Applying for uni in 2021...

[Parsley65]

Thought I'd start the ball rolling on this one...

Dd wants to study psychology and we've been checking out dates of open days.

Her school still does AS levels. She's doing psychology, physics & business.

Please come and join us on the long and bumpy ride past revision and exams and on towards the much anticipated start of uni life in Autumn 2021.

DD has had another offer through - Liverpool AAA for law. Unfortunately we both think that's slightly out of her reach but still nice to get an offer! She really, really wants to go to Sheffield so everything crossed that it won't be such a high one (and that she gets an offer at all of course!)

Well congrats on the offer anyway storminasnowglobe .. it IS nice to get and offer. Was that offer the same as the normal entry requirements for the course? What are her predicted grades?

MarchingFrogs the Edinburgh application sounds tricky! We need to do a Bristol trip at some stage as never visited albeit I think DD may have been to the uni in Yr11 for a spectrometry thing. Not sure if they’ll do offer holder days virtually or otherwise.
First offer in is so reassuring isn’t it storm? Is AAA higher than her predicted? My DD has applied higher than predicted as she thinks there’s a tiny possibility she could pull it out of the bag. There’s no harm in one or two aspirational choices. Fingers crossed for your DDs Sheffield offer!

Has she done an EPQ storm? I know for Sheffield law they reduce their standard AAA to AAB if there’s an A in the EPQ.

Thanks all . Her predictions on her UCAS were AAA but the school tend to be quite negative "in real life" so we were both pretty shocked by the predictions (which we only found out just prior to submitting the form!) and treating them with caution. The school hadn't indicated previously that they would be giving such high predictions - the only feedback she gets are things like "if you sat the exam tomorrow you would probably get a B/C/whatever". She does work hard and worked throughout lockdown but has never been able to "crack" the A grades consistently. But I wonder if this is a school strategy to make them work harder .

She has done an EPQ and we think got a B - it's gone off for moderation - so nothing official yet. It's a shame as she put SO much work into and used more than 70 sources, buying loads of books on eBay with her own money as the subject matter is something she is genuinely interested in. She was very disappointed with the B to be honest which is another reason now why she is very worried that the AAA predictions will be not be achievable.

She does also have an offer from Swansea for ABB with B at EPQ, which is great. However, she did also want to continue her Spanish studies (hence the Liverpool and Sheffield applications) whereas Swansea is just straight Law.

@NotDonna best of luck to your DD too, I agree there's no harm in having an aspirational choice or two (especially in the current situation as we really have no idea how things are going to pan out!). I think DD is having a huge confidence wobble at the moment so instead of being thrilled to get an offer she felt a bit overwhelmed by the reality of it all.

Here is the Times article - there is also another one that I will copy and paste shortly:

A Russell Group university will be the first to reduce entry requirements for most subjects next year because of the impact of the pandemic on pupils.

Birmingham University told The Times that it would lower admission requirements by one grade across almost every course. It wants to acknowledge the pressure felt by teenagers and the learning they have lost after schools closed in March.

The move will put pressure on other universities to follow suit, or to set out what they plan to do to help teenagers sitting A-levels or the equivalent next summer. Only medicine, nursing, dentistry and dental hygiene, physiotherapy and social work will be exempt.

It means that those applying to study English literature will need ABB grades, including an A in English, rather than AAB, the standard offer. The change will also apply to history.

Computer science will require AAB, including an A in maths, rather than three A grades. The university said the lower grades would also apply to those who had received offers.

Those who would have qualified for lower offers because they went to low-attaining schools, have been in care or are from poorer families will be entitled to two lower grades, for example ABC in computer science.

Sir David Eastwood, vice-chancellor of the university, said: “We have been concerned about those in Year 13. They’ve had to self-isolate, there is uncertainty about when A-levels will be taken — what we are trying to avoid is the combined effect of disrupted learning for students and uncertainty around assessment.

