Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Higher education

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

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6 ··· 37 38

Original poster

Applying for Uni 2019 entry Part 2, UCAS & offers

943 replies

Decorhate · 06/11/2018 19:54

Here we go!

OP posts:

Piggywaspushed · 06/11/2018 21:06

Thank you!

Justanothermile · 06/11/2018 22:11

Thank you

GoldenRuby · 06/11/2018 22:55

NTU offer in, unconditional if firm. It won't be DS's firm choice - I think that will be Birmingham or UEA, but could be his insurance, in which case he needs DMM in his Btec. He's really pleased to have 4 offers in the bag and an interview for the 5th lined up.

Monkey2001 · 07/11/2018 00:00

Wow, this is all moving so fast now! Things are a bit slower over on the medicine thread, but even those seem to be coming out more quickly than usual. Will be waiting for offers until mid-Feb at least....

FrameyMcFrame · 07/11/2018 06:39

Checking in to the new thread. Thanks decorhate

Piggywaspushed · 07/11/2018 06:56

golden, what course is that at NTU?

AtiaoftheJulii · 07/11/2018 06:58

Thanks Decor!

Ds received an invitation yesterday to a visit day/one-to-one meeting at Manchester, for two weeks' time.

I just woke up from a weird anxiety dream about getting my A level results

Piggywaspushed · 07/11/2018 07:08

Have to wrestle with DS to write PS tonight...trouble is, he has almost nothing to say.... !

Original poster

Decorhate · 07/11/2018 07:17

Piggy, for most unis & courses it probably won't get looked at anyway! Just needs to say why he wants to do that subject & any relevant experience etc.

Monkey2001 It's really hard when many of their friends will have all their offers by Christmas & medic applicants may only be starting interviews by then.

OP posts:

Dumbledora · 07/11/2018 08:01

Hi.
DD has had offers for bham, Newcastle, Loughborough and Aston.
She was very keen on Newcastle which we were happy with but she went to an open day at Aston where the students she was talking to said its easier to get a first or 2:1 at Aston, so now she wants to go there. Offer for there is lower, too.
Am I wrong to want her to still aim for Newcastle?

VanCleefArpels · 07/11/2018 08:13

I Came on to see if anyone had heard from NTU which is the last one DD needs to hear from. She has had an email about applying for a accomodation but nothing on Track yet. Agonising!

Piggywaspushed · 07/11/2018 08:18

I don' t think that is necessarily true for popular courses , or where someone doesn't have academic qualifications that clealry make them a top pick, to be honest OP - the main difficulty is that he deosn't have a huge passionate interest in the subject (although we can embellish that bit!) and has no relevant experience. His PS may well be rather short!

Thsi not looking at the PS bit : does anyone have any evidence - beyond MN- of this? I've read it lots of times on here but at Open Days they have often emphasised its importance...

My DS does not have strings of GCSE top grades : he has one A, one A , the rest 6s and 5s and Cs and a D for geography...(and is not applying for the subjects he gots A and A in...go figure)

VanCleefArpels · 07/11/2018 08:35

He doesn’t need to have a great passion. But he should refer to some wider reading about a particular relevant topic. So for example if within environmental science a student is interested in recycling they could refer to recent research on recycling rates in their area, articles in journals or relevant books. If they haven’t actually read those things in detail no matter (in my very humble opinion) - someone close to me relied on Amazon reviews of a book referred to in a PS some years ago 😉

Laniakea · 07/11/2018 09:19

I honestly don't know re the PS. The only direct information I have was from Soton who said for the course dd wants they are interested in it - I get the impression that's because they interview for that course though & want stuff to talk about. They said that 'other places' and 'other courses' are not really interested in more than grades. And Bath where the admissions tutor said that all the PS he reads are rubbish so don't worry too much ???

So many offers coming in!

That's really good about Manchester Atia :) fx for an offer afterwards - is that all of them except Cambridge now?

I have email confirmation that dd's will go in 'on or before the 7th' ... hasn't happened before, I might have a bit of a strop if it doesn't go in today.

More exciting news from school - dd is down a chemistry teacher & the other one is leaving at Xmas. They have promised they have cover for the one who is leaving but no idea about the AWOL one. So on awol-teacher's week they are teaching themselves A2 from a text book. DD is going back to her chemistry tutor starting next week but it is unbelievably shit for all of the kids.

Another factoid from physics - they have all these horrible wordy conundrum type questions now (in OCR particularly which the school chose 'cos it most most interesting AQA not so bad). All of the y13s really struggle with them but the y12s are doing fine - the new spec GCSE is much better preparation for A level than the old one.

ho hum!

Monkey2001 · 07/11/2018 09:20

Piggy it is true for most medicine and Biomed courses. Not 1 of DS's use it for interview selection because so many are not written by the applicant. There are a few which still use it, but not many.

It probably comes down to how oversubscribed a course is.

ifonly4 · 07/11/2018 10:46

Piggywaspushed - good luck with the ps. Yes, lots of embellishing. What does he want to study?

ifonly4 · 07/11/2018 10:47

Five acknowledgements back now, and second Personal Statement into Durham who I suspect will be the first to reply.

dancingdirty · 07/11/2018 11:03

Hi all quick question. Does it matter which order you put the uni's on the UCAS form? DD has asked her teacher and they didn't know!

VanCleefArpels · 07/11/2018 11:18

@dancingdirty no it does not - each institution does not know where else the candidate has applied. Amazed a teacher with responsibility for this has no idea how it works.

Better than ye oldene dayes when we had to put in order of preference which put some noses out of joint to the extent they would not make an offer if put below certain others(Durham I'm looking at you, and no I'm not bitter after 33 years)

Piggywaspushed · 07/11/2018 11:24

ifonly Politics and IR. Lots of books he has started reading (and documentaries part watched)... Not really made it past about page 50. I told him to pretend and he was horrified, but it didn't persude him to read them!

Piggywaspushed · 07/11/2018 11:25

vancleef I had the same with Manchester back in the day. Rejected outright , even though I had grades in hand !

Piggywaspushed · 07/11/2018 11:26

Also, I am a teacher the PP did just say her teacher) and know nothing about UCAS. We get no training at all.... this has been very apparent to me this year!

dancingdirty · 07/11/2018 11:33

thank you@VanCleefArpels i was amazed too that the teacher had no idea, but her form tutor has been off for 4 weeks and this was a stand in so maybe no experience

The old way sounds terrible!

PancakeMum6 · 07/11/2018 11:53

piggy I know DD1 was told by the Oxford physics admissions tutor that he’d never looked at a personal statement and never planned to... I also have a friend who works at Leeds uni and she says they don’t read them for her subject. Those are the only two “official” sources I’ve heard it from...

VanCleefArpels · 07/11/2018 12:13

I think for a while they asked you to put them in alphabetical order but this was pre computers etc so each place still knew who else you were applying and could pretty much guess the pecking order! Much better now they look at each application in isolation

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6 ··· 37 38