Unconditional offer - advice please

[Helpuschoose]

DD has offers which are all high and all very similar. Except for one uni which revised their offer to unconditional. This uni would not be her first choice. Now after some course work resulting in an unexpectedly low (disastrously low!) mark, her predicted grades are looking unlikely and therefore so are her chances of meeting her offers including the uni she was intending to put as her firm offer. The unconditional offer is therefore looking very tempting if only to avoid playing Russian roulette with the grade boundaries in August!
I have two questions.

1. Is there any point in her contacting her intended first choice uni and coming clean and seeing if they want her enough to revise down their offer? The poor coursework mark is not in the subject she wants to study. This uni has given unconditional offers to students but unfortunately not in DD's subject.

1. If she has a miracle performance in the exams can she go through adjustment if she has accepted the unconditional offer in May? I'm assuming not but we are new to all this!

Any advice gratefully received.

Just to be clear. Her unconditional offer uni originally offered AAB. If she doesn't firm the unconditional the offer reverts to a conditional offer of AAB which is the same offer as her first choice. So if she thinks she's going to get AAB there is no dilemma. The problem is it is now looking likely, though not certain after a million speculative UMS calculations, that she will get ABB. Hence the temptation of the unconditional.

LIZS. It depends on the course. The information is listed here You need to be on a model A course to have an unconditional unconditional

I think you should firm the University that your DD wants to go to, if that means insuring the 'unconditional' but as a conditional then I think it's worth the gamble.

FWIW DD1 was accepted onto a competitive course at a good RG University despite having missed her offer. If she'd played it safe, and tried to get in via Adjustment I doubt she would have been successful, as the course was full.

I would think that the university that have offered your DD an unconditional might still take her if she misses her grades anyway if she puts them as her insurance.

Good luck, it is stressful, but lots of universities do take those that miss their grades by one..

Ah ok, looks like it would revert to conditional if insurance in his case. Interesting that maths and comp sci are category A as those tend to attract a high proportion of overseas students and this may a way to redress the balance.

OP. What are the chances that your DD might drop two grades below AAB?

Ah, so they've stated that it would revert to conditional if she doesn't choose it as her firm choice...that completely explains what I was missing

In that case, how well did she familiarise herself with the uni that's given her the unconditional offer? I actually turned down an offer from one of the best unis in the country for the course I'll be doing. I visited and it was an extremely poor fit for me. I'll be going somewhere that is considered a really good uni for the field that happens to be a better fit for me, despite not having the prestige of the other one.

It's also worth her considering, unless this uni has a poor reputation for the delivery of her course, she's likely to do just as well there as she will anywhere else. How well she'll do there comes largely down to her, not so much the uni.

Has she been on The Student Room to ask how people have found the course delivery at that uni?

"OP. What are the chances that your DD might drop two grades below AAB?"

Ha ha. I asked her that. Her honest opinion is that she could see herself getting anything from AAA to BBB. I don't want to go into too much detail but she was predicted AAB. One A now looks like a probable B because of the coursework mark. The predicted B has always stayed firmly at B because she got a very high B at AS and that teacher refuses to over predict. She's retaking the AS and got A in her mock so the B could become an A but the teacher is very cautious. The third A predicted is pretty solid. Does that all make sense? If so you wil understand the dilemma!!

Just realised that I did going to a ridiculous amount of detail after all! Sorry to bore everyone with my own particular naval gazing.

*navel even!

OP,
I not only understand your dilemma I lived your dilemma last year with my DC4. 😭 It was stressful. DC4 ended up achieving two grades higher than their predicted grades so it ended up being the right decision not to firm the unconditional.

I think its a good plan for your DD to revisit the unconditional Uni and take it from there. It must have been a while since she went on open days and she might have a better idea of what she is looking for.

UCAS publishes comprehensive statistics about offers (percentage of applicants who get 5/4/3/2/1 offers) every year, after the cycle.

Applicants from overseas have a much lower take-up rate than UK based applicants, presumably because most of them will be applying for HE in their home country and perhaps other countries as well and therefore have more choices.