University Letter - can anyone explain

[jewel1968]

Hi. DS has a conditional offer from Royal Holloway and today he got a written communication in the post that started by saying ' We wanted to say congratulations on gaining your place to study with us' It goes on for a bit and then finishes with 'In the meantime keep up the good work and we'll see you soon '.

So he phoned their admissions and they check their systems and he is still down as a conditional offer. Does anyone have any idea why their written communication makes it sound so definite when he is on a conditional offer. Thanks.

@Xenia - I think Lettice's point was that it has nothing to do with the Trade Descriptions Act: that would only come into play if the university accepted someone onto an economics degree course but then made them do history because they didn't have enough economics lecturers.

I think Royal Holloway's letter, and Cat Cole's response above, are of very dubious legality but this would be to do with the nature of contracts rather than trade descriptions. I am an admissions tutor in another university; if our marketing department sent out a letter like that I would be furious.

"Gaining your place to study" is a bit ham fisted then. "Gaining your place to study conditional on getting the grades" might be better. Anyway it's no big deal as just about every student will understand it doesn't mean what it says and that they need to get their grades required.

The letter in question isn't a contract - it is just an informative letter referring to a previous (conditional) offer that has been made, but it isn't the offer itself.

The letter might have described the contract slightly inaccurately, but it doesn't mean the contract that was referred to is now invalid as a result.

Would be interesting to see what would happen if a child didn't get the required grades and could produce a letter that said "gaining your place"

I would imagine they would just be referred to the contract and to the 'entire agreement' clause within it.

The letter in question isn't a contract

I'm not sure this is true. A letter (or even a phone call) offering - or even implicitly offering - you a job is part of a contract. I think a letter implying that you have been accepted onto a university course might have similar status.

I would think the Competition and Markets Authority would have a thing or two to say about this, too. If RH sent this during the UCAS embargo period this would be regarded as a major breach and RH would be in serious trouble. Cat, fair play to you for coming onto the thread but you really need to look at the wording of your emails. As they stand they do not meet the expected standards of the OfS.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/11411808/St-Andrews-University-apologises-after-wrongly-telling-hundreds-of-students-their-applications-were-successful.html

It's happened before - someone really should re-write the communication

Also as it is consumer law, not business law, extraneous letters which in a business contexts would not be part of the entire agreement are more likely to be found to be part of the contract actually because young 17 year olds might well not understand that only the detailed small print counts. Anyway lessons learned hopefully - get in-house solicitors to read this kind of thing before it goes out.