Durham University

[NotEnoughTime]

Hello.

How many of us are waiting for their DC to hear back from Durham? My DS applied back in October last year and is getting very down now he knows that others who have received offers are being informed that they will be told soon re college allocations.

I am usually a 'no news is good news' type of person but even I am finding it hard to be upbeat as I too am fed up

I wish they would just let him me know soon if he is going to get an offer or a rejection and then he can get on with his life and his A Level revision without this hanging over him.

No it’s not but that’s my point, every leafy school state has children from difficult backgrounds who may need positive assistance but the reverse is also true .

I do think that Durham needs to broaden its intake, my suspicion is that it has become more rarified socially than when I went in the 1980s but making very low contextuals immediately on receipt of the application but then making others ( whose background may not be significantly different ) wait months longer and then making an offer which is more than 2 grades higher is in itself devisive . They should be trying to flatten the intake socially and economically not make it one of extremes. It may just be an impression but it seems to leave out those in the middle.

Still waiting here too GG - so frustrating

Do Durham still interview? I seem to recall I was invited to interview and only afterwards got an offer. The interview included 1 college interview and 1 academic interview.

Contextual offers are for children who are first generation to go to uni / from a low performing school with a certain high % claiming free school meals / young carers/ children who have been in care etc.

I mentor high potential kids from disadvantaged backgrounds to help get them into elite universities, so a lot get contextual offers. Some of their histories make me cry.

Hang on in there....I remember this time last year only too well and feeling quite fed up and frustrated by the wait on behalf of my DS. He had to wait until almost the end of March but he did get an offer in the end. Fingers crossed for all those still waiting to hear - it does seem a little unfair for some to hear so quickly and for others to have to wait until the bitter end. It doesn't exactly make the individual who is left waiting feel valued and wanted - I think Durham needs to look at this process as something needs to be done - in my view.

Peaseblossom- I see what you mean. So the AAA pupil from a good comprehensive/grammar or 3rd league independent will lose out to the contextual offers (don’t mind that) but also to the AAAA* student from a top public school.

I must say when I looked round most the students doing the tours had incredibly plummy voices. Don’t think any of them had been to comps, leafy or otherwise.

@Pollaidh I don’t doubt it and I am in no way arguing against contextual offers but I do think it’s a blunt tool and the apparent practicalities of actually making offers seems awry and the targeting definitely at some universities is odd.

I know my ds with his two university educated parents living in a leafy area is hugely privileged ( and he knows it too ) but at heart he is just a 17 year old boy who has worked hard and is waiting for an offer from his preferred uni. ( he has also had some hard things go to deal with which, quite rightly, won’t appear on an application but which make this process a difficult one for all of us )

I mean 4 A*, came out wrong 😬

You cannot use an accent to determine school. Plenty of plummy accents amongst DD1’s friends at her (Oxford) college and they are all state educated, admittedly at a range of grammar schools, high performing London schools and the big sixth form colleges eg Peter Symonds.

To be fair to Durham, they are trying to reach students from schools other than the above but I am inclined to agree that their guaranteed contextual offers are extreme.

There is a particular accent which usually marks out a public school pupil, at least in my experience. I’m sure there are some exceptions, especially in London schools, but on the whole it’s true.

Perhaps it depends where you live but certainly where I live (not London) you cannot (not should you) assume educational background from accent.

You can on the whole

I mean it’s obviously not always true, but on the whole. Speaking as someone who has had her own children in both public schools and state schools I am quite attuned to the difference. Not that it really matters.
But my observation at Durham is that the students I met were really quite posh, by which I don’t mean just normal private schools but boarding schools. It may have just been the colleges we looked round.

This thread is becoming quite ridiculous. I know 5 people at Durham, all of them from ordinary backgrounds and all of them from Northern towns. All of them loving it there.
All this talk of boarding school types (whatever that is) is just going to put people off applying.

