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.

That makes sense, really. One degree can't be all that much harder than another (for the same subject). So, someone who got all A*s is more likely to be able to succeed than someone who got a mixture of Bs and Cs.

I don't believe the problem is necessarily with the universities themselves or the quality of their teaching.

Students with poorer A-level results are more likely to dropout of university. The dropout rate is higher for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Students who work more hours in parttime jobs are also more likely to drop out.

People with Bs and Cs for A level grades are not at the top tier universities are they? They mostly have people with A*s, As and the odd B. Therefore their drop out rates tend to be low because they have students who are more likely to succeed based on previous attainment and are less likely to be disadvantaged, working or simply do not have enough money and need to find full-time work. Most of these students find their way into the lower level universitites because they have more generous admission policies and offer courses which are recruiting, not selecting. They offer below their stated tarrifs. I also suspect these universities take on more students from their local area than others higher up the chain do. Therefore they reflect the attainment of the young people in that area, not the country as a whole.

If a university offers a low tarriff course (BBC), how many A*/A grade students are they likely to get? (I do not know the answer). One would expect that courses requiring much higher grades will get the better students. The university with the lower A level grade students will still produce plenty of first class degrees though, possibly more than the higher tariff university. I tend to think that reflects the difficulty (or otherwise) in the courses and why employers do prefer some universitites over others. Some are seen as delivering challenging courses where only top students succeed. Most of us would assume that a CCC student would not get a first at Oxford, Durham etc. but they seem to elsewhere.

That is why it matters hugely which university you attend. A degree from unis such as London Met and others is not worth the paper it is written on. It is certainly not worth the 50k+ debt. This may be un unpalatable fact to many people but isn't it better to know this in advance.

I agree on BBC people. My twins who hopefully are A people will probably find their AAB Nottingham offers are the lowest and in deciding where to apply one factor is grade requirements - good places have high grade requirements. In fact we've almost found it an acid test - if your best friend says XYZ university is really good go and look at the grades for entry and that usually helps you decide if said friend is likely to be right or not. Obviously there are exceptions..... Anyway it is probably best not to predict grades on here as I might find my lot get all Cs next summer and I will be burying the thread.

(Although my immigrant cleaner's son by the way read law at London Met - probably a high achievement given their history and has done the same LPC course as my daughters and now has a paralegal job in the City.... and I'm rather pleased about that'; good for him. I wish him well. However had he gone to a better university he would have found his route in easier).

It is important to look at the employment statistics from a degree course. Don't just look at the ranking of the university as some of the former polytechnics do have very good employment levels for certain vocational courses e.g. Nursing, midwifery, pharmacy.

I disagree with Jeanne 16, in that there is room within the tertiary education sector for good, less academic, more vocational colleges: colleges that in the past would have been known as techs, polys, teacher training colleges, nursing schools and so on.

I spend a lot of time on the South Coast, and regularly meet either small business owners or trades people who have children at Bournemouth University, or recent graduates. There are obviously courses of dubious value, but equally other, well regarded, courses with tailored towards the needs of local employers.

Its really not about the "best" University/course but about the "right" University. Somewhere where you are stretched but not over pressured, and takes you through to the next stage. DH has spotted the odd Linked-In profile with a Bournemouth grad in a senior City position via a back office position on the south coast, ditto with graduates from lesser ranked Yorkshire Universities close to finance sector employers.

The classic example is the internationally renown product design course at Northumbria, alma mater of Jonathon Ive.

My dd went to a mid range uni for undergrad course with 3Cs and 1 D( she is dyslexic)... They had wanted 2Bs and 1C but she had a brilliant personal statement and was Welsh student going to Scottish Uni
Got 2:1 MA Hons- Now doing Post grad a prestigious RG Uni....she would have never got in to do under grad course at this Uni with A level results, but her approach to study/ essay writing improved so much over her under grad years that she was accepted in to post grad course immediately!

Glad I have found this thread. DS's UCAS has finally gone in after delays from one particular teacher in doing references. He has applied for History at Birmingham, Newcastle, Nottingham, Southampton and Leeds.

Thirty years ago I got BBC in my A levels as I was lazy and did no work. I ended up at a mid-range university but graduated with a First having realised my error. I recently obtained an MA with distinction from UCL so all is not lost by not getting stellar results.

Well done to your DD stopyourhavering!

