Applying for Uni 2019 entry Part 2, UCAS & offers

[Decorhate]

Here we go!

Yes, we were suprised. Others dd have applied to have either been interview with portfolio or scan your portfolio. Trent website even talks about the need for a portfolio! Where else has your ds applied to?

My DD is trying to decide between making Glasgow or Sheffield her first choice. The offer is the same for both, ABB. I have heard that Sheffield can be quite accommodating if students miss one grade but Glasgow not so much. That could be just hearsay though.,.
You can look on unistats to see the tariff points that last year's cohort got in on. Unfortunately the info is quite unclear when it comes to Glasgow as advanced highers carry more points

DD's boyfriend is at Glasgow and loves it. He went there through clearing, and according to DD so did most of his friends. His halls are very much for party people and it seems that there is a lot of partying and very heavy drinking in general at the university.

Framey what course is it? Some are more forgiving of dropped grades than others but standard entry for most is AAB or higher and minimum BBB or higher so an ABB offer doesn't leave a lot of downward movement at Glasgow.

Agree Scottish students are very distorting to UCAS tariff point averages. 5 Highers gives the same points for comparative grades as 3 A levels and most Scottish students have extra Highers and Advanced Highers from 6th year to add.

Glasgow has the highest proportion of Scottish students of all the Ancients and a high proportion of them commute. It is therefore a 9-5 Uni for some and a full on campus for others. By the time students move out of Halls into private accommodation in 2nd year onwards it becomes a happy mixture of the 2 for most. I went there and I have lots of friends with DC there atm.

Piggy We were at a Southampton offer holder day yesterday & the admissions tutor was very open about what grades they will actually take on results day for ds' subject. It was reassuring to know they don't need to actually achieve the grades in the conditional offer though it makes me even more about the whole process.

Talking to other parents, it seems they are also quite generous with their contextual offers.

That's interesting howabout. None of the BF's friends or students in halls are Scottish. Most of them are English, and some from overseas.

That makes sense Lonicera. It is difficult for Scottish students to get halls at Glasgow unless they live far enough away. That effectively excludes the almost 50% of Scots living in the Glasgow commuter belt. Since Glaswegians tend to stay West they are over represented in the Scottish student figures.

Howabout, this is what I was thinking.

So with Glasgow they seem to say minimum grades BBB and that means they absolutely won't budge from that. Am I right?

So say if DD got ABC she wouldn't get in, even if the UCAS points were almost the same?

Decorhate how much lower than conditional offer did they say that they'd take?

I don't recall that ds Southampton offer was lowered by him taking politics a level - he discounted the course after applying when he realised how stats based it was. (BSc not BA)

I don't know definitively Framey. I do know friends of DD who have fallen foul of this, but Scottish places are capped so there is more competition. In fact most Scottish students would have to meet standard entry after S5 to get an offer.

My advice would also be that if you struggle to meet minimum entry you may struggle with the course with Science / Social Science.

Could your DD have them as first choice with a safer insurance?

The Unistats data is puzzling for ds' subject. It says that 25% of applicants had over 240 tariff points for one of the universities he is interested in Not sure that is even feasible now with most pupils only doing 3/4 A Levels. I'm assuming it's because they are using data back to 2015 when they were still doing AS's?

Framey the standard offer is AAA. They have taken everyone who got AAA in the last few years or what they deem equivalent (AAB)
They may even take AAB

Those are the old style tariff points. A student with 4 x A* at A level would only have a maximum of 224 tariff points.

Decorhate if it's a Further Maths requirement course then I think most are still doing 4, which gets to 220ish. Add in some Music exams or EPQ and that gets to 240.

If the 25% are Scottish then I know a few with close to 300. They distort the averages somewhat.

It says on their website they have used the new points system. But it definitely must be wrong or including AS grades

I think it's a new change LIZ as it syas different in their subject booklet ( a dropped grade for a in EPQ) but on their main website it definitely states a lower offer for applicants who have politics. It's the BSc thing that might actually suit DS. He likes his stats!

That's interesting decor. Who knows? DS might actually send the bloody thing off some time in the next three weeks!

Now I have to think through what uni to remove to replace with Southampton. The ones he has so far are Aber (BBB- BBC) ; Hull (BBB allegedly, but I have heard they give lower offers) ; NTU (BCC) ; Lincoln (BBC) and Portsmouth (BCC). Hmmmm....

Aberystwyth is the really remote one but the one with the really good reputation for IR. I think it will probably be Hull that goes. Maybe we will just leave it.

If my son attains his predictions (3As at Advanced Higher) plus he's already got 5As and a B at Higher he will have 360 UCAS points, and that's not including his Grade 8 violin.

He is pretty smart, but not exceptional, although he has just been interviewed at Oxford.

The Scottish students have the advantage (or maybe disadvantage) of having twice as many exams as English kids where the points really do add up.

I'm not sure they double count the Highers and Advanced Highers though Aurea. I think it would be 3 AH x 56 = 168 plus another 90 for the 3 Highers and then add the Grade 8, so just shy of 300. I could be wrong though and still no mean feat.

Glasgow standard entry of 3 As and 2 Bs Highers in S5 gives approx 150. Add on typical 1 AH plus 3 Highers in S6 and you are at 240 or above.

Out of interest what is your view on ideal number of Nat 5s? Discussion going on in Scotsnet and I just namedropped you.

@howabout.

Ok if I don't double count subjects then as he did a crash Advanced Higher, he'll have 318 points with his grade 8.

If I remove two duplicated subjects, he got 4As at Higher and 3 As predicted at Advanced Higher plus his grade 8. I have removed two subjects at Higher which he repeated at Advanced Higher level.

It just shows what stress they have to endure exam-wise in Scotland.

No wonder the tables look skewed.

Oh, well our state school only offers 6 Nat 5s. For the more able kids this is pitiful IMO.

My son only took 5 through school as he did a Higher a year early which was his sixth subject Luckily I used to be a french teacher and taught him outside school so he managed 6 Nat 5s in total.

He has 6 Nat 5s
6 Highers
3 Advanced Highers.

Mine did 7 which was more than enough by the time DD2 added her Grade 5 Theory and Grade 6 in 2 separate instruments at the same time. Wish she'd bothered to do some theory and piano practice a couple of years earlier, but the slack in the S4 school curriculum definitely helped her. As you say it is a long slog to the end of S6.

Piggy do you know if any of the courses were in clearing last year? If you know you will get a second bite at the cherry the decision can be less stressful now.

I am not sure monkey : I am reasonably sure that Portsmouth was, and possibly Hull. There aren't many places on the courses, so they do fill up. How would I find out about Southampton now?