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Higher education

Talk to other parents whose children are preparing for university on our Higher Education forum.

Uni offers for 2017 start

980 replies

Carriemac · 19/10/2016 07:25

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.

OP posts:
ErrolTheDragon · 12/11/2016 19:02

Yy modor - all of DDs interview too (if she gets one at Cambridge) - two aren't too far and shes done the worst trek, Southampton. I'm sort of hoping she decides not to bother with the other middle distance one.

Enola - good, is that about what he was expecting?

Renaissancegirl · 12/11/2016 20:14

Dd got an offer from Durham this afternoon, combined honours in social sciences, 1 A*, 2 A's.

enolagayits0815 · 12/11/2016 20:46

Yes, the offer calculator said aaa.
Great news about the Durham offer :)

Bluntness100 · 12/11/2016 21:00

My daughter is in her second year of law at Birmingham.

She failed LNAT. You'd be surprised how irrelevant it is. She is 10 GCSE at A or A star, and she was given an unconditional from reading if she rejected the other unis, she chose to reject reading and went for Birmingham, which required three As. Fortunately she got two A stars and an A. The LNAT was irrelevant in fact the thought is those who perform worst at LNAT do best at a level.

Her offers will be based on her GCSEs and her predicted grades. Then they have to deliver those grades,

I would say law is a hard course, my daughter works from between 9am to 9pm seven days a week, when she is not in lectures or seminars, she is in the library reading. She is applying for placements for solicitors training, which only seven percent of students get in their second year. Otherwise she has to do her masters and then effectively pay for her own study.

It's a long and arduous course, up to six years for a solicitor, with significant debt, and then much longer for a barrister. The work is hard and it's a highly competitive training field. My daughter regularly goes to legal firm networking events, and the junior lawyers say they often work till two in the morning as standard.

She loves it, but I'd say it has to be something you really want to do, and uou need to have strong results to be able to compete in that environment.

To put it into perspective, 400 students started at Birmingham last year with her. Less than two hundred were allowed to continue to second year.

Me2017 · 12/11/2016 21:05

Good luck to your daughter B. My daughters and I are also lawyers although my daughters did not read law at university ( in fact the one at Bristol has 3 hours of lectures a week so perhaps made a good degree choice although I really enjoyed reading law and remember to this day so much which I learned in the 3 years and use even now).

One of my daughters did not do a summer placement and still got sponsored through 2 years of law school by a law firm by the way although I am not recommending that route as it's better to do the placements as most trainees are recruited from those.

WalkingToMordor · 12/11/2016 23:28

Congratulations to everyone's DC on their offers!

I feel your pain Errol and hope your dd gets good news from Cambridge. We are at the other end of the league tables in terms of universities. Smile

Good news is that ds has been invited to an interview (yippee) but bad news is it's on a day he can't go. He has emailed to ask for another date. Still he is feeling encouraged that someone will give him an interview!

enolagayits0815 · 12/11/2016 23:47

Well done mordor
I don't think it matters where on the league table of unis you are, getting to uni with the state of school education nowadays is an achievement to be proud of.

goodbyestranger · 12/11/2016 23:47

B that's shocking about Birmingham hoodwinking half the students onto the course - I understood they did this with medicine but didn't realize it was a wider policy. Shameful.

I have to say that your daughter is working far, far harder than any students I knew when I read law and far, far harder than my own daughters did (one went to a magic circle firm and the other is a barrister). It's not necessary for success although if she likes to work that much then fine, but it isn't necessary so others shouldn't be put off by thinking that it's the norm.

Me2017 · 13/11/2016 08:29

Goodbye, though I suspect a law degree still is more than 3 hours of lectures a week my daughter (not law) had at university. Mind you lots of face to face time can be good as it keeps the lazier students at it. Some are not good at doing enough work unless forced.

(enlo, comforting though your words about the institiution not mattering might be that is definitely wrong for many of the higher paid careers as there are so many applicants employers do pick the universities with the highest entry demands just as a filter as otherwise they do not have enough time to interview everyone; that does not mean only Oxbridge counts but London Met if you got CCC A levels eg might make it hard to become a City lawyer)

goodbyestranger · 13/11/2016 08:45

I agree Me. Where you go clearly matters enormously in certain careers.

