Another insurance choice query.

[Eeeeeek330]

Happily DD has an offer from her first choice university for a humanities subject, she has also has an offer from Glasgow. She is still waiting to hear from LSE, Edinburgh and Durham. She doesn't seem too concerned at present, however I am aware she hasn't visited any of them yet. She had planned to go on offer holder days if she got an offer. Most of these are before end of March, However, the deadline for universities to aim to reply by is 31 March, although they seem to have till 9th May as the real cut off. I would book travel to Glasgow's offer holders day, but as Edinburgh is the next day I am a bit reluctant. But the flights will be going up in price daily.
So, is it possible she wont hear back from these institutions till after the offer holders day?

And I am also wondering, though I think I know the answer to this, will she automatically be rejected for a course if the PS is declaring undying passion for 2 subjects which in combination that are not offered by the institution. She applied to Durham, thinking she could then send in a modified PS, but somehow this didn't happen.

So the current system is basically setting students up to fail, school predict high grades, unis ask for them and then most students don't get them ?

Has anyone any experience of education in the US and their University application process. I'm no expert but they generally apply and get confirmed places early in the year in their final year at school.

I have lived and worked in the US and the UK.

The US school and university system is completely different to that in the UK. US students learn rather little in depth in high school, and enter university without specialised knowledge. They take 4 years to get a Bachelors degree and don't specialise (major) until part way through their degree. Since their Bachelors are less specialised, it is more common to attend graduate school, particularly to train in specific professions e.g. law and medicine. So to become a lawyer you need considerably more years of university education than you do in the UK. From school to PhD in the UK is 7 years. It is 9+ years in the US.

Now since students learn relatively little specialised material in US high school the detailed grades in particular courses don't really matter for US college admission - it is the overall transcript, plus SATs, plus essays, broader co-curricular profiles etc that are used to select. Selection at the "top" universities is certainly not just on academics and is far less transparent than in the UK.

And indeed after college acceptances are in students typically do very little studying at high school. The US system is very wasteful in that bright students could easily do much more at high school.

user7214743615. That's interesting to hear how the US system works. It seems very different to the UK.