Uni offers for 2017 start

[Carriemac]

Could we have a handholding thread? I have two DCs going through UCSS at the moment, would love to obsess here so I can appear calm on the outside.
LNAT results go to the UNIs tomorrow I think, so offers could be rolling in soon for DD who has applied for law.

Dd1 (Physics/Theoretical Physics) now has an offer from Queen's, Belfast. AAA, or she could go down to a B in Physics if she gets an A* in Maths.

So she now has offers from Bristol and Queen's; upcoming interview in Manchester; waiting for what she expects to be a rejection from Oxford at the end of this month; and also waiting for St Andrews, which apparently doesn't usually respond until Jan/Feb. It's all ticking along :). St Andrews have decided she's British so she'd be full fees there as well if she ended up going.

No offers yet here but that's becaude one hasn't put his in (I think he will early this week) and the other just applied at end of last week. He's had acknowledgements of receipts from 3 of the 5. I would have made the applications much earlier but mine are a bit laid back. We shall see. I don't think either of them has applied anywhere where they would be interviewed so we won't have anything more than the £24 per twin cost of application so far.

LIney, it's interesting to wond if they are predicted high grades they then receive very high requirements. It is my fear (one is predicted three A* which seems a bit over enthusiastic of the school to me).

Olympic fan, I used to do admissions on that and I think it would be A*AA for Y13. Fast-tracking isn't always taken very seriously because many kids simply don't have the resources/opportunities to do something like this, so it would make it unfair.

I have DS1 applying here. He's applying for Maths. Mainly MMaths courses, I think. He has 2 offers so far 3xA for Warwick and 2xA, A for Bristol. He can drop a grade if he gets a 2 in any STEP for both.

I'm definitely more anxious than he is. I'm also trying to help DS2 narrow down his A level choices as he is applying for VIth form at the moment.

It's all so nerve wracking.

Some of these train fares are shocking. I think academics are completely unaware of what they are asking financially of people, and should offer more Skype interviews.

I think academics are completely unaware of what they are asking financially of people, and should offer more Skype interviews.

We are perfectly aware of the costs - we travel by train too; we have DC who travel to universities by train. Most of us are not that well off, on academic salaries.

Weighed against this is that Skype interviews do disfavour borderline and weaker candidates - it is much harder to get a real handle on somebody via a Skype interview. You lose the body language, the connection with people. It's much harder to push and to extend people via Skype.

Personally I think that all Oxbridge interviews in my own subject could be by Skype, as this would save parents/colleges/bursary funds a lot of money. Making all interviews by Skype would solve the problem of Skype interviews being different to face-to-face interviews. Some colleagues in my field agree me with on this. But, as I understand it, the senior leadership (colleges/university) say absolutely not. It is them who are not putting enough weight on the costs/stress etc imo, not us, the academics. My own college does BTW make a lot of funding available to cover costs.

Cheesealarm - DS1 is applying for MMath as well. Are you sure it is two A stars for Bristol? DS has an offer of one A star, two As. He is doing FM, could that be the difference?

Manchester is our nearest big city so DD's ticket for next week is about £3:50 each way. OTOH Southampton by train wouldn't be logistically possible without 2 overnight stays (and places like premier inn wont let a room to an unaccompanied 17 yo) so DH is driving her down tomorrow afternoon and back tues evening. Sheffield the timing is an easyish day trip by car but would be a bit of a PITA by train it seems... fortunately DH's time is his own. She hasn't heard back from Nottingham yet.

GeorgetheThird - It's definitely 2 As. DS1 goes to a specialist Maths school and I think that is why is the offer is high. If he gets a grade 2 in any STEP paper it comes down to 1A. His friend at the same school has an identical offer.

Me2017 I'm wincing at 3 x A*

I'm not sure why the offer for my DS is so high - he's at a bog-standard comprehensive in Leeds.

He works so, so hard - I'm not sure what else he can do

There are some really tough offers coming out! Ouch!

Ilove - Is Warwick your ds's first choice? Is that for a BSc or an MMaths?

I don't get it either, Ilove. 2xA* and 2xA seems a bit stellar.

ilove does your DS's offer not include the 2 alternative standard Warick maths offers (I.e. the 2as replaced with either 1 astar or 1a and a grade 2 at STEP)?

TheCheeseAlarm - my ds1 has also applied for MMaths at Warwick and Bristol and has received the same (eye watering) offers. Ds1 is at our local non-selective comp so offers not adjusted for Maths School.