Carriemac · 13/11/2016 09:14

DD got an AAA offer from Exeter for law. I'm shocked about the first year cull from Birmingham , so glad she didn't apply there.
Durham is her first choice , or oxfords, which is a long shot.

OP posts:
ErrolTheDragon · 13/11/2016 09:48

Carrie - good, hope she's pleased with that offer.Smile

ErrolTheDragon · 13/11/2016 09:58

Re the 'where you go matters' - well, yes, for some career aspirations but obviously not all. For some fields, the what you do may be more important than the where, and for others even that's less crucial. A world where everyone was wanting to be at the top of 'elite' professions wouldn't function very well!Grin

goodbyestranger · 13/11/2016 10:04

That's a good offer Carrie - is it below their standard?

Needmoresleep · 13/11/2016 10:41

I suspect "where you go" helps, though is not an absolute. A friend has been very successful despite starting off at somewhere comparable with London Met. She had wanted to study law but had no idea that she should aim higher than her nearest college, but then did well enough to receive a funded place at the College of Law and has since thrived. Coming from outside the bubble has done her career no harm at all.

The drop out rates for Birmingham seem shocking. I had heard that first year failure rates can be quite high for medicine, and that quite a lot will transfer out of top maths courses. But 50% for any course sounds too much, and very unfair on the students. In Yr 13 getting that place seems to be the be all and end all, yet both DC report that several of their peers have either found the transition to University tough, or found that the course was not what they expected. And that it would not have been easy to predict who would thrive and who has not.

Lollollollol · 13/11/2016 11:00

To put it into perspective, 400 students started at Birmingham last year with her. Less than two hundred were allowed to continue to second year.

Has anyone got proof of this? It's seems too high. I know law has a high'ish drop out rate in general but this seems crazy high.

I'm going to check for freedom of information requests!

Lollollollol · 13/11/2016 12:08

Bluntness
UNISTATS info for continuation from year one to year two for law at the University of Birmingham . Looks like the 'drop out' rate is only 8% which seems normal for law. It's based on 320 students.

I guess each year is different and that a good few of the 200 that didn't make it to year 2 in your DDs year may be retaking the year but even so the 200 non continuation figure seems extremely high. Confused
Apologies if I'm missing something but it would be a shame if people were put off Birmingham for possibly incorrect information

Uni offers for 2017 start
WalkingToMordor · 13/11/2016 15:20

I think that the university you study at is important for lots of careers and students should be aware of that.

Ds's course is only taught at 10 universities of which 2 are Russell Group and the rest are former Polys. It's a vocational course with a set curriculum so every student is taught the same thing wherever they study. So it is a course where it truly doesn't matter where you studied.

This is very fortunate for ds Grin as his AS grades were grim. Wink

I am shocked at the idea that Birmingham dump half their law students at the end of first year. I thought this only happened in medicine.

GetAHaircutCarl · 13/11/2016 17:19

Things are moving here in CasaGetAHairCut.

DD has offers from Nottingham, Birmingham and Warwick. Still waiting on Oxford and Exeter.

She also has an audition at RADA.

DS has offers from York and Bristol and an interview at Cambridge.

GetAHaircutCarl · 13/11/2016 17:20

Sorry wrong way round DS has an offer from Warwick and DD for York.

ErrolTheDragon · 13/11/2016 17:25

So long as they dont get confused which is doing what! Grin well done then... and on the RADA audition!

ErrolTheDragon · 13/11/2016 17:26

Them not then.

GetAHaircutCarl · 13/11/2016 17:30

They hold me to an unfairly high standard of memory IMVHO.

Given I can barely remember my own name most days Grin.

Regarding RADA, it really is a long shot. The odds make Oxbridge look a sure thing. There are 28 places per year. 14 boys, 14 girls!

LittleHoHum · 13/11/2016 17:38

Good luck and lots of Wine GetAHaircut. Sounds like a whole heap of stress. Wink