I agree that it depends on what your career plans (if you have any at 17/18) are as to whether the institution matters. If you aren't sure what you are going to do it tends to be a better bet to try to get into a higher ranking university, that's all. It keeps options open.

The Today programme on Radio4 today had an item about whether we should push so many children for degrees particularly not very good ones given the debt levels but nothing was said which made me think university was the wrong choice for my children.

Has anyone got any firm stats on how A level grades effect the likely outcome at Uni. I imagine at the highest tariff Unis you need your As and A stars but for the normal high tariff Unis I wonder how much a grade here or there actually matters.

Several of my kids seemed to specialise in getting either extremely high Bs or extremely low As for their mock ALevels - As it was they all did OK in the end and got into their preferred Unis but for a few exams they were perilously close to going down a grade. It's scary to think how just a few marks could have made such a difference.

It's a combination of institution and course lol that affects whether a slipped grade matters. Law at English RG - no entry with a grade one below offer. Physics at Cardiff on the other hand...

I don't know, Lol - some kids with a slipped grade get into their preferred through 'adjustment' don't they (whatever the heck that is!), I don't know if this is captured in any published statistics.

Errol - adjustment is when they do better (not worse!) and apply to a higher tariff institution.

Slipped grades are accepted or rejected through track on results day as normal.

Ah, right, thanks for the correction.

Lol, the research says that if grades are on the low side of a usual offer, but the student was state educated, it doesn't make much difference to a final degree outcome and can even be irrelevant, but if the student was independently educated, they might do a bit worse at degree level than their state counterparts. The theory is that independent school pupils are eased along the path more at school, so aren't quite as resilient at university in such cases. At university they sometimes let in brilliant people with appalling A Levels, because it is recognised that sometimes the limitations of that exam do not serve the top 0.5% well. You would have to be seriously brilliant at something though, in a way that could be tested, for example CompSci or Maths or whatever.

(I would stress that is very rare though, so don't get excited)

Boff - I think lol was referring to the likelihood of gaining admission rather than outcomes once there.

However I think the state vs private degree outcomes is largely myth - if memory serves it was based on an incorrect dataset from HEFCE.

the research says that if grades are on the low side of a usual offer, but the student was state educated, it doesn't make much difference to a final degree outcome and can even be irrelevant, but if the student was independently educated, they might do a bit worse at degree level than their state counterparts.

Agree with Titchy that this is not an accurate summary of existing research.

In my own subject (maths) extensive studies indicate that those with worse incoming grades do worse, regardless of where they came from. It is very unusual for offers/acceptances to be differentiated by more than a grade by school type for maths.

I know that in subjects such as computer science they have similar evidence and so again top universities don't lower their grades much by school type - those with low incoming maths + other science grades simply don't do as well (on average) on computer science courses.

Oh darn, so sorry everyone for not being clear

I wanted to know about the correlation between A'level results and degree outcome.

I know they must be some but I would like to see some actual data. It would be more interesting to see the link between actual A'level grades rather than UCAS points.

There isn't a correlation. If there was then the higher tariff institutions would have the vast majority graduating with firsts, while low tariff institutions produced vast number of thirds.

That doesn't happen at all! at least not since percentage of 1sts and 2:1s was one of the metrics used to drive league table position

Hmm, thanks for the reply but it still not quite what I'm after. 😂 I'm so sorry I've not explained it well. I'll try again then if that doesn't work I'll give up

So, say there is a computer science degree at XXX University with 200 students who have a wide variety of A'level grades ranging from a few who achieved all A stars down to a few that have just scraped in with ABC. What I was curious to know is how much more likely for the students with the top A'level to do well in their degree compared with the students with much lower A'level grades. Presumably someone has done research on this. 🤔

There isn't a correlation. If there was then the higher tariff institutions would have the vast majority graduating with firsts, while low tariff institutions produced vast number of thirds.

Thats because degree classifications aren't standardized any more, unfortunately. You'd have to look for correlations within each institution. Back in the day, my understanding is that there was some sort of external standardization so a first was a first from anywhere, and numbers would vary between the institutions. That doesn't seem to be the case any more - which presumably is one of the reasons why there's more concern about league tables and the reputation of the uni nowadays.

xpost -yup, within each course as you describe would be the only way to do it meaningfully. you'd have thought someone would have done this but a quick look in google scholar didn't turn up anything recent or with either full text or much detail in the abstract.