My son who is predicted 3 A* and won't get that (he had AAAA at AS but does exactly the right (minimum) amount of work, foolish him, to get what he needs, a very foolish strategy probably won't get offers as high as his predicted grades as his subject does not usually generate that and I am sure he's picked the subject for the easier ride too knowing him, but we shall see. His twin is now caught in a delay at school which is not surprising. if they'd submitted them right at the start to the teachers they wouldn't be in a back log. The early bird always catches the worm but no one listens to me..... My older children have been through it before so I am not particularly worried. Things tend to work out for the best.

I'm not sure about the high predictions/ high offer thing if only because my son, also predicted 3A*, has now got two offers, one for Bristol and one for York, both at the lower end of their offer spectrum, despite going (as has already been pointed out!) to a superselective grammar. His chosen subject and another of his A levels are in reformed subjects and the school chose not to do AS levels in those subjects, so they have nothing to go on bar the school reference and his personal statement (if indeed they looked at it). So frankly I don't know what's going on, although whatever it is I quite like it. His Manchester interview is in a couple of days so I hope they don't throw out a high offer if they throw one out at all. Very glad to be of help with raileasy - I'd never heard of it until a week ago when I was talking to our school business manager about the prohibitive cost of the Manchester ticket from where we live; he uses raileasy all the time to visit his daughter who's at uni up north and is a massive enthusiast (as am I now!). Tiny downside for raileasy is that the wad of tickets is enormous, and the individual elements easily lost but that's a minor grumble!

That's a good point and on the AS issue the universities may well be ignoring the AS results this year to be fair on those who have not done AS. My twins' school did AS levels and in fact they had 50% reformed A levels but other schools haven't. I'm glad they did as the boys are enjoying sixth form particularly being able to ditch French etc and any other subjects they did not like and are doing better I suspect.

Good luck to those with interviews. I was emailed a draft PS this morning by one of mine who has not yet submitted it so hopefully he's close to submission.

Bristol are trying to up their grades with Maths to bring themselves nearer to Warwick, UCL.

Remember that Bristol has a list of "below average" schools for contextual offers, one grade lower than standard offer. Since "below average" literally means lowest half according to A level results, you can get a contextual offer even when your school is doing fine with its high achievers.

Some of the other science subjects at Bristol don't have strong enough recruitment to insist on higher grades.

(Contextual offer clearly does not apply to goodbyestranger's DC but could maybe apply to the person with a single A star offer for Maths? I suspect that for goodbyestranger's DC's subject recruitment is not so strong and they are trying a different strategy - generous offers to encourage strong students to accept?)

MMaths is what he wants to do. No alternatives for STEP at all - they want 2 x A* at A level for Maths and Futher maths, plus two other A grades.

His first choice is Oxford but I don't think he will get in there - he sat the exam for them last week (can't remember the name of it) and said it didn't go well.

His preferences are Oxfoes, Warwick/Durham (= second), Edinburgh then St Andrews.

We'll see.

*Oxford not Oxfoes

MMaths is what he wants to do. No alternatives for STEP at all - they want 2 x A at A level for Maths and Futher maths, plus two other A grades.*

This is extremely strange and may be worth querying. Warwick Maths have an absolutely transparent admissions policy - same offer to everybody (regardless of school type, allowances may be made in August not at time of offer) and offer has alternative forms with and without STEP. They strongly want students to do STEP so I am very surprised to hear of an offer without an alternative STEP form.

DS' experience has been that the maths when taking a degree with a high maths content on a very selective course, can move very fast indeed. He has been lucky in that he probably has more aptitude than he realised, whilst his GF struggled but luckily the course (economics) offered sufficient options that she was able to do well by only taking a minimum number of applied maths courses. Even students with A*s in Further have had problems. My understanding is that this replicates experience on similarly selective maths degrees (user can correct me, though it happened to one of DS' peers) where a proportion, despite great A level grades, will find the step up difficult and want to switch to other departments.

High entrance requirements are not necessarily a bad thing if they are effective in weeding out those who might struggle. I think it is also worth looking at the flexibility a maths degree offers. It is really hard for a student coming from either a school where they are clearly the best at maths, or from a very selective school with a big talent pool to work out where they will sit within a University cohort. Keeping up, if you are towards the bottom, is really really hard work. Indeed maths seems to require a specific character which involves a willingness to spend long hours in the library trying to figure out methods.

Another thing to watch out for is the flexibility in terms of Masters. Does the MMaths mean you have to take a Maths masters. What happens if you decide pure maths is not for you, and you might want to shift towards something more applied like actuarial science, stochastics, or econometrics (or something engineering or physics based). The advantage of staying where you are and taking an integrated masters is that fees are capped. Applied maths masters at top Universities (the ones that rank well with employers) can be very expensive. A level of flexibility is very well worth factoring in to any decision.