Calling anyone with a DC that's had an offer to do English Lit at Edinburgh

[cathyandclare]

DD is looking at applying for entry in 2017 and the grades on the website are an eye-watering A star A star A. Is that pretty standard for there? I remember Exeter chucking out some absurdly high offers last year it seems incredibly tricky, especially as the arts and humanities can be rather subjective.
DD1 had an A star A A offer for similar subjects last year and despite thinking the exams went well, only got the grades after a remark, so I'm a little bruised by the experience.

Edinburgh has always been exceptionally high for English Lit. I did my Lit degree 15 years ago and it was AAA then (pre A star days).

If Edinburgh say that is their standard offer, then you have to accept that it is. There must be lower standard offers elsewhere but offers usually reflect popularity and not necessarily quality of degree. Although I am not saying Edinburgh is not top class!

Kings College London is AAA as is York and Nottingham. Bristol and Durham require A*AA so this gives a flavour of where you can get a lower standard offer at highly respected universities.

Yes, DD1 is also doing English, so I thought we were fairly clued up.
Obviously things have changed with time, I was pretty sure the standard offer was lower last year. I also wondered if they were going for a weed-out-all-the-oxbridge-back-ups approach. Bristol and Durham are on the list, I think Warwick in AAA too and has a great English department.

Sorry, Bojo I should have said thanks :)

< sits self on naughty step>

I do not see how high grades make people put the uni as firm though. If your offer from Oxford is AAA then why not take that?

I agree. I think it just stops them being an insurance and makes it easier to predict how many people they'll have. Although with offers that high there must be loads that don't make the grade.
The offers are mad now, It makes me long for the days when I had a CCC offer for medicine

I had an offer for Eng Lit at Edinburgh in 2012 and it was AAA

Cakes AAA in the pre A days was not super high although I'm talking a little more recently than 2001. Modules meant that achieving AAA was not especially rigorous. Achieving A is a different thing altogether.

Not English Lit and his offer was AAA, but DS1's friend was accepted by Edinburgh with ACC this year.

Goodbyestranger my A-levels weren't modular and I found getting my AAA pretty 'rigourous'!

Not much good if the ACC was for Italian (or similarly less sought after course) though, if you want to do English Literature! I am not sure the insurance choice has to be an offer of lower grades than the firm choice? Does it? Can you insure a higher offer?

Grade offers change year on year to reflect demand and the policy of the university, so in 2012, Edinburgh deemed AAA was fine. In the intervening 4 years, they appear to have had a change of policy.

Cakes I said I was talking about the state of play more recently than 2001 when you said you took your A2s, in other words when the Edinburgh offer was AAA at its highest until now but A2s were modular, with January and June exams, not merely AS levels counting for the first 50%. For the whole of that period it was relatively easy to notch up marks to achieve an A grade.

Yes bojo you can insure a higher offer. Most of mine have done that, relying rather perilously on the (probably false) notion that they might have been able to talk their way in to the insurance.

To be more accurate it's ranged between 'insuring' with the same offer or higher.

I think that course is about 6th in the world so I guess they can afford to be fussy

With the new linear A levels it's even harder, does anyone know what an A* will be? It used to be over 90% in A2 and over 160/200 overall.

I think that course is about 6th in the world so I guess they can afford to be fussy
Different surveys have different unis at the top, many of the UK and international lists have Cambridge, Oxford, Durham and UCL above, although they ask lower grades. But you're totally right, it's supply and demand and DD really likes the look of the course, so I suppose she'll roll the dice and then decide if she's lucky enough to get an offer.
I was asking because I was wondering (or perhaps hoping ) whether that was actually what they were asking because it's not what I'd heard anecdotally.
Thanks for all feedback...and if there's anyone lurking whose DC was offered AAB ....don't be afraid to chip in!!

English Literature Joint Honours at Edinburgh is A*AA for both options and far fewer applicants according to their latest published admissions statistics (13/14)! Greater chance of getting an offer too. Would this be an option? In the last set of admissions stats available, for the Literature course out of 1008 applicants, 239 were made offers. For Joint Honours, 320 applied and 99 were made offers. 69 accepted for English Lit and 47 for Joint. Their Joint Honours options are rather narrow though.

Contextual Offers will be lower so someone might have got in with AAB a few years ago.

Part of the reason for high offers is that it gets you higher up some league tables which see it as a mark of desirability so making yourself seem more prestigious can make you more prestigious.