“We recognise they might be anxious and worried that in the current circumstances they might underperform a bit. We want to try to give students motivation and the best chance.”

Sir David said the university was not adopting the practice to try to boost its application numbers, adding: “We’re not particularly looking to increase numbers this year.”

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A university spokesman said pupils had faced school closures, isolation and uncertainty around exams, and that the additional flexibility would help to mitigate against the “extraordinary disruption”. The situation had highlighted the need to review admissions nationally to ensure that the needs of students were put first, he added.

The adjustment to entry grades will not apply to courses that are externally regulated, nor to foundation year and degree apprenticeship courses.

Birmingham was one of the first universities to start making unconditional offers that required students to reject all other offers in exchange for a place that did not require set A-level grades. In September last year it was also among the first to announce it would stop using such offers.

And this one - good luck with telling 6th form students not to snog

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-easier-university-entry-for-pupils-who-miss-lessons-dn5bm5zfx

The amount of lesson time each pupil has lost to the coronavirus could be recorded to allow universities to lower entry requirements for those hardest hit.

The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, is also looking at plans to score pupils as generously as they were this summer as he battles to avoid a U-turn over next summer’s exams. This year, top grades were up 13% compared with 2019.

The move comes amid protests by head teachers that going ahead with GCSEs and A-levels would be unfair because pupils in regions worst affected by the pandemic, such as parts of the north of England, have missed more schooling than others. A record 600,000 children, one in six secondary school pupils, were absent last week, unwell or self-isolating. In Hull the figure was one in four. Teachers there have asked to close early for Christmas because schools are “on the brink of collapse”.

Under plans being considered by the exams regulator Ofqual and the Department for Education, universities would be given data collected by schools on lost learning. They could then make lower A-level offers to those whose education had been most disrupted. The government is due to set out its plans next week.

Schools will also be told to warn teenagers against kissing and casual relationships outside school, which some officials say is spreading the virus, to give exams the best chance of going ahead.

Oxford and Cambridge have written to schools to ask how much lesson time candidates have missed. Both universities, which start online interviews next month, plan to show clemency towards bright pupils from schools with the highest infection rates. The elite institutions are worried that efforts to improve social mobility will be hurt by the crisis.

Samina Khan, director of admissions at Oxford, said: “Oxford is working to understand how learning loss and educational disadvantage could affect 2021 undergraduate admissions, and what we can do to negate this effect.”

Last week Birmingham University said it would lower entry offers by one A-level grade across most subjects.

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More than one million children in England are three-quarters of the way through GCSE and A-level courses and are waiting to hear how they will be assessed in 2021. Wales has already cancelled GCSEs and A-levels next summer and Scotland has axed its equivalent of GCSEs. Kate Green, the shadow education secretary, said the delay in England was causing “huge stress for teachers, pupils and parents”.

Sources close to the government said schools could confirm how many weeks of learning each teenager had missed and whether they had had online lessons. More than a third of private schools offered a full daily timetable in lockdown, compared with 8% of state schools. Some pupils lacked laptops or wi-fi.

The plans are backed by private schools. Some heads wrote to The Times last week to argue that, as Clarissa Farr, former high mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ School put it, scrapping exams would be “selling students short”. Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said: “I am very much in favour of a national census of learning loss which could be passed to universities.”

At least two universities that ds has been looking at have increased their grades for next year - UEA and Leicester.

you can swap a choice for a different one within 14 days of the date on your welcome email. You can only swap each choice once

Ah I thought it was 7. So much the better!

Any others got children who are really struggling to pick a uni without attending open days?

My daughter would like to study mechanical engineering but is having to rely on the reputation of unis rather than visiting them, and she’s overwhelmed and doesn’t know where to start. We are suggesting that perhaps a gap year might help, but it’s tricky.

@cologne4711
You can swap online up to 7 days, but need to phone UCAS after that and up to max of 14 days.