Serin - i dont see why there being ‘boarding school types’ there would put people off?! They are just as likely to be great people as any others aren’t they?
My point was a response to someone’s observation that the admissions may have become skewed to the extremes - contextual at one end and ultra high achievers at the other end (perhaps favouring top public schools where lots have 12 A*s at GCSE etc) at the expense of the middle ground. My observations are just as valid as anyone else’s and since they don’t break the statistics down into top name high performing public schools and ordinary independents we have no real answer.

Still no news here for DD.....

Losing patience. Still waiting for offer.

My advice to anyone in the future is unless Durham is going to be your first choice then don't bother putting it as one of your 5

My twins (and their older sister) chose Bristol over Durham so none of mine went to Durham but my father and uncle did and I applied years ago but it and Bristol both rejected me. I think Durham always make late offers.

on contextual offers the system will depend on the place. Bristol for example has its own special system inculding if you went to one of the worst 40% of English schools on this list [email protected]. They have another list for Welsh schools. Amusingly they call the useless or losing schools "aspiring schools" - talk about Animal Farm speak.

The alternative criteria are post code and being in care and that kind of thing.

You can stick your postcode in here to check - www.officeforstudents.org.uk/data-and-analysis/young-participation-by-area/search-by-postcode/ Mine puts us in top place (5) for everything but ethnicitiy - we are quite a mixed race borough - mostly non white so that will be why we don't get 5 for that. I fyou put in my parents' address in the NE they sore higher on the race grounds as mostly white (Northumberland is even 98% white) but lower on numbers who go to university.

I did think it a bit much one person my son knows on his course got a 2 grades lower contextual offer but they live in a £3m house very near us, parents well educated etc - presumably they went to a one of the 40% worst schools.

Xenia - they rejected me too! Over 30 years ago I went for an overnight stay and interview and felt totally out of place with the type of students there and thoroughly unprepared. If it was today I would have got a contextual offer (crappy technical college, parents who left school at 16 and from poorish area)
As it happens I then got top grades, went to a different northern university and had a fantastic time. I never wished I’d got in to Durham.
If our children don’t get in to these top unis we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that they’ll probably forget about Oxbridge/Durham the minute they start at York/Leeds/Cardiff or wherever.....

My tuppence worth on Durham. Both my DC had early (November)offers.
One though, the English student, was applying post A Level and had already leapt the standard offer. He went elsewhere. The other is there at the moment. She also leapt the standard offer for her equally popular subject. Whilst lots has been brilliant, one thing stands out: awful pack behavior by certain Male sporty types. To describe it as rapey is not overstating it. She's unsure how seriously the university takes it either.
On the plus side (and weirdly given what I've just said) the pastoral care in college has been good. Also the college scene means there's loads of student led activity. DD is always busy (too busy??!).
But the first thing I mentioned has been a constant. I can't obviously say whether this is worst at Durham than elsewhere. Not sure son at Cambridge would have noticed in the same way his sister has at Durham. Anyway, something to think about....

DS was thinking of applying to Durham for next year, but to be honest, reading all this, I hope he doesn’t. I don’t want him to be in a position where he doesn’t get a Cambridge offer and then has to wait and wait for a Durham offer with the same A*AA conditional grades anyway. Plus Durham is miles away for us and when he looked at the photos and read some of the student blogs online, he was a bit. and thought it all looked “too British.” I told him to keep an open mind, but now not sure if it’s worth applying.

@TheoneandObi, is this “pack behaviour” apparent within specific colleges or associated with University level sports teams?

I don't know about colleges. But Rugby seems to be the main problem sport.

Perhaps they have been taking lessons from Joe Marler after his shameful behaviour towards Alun Wyn Jones in 6N yesterday.

Unfortunately it seems to be an issue on campuses generally and chiefly among sports clubs. Unions and guilds I think are starting to try and tackle it and it is probably a minority within each group but it exists.

Slowly. And if it's a minority then teammates should be able to tackle it. Unfortunately their silence and support makes them complicit.