Which offers would you hold...

[another20]

DS has an AAA offer for a course at Bristol and AAB offers from his other choices (Leeds, Manchester, Exeter) for same course.

However he also applied for a joint honours same main subject and dept) at Bristol and has AAB offer here also.

He is keen to go to Bristol, hence 2 applications to same dept - but I am thinking that as a contingency he should accept the AAA and an AAB from elsewhere - as if he misses his AAA he might get in on AAB to that course or offered the joint honours again --- and if he drops to ABB he might have a better chance of getting on to the course at Leeds but might be rejected by Bristol?

I am thinking that having a foot in two camps is better? Or am I just talking nonsense?

I apologise user2222018 it was a flippant comment. Though I notice you didn't dispute my comments about pictures of Petri dishes or incomprehensible (to me) concepts 😉.

Slightly off topic, but I'd not heard of anyone applying for 2 courses in the same department before and just wondering if this happens often? Would there be an advantage in the same admissions staff seeing two applications from the same person? I'd assumed that there's normally an option to switch from joint to single honours, so that it might not be worth applying for both. Interested to hear if others' dcs have done this too.

I didn't even know you could do that - apply twice to the same place but for different subjects. Mine met their first choice Bristol offers last year so we luckily didn't have this issue.

My gut feeling is he should go for both Bristol offers because there are a fair few places in clearing if he totally messes up.

If Bristol is his preferred uni then I'd also do Bristol twice.

None of my DC have applied to the same uni twice (and I expect applying twice to Oxford or Cambridge is a no no) but several friends of theirs have applied for Ancient History and Classics for example. I don't think it's that unusual.

The same admissions staff are not making judgements on both applications though for all joint honours. The second subject is going to be judged by different staff if it’s in a different department. Eg History and French. I don’t think it’s problematic to apply for joint honours in the same dept as well as single honours. Many MFL students might choose to do this.

You may or may not get a chance to change courses. When we went to Bristol a parent was told their DD couldn’t change from single honours French to French and another MFL. Joint honours are often a good way to go if you include a less competitive subject.

I think that few students actually go on to PhDs. They are obviously specialists and are not the “normal” student. What proportion of undergrads in sciences actually do PhD’s? Anyone know?

Thanks for the info re applying for 2 courses. A friend of dd's is thinking of doing this and I hadn't come across it before. I showed this thread to dd just now and she said she would definitely choose both the Bristol courses as firm & insurance if that was where she really wanted to go.