@Mysillydog Maybe help her write an essentials list. Go through the course details & module info & ensure the course is exactly what she wants to do. Don’t assume that every course in your DDs subject is the same. We initially made this error with economics assuming that economics with code L100 was the same course at every university but it isn’t, another economics course with the same code can have totally different modules. So start there. Ensuring the modules excite. Then, what else is important to her? % of 1st degrees? Is it a target uni? Placement year? Campus? Distance from home? Train links? Accom? Affordability? etc etc

I don’t altogether understand the B’ham cut a grade from offers thing. A levels are a mess and lord knows how one sorts it out but surely if they are sat, the boundries will be set to be, at worst, typical for 2018 and 2019 grade distribution (and possibly according to the Times, 2020). So if in general pupils are struggling , the relative score for a B will just be lower so that the same proportion achieve it as the n the past (so a bigger version of the sort of fiddling that goes on every year to even-out different papers). So there is no need to change the grade tariffs.

And surely doing so would just make a local version of the CAG problem - wouldn’t B’ham have to make fewer offers to balance their numbers? I don’t see how that helps students.

And don’t GW and Ofqual have decide ASAP whether they are aiming for 2020 grade profiles or 2019 ones, as without knowing this, surely universities can’t know how many offers to give without being back in CAG over- subscription problems? And the uncertainty could make institutions who struggled with this issue delay their main offer releases.

What am I missing ?

@Revengeofthepangolins I think it’s just a way of universities trying to “bag” the best students. They can’t give unconditionals so this is the next best thing - offer A* students low offers if they firm.

But this is more than that - B’ham says it is lowering its tariffs for everyone

@Revengeofthepangolins yes it seems to be across all subjects & not just those that are A*. Maybe they are trying to reduce the pressure. If a teen thinks they need AAB it ‘feels’ better than AAA. Universities often end up, on results day, awarding places that are lower than their offers. Maybe this just cuts out that uncertainty? Having said this my DDs b’ham offer has t been reduced further

So impressed with Southampton! Admissions tutor (or maybe admin I’m not sure) sent DS an email yesterday. Totally personalised having clearly read his PS thoroughly and just checking if he’d rather do a different but similar course to the one he’d applied for, clearly outlining and explaining the differences. Absolutely made sense to ask as his PS was geared towards Cambridge and therefore had a slightly different emphasis. What a personal touch.

Wow! That’s very impressive @Tenpastseven! I’m sure they’ll be keen to have an oxbridge candidate.

Thanks @NotDonna. They have followed up with an offer today

Apart from Durham, I can't say that DD's offers have been any lower than she was expecting from their published standard offers. She's reasonably sure that the university she'd picked as a likely insurance place would take her with lower grades if she didn't quite achieve them, but as things stand today she'd have her firm and 'insurance' both requiring the same grades.

Dd is still waiting for college to do their reference and send her form off ...

@Tenpastseven that is really great and feels very reassuring to hear that there are "real" people taking a proactive and helpful interest in our DC's applications at the other end of the admissions process! I have found the whole thing so very surreal - probably a combination of it all being done online and not being able to visit any unis or open days due to Covid - so the personal touch becomes more important than ever.

@DahliaMacNamara yes same here. DD has had 3/5 get back to her with offers now and I think they've all been set at the published grades, as high as ever for her subject. I have studied some Student Room threads from previous years to see which of the unis DD has applied for still had places at clearing in 2020 & 2019, so I think DD will put one of those as her insurance even though the actual grades asked for at this stage are not much different. What does worry time though is that this year is going to be a complete anomaly - we have no idea yet what effect deferred students (with results in hand from 2020) is having on applications/places for 2021. I imagine as well that there will have been a significant number of drop-outs this year (and who can blame them?) who may be looking to start afresh next September.

Fantastic to see so many offers coming in. Ds still only has the Liverpool Offer. Both Bristol courses have now put his application on hold and QMUL have asked for scanned copies of his gcse certificates (Liverpool didn’t do this so was a bit of a surprise). Crossing all our fingers.