. One of DS's top two choices didn't give him an offer until the very end of Feb. If she gets an offer and goes, once she is on the course and stuck into it, the admissions process will likely be a very dim and distant memory, unless she lets it get to her too much now. If I remember correctly your DD got most of her offers in short order so I can see it is frustrating but really, given the logistics of the whole thing, it amazes me just how well the universities do.

I have forgotten what the date is by which offers are all given out but, assuming that is not yet, then they are still working to time. If her friend's courses are not her exact one, then tbh I think that's a red herring.

Good luck to her though.

DNephew applied to Exeter and just received an offer last week, if was the last of all the places he applied to so don't panic yet.

Maybe call after Easter if you still haven't heard anything.

Maybe they are still deciding whether to give her an offer or not. No offer yet might be better than having a rejection?

Does your DD want to be able to select the course at Exeter as her firm or insurance?

Anecdote does not equal fact.

I'll add to the anecdote pile. We got a bad feeling when DS applied. The general vibe was "we are a v.g. university, we'll have you know. We call the shots. You will be a very lucky person if we deign to let you pass our threshold."
DS thought "Bollocks. I'm a v.g. candidate. I'm worthy of being treated better than this."
He went to another excellent RG University where he has had a fantastic two-an-a-half years and I have never once heard him utter "what if ..."

If Oxbridge can get their act (which includes time-consuming interviews, don't forget) together within two month's of application cutoff, then why can't Exeter? And Durham, come to that.

We got a bad feeling when DS applied.

I can't remember now if he actually applied or if an Open Day put him off. Either way, they ruled themselves out of the running with their attitude. And it wasn't just the Department, it ran through the whole University.

DS got one of the AAA offers for English lit from Exeter last year we just crossed it off the list and wondered what on earth they were playing at. It felt like a complete waste of a choice.

If Oxbridge can get their act (which includes time-consuming interviews, don't forget) together within two month's of application cutoff, then why can't Exeter?

This is pretty unfair, as Oxbridge has a lot more resources to deal with admissions than other universities do. (And I don't BTW work at Exeter or have any connection with them.) Oxbridge has significantly more resources, full stop.

It would also be unfair to count it against other departments that English lit last year gave some very high offers.

This is pretty unfair, as Oxbridge has a lot more resources to deal with admissions than other universities do.

Not really. Other RG manage to get their offers out, despite not having Oxbridge levels of funding. Why can't Exeter?

Oxbridge fall over themselves to not appear stand-offish but Exeter seem to relish it.

maybe being relatively new to the RG club Exeter (and Durham) haven't fully appreciated MN expectations

Maybe your dd's UCAS application was not as good as her friends and she's been put on the possible if we don't get any better ones pile.

They're not obliged to make her an offer, you know?

Other RG manage to get their offers out, despite not having Oxbridge levels of funding. Why can't Exeter?

But other courses at other "top" universities also often give decisions on the late end (mid March or even later), so why single out one particular course at Exeter? Typically late decisions are made by courses which are heavily in demand: it's not uncommon to wait for students to make decisions about Oxbridge etc before finalising offers to borderline candidates i.e. to wait for their "top" candidates to decide on firms and insurances, which often happens before the March deadlines.

Sometimes late decisions are made simply because admissions teams are utterly overloaded, through (unexpected) growths in student applications. I know of one place where this happened this year because they launched a new MSci programme and suddenly had masses more applications than they were prepared for, and they couldn't recruit a new member of the admissions team in time. So offers are indeed apparently going out very late for this subject.

It's not fair to compare with Oxbridge for multiple reasons, one being that the Oxbridge knows every year that (home) students will accept a large majority of offers, while other universities have much more complicated calculations to make about what fraction of offers will be accepted. This is another valid reason for late decisions, as they need the information of how many students are firming and insuring with them before deciding to make more offers.

The surprise in the OP's case is that the course wouldn't be expected to be that much in demand, but who can know whether it is more in demand this year than in previous years without inside knowledge.

disquit
same course

A rejection would be easier to cope with than the waiting

the other four offers are all good

I think it's really late too. I don't know if it funding or 'arrogance' or sheer weight of applicants but they have had the OPs DDs applications for over five months. It does seem excessively long.

Information is the key. People don't mind waiting if they are kept informed of what's happening. How hard is it to send out a few emails.

One of my DCs was kept waiting ages and ages by two of the medical schools, one kept him informed and gave him several deadlines and let him know he was on a provisional 'maybe' list before calling him for interview, the other medical school sent no information at all.

But it's not just a few emails. Most courses at in-demand universities attract 500-600 applicants minimum. Multiply that by the number of degree courses and a University is dealing with thousands of applicants, while we also get on with teaching thousands of our current students.

talkinpeace you do seem to have quite an antagonistic relationship with university processes- I remember your My DD is not going to Oxbridge thread. If your DD wants to keep Exeter in the mix then maybe you ought to back off a bit. You seem rather more angry than is rational. It's not personal (and anyway, it's not about you).

I have to agree with Badger here Talkin, you do seem to be losing perspective, it's a long time since I went through the applications process but both my nephew and youngest brother have been through Oxbridge, Durham and Exeter applications in the last couple of years and have had similar experiences (one for Russian one for Theology).

I am also from a family of academics and have worked in academia so know the system

I do think you need to take a step back and maybe let your daughter guide the process, she's on the cusp of adulthood and independence. What does she want?

DN's offer for Exeter was made last week and was an extremely low offer for the course, so they're obviously keen to have him there.

Hold your nerve and CALM DOWN.

My problem is that they lie.
She has emailed them and they have lied in writing.
She has phoned them and they have lied.
I have phoned them and they have lied.

If they make an offer, all well and good. They will be her second choice.
If they do not make an offer, so be it.

But it would be nice if they were honest.
Other people on that course got their offers months ago.
Applications closed over a month ago.
Its all done with algorithms .
Honesty and courtesy cost nothing.

At the risk of sounding rude Talkinpeace what the hell are you going to post about after your dc finish their education