University 2020 :4: The wait for grades and better days ahead

[MillicentMartha]

New thread for us. Interesting times.

Old thread here

I’m not sure how it works re- timescales for overseas applications, but would they not have already have applied and received conditional offers in the same way as UK applicants? Maybe they’ve firmed their offers too? I think if you’re single-minded enough to apply to top UK or American unis from say, China, the virus wouldn’t put you off. They’ve seen it passing through their own nation and October is still six months away. If they get a place at Oxbridge or Harvard etc, chances are they would still take it up surely, even if they had to start term a little later?

@Kingscotestaff... You can probably establish the number of overseas students from some of the Unis websites (Stats).

I think I remember seeing that 12% of students don't make their Oxford offers.. but can't remember where...

I was looking at the stats for one course at Cambridge my nephew has applied for (humanities) which asks for A*AA and last year they made 130 conditional offers for 90 places.

The thing is, if a school has fairly recently given one of their students the predicted grades of AAA which had enabled them to apply to a particular uni and receive a conditional offer which the student has now firmed, I really don’t see how they can withdraw this now, or say, “oh sorry, actually we don’t think you would have got the A after all..,” I think unis will have to take them all and find the space.

I really don’t see how they can withdraw this now, or say, “oh sorry, actually we don’t think you would have got the A after all*..,”

But the idea is that the A level students will receive grades according to.the school / exam board(?) calculation, as if they were the grades obtained in the normal way (the certificates won't say that they were 'given' grades). So that is what the universities will be presented with, to deal with in their normal way. It won't be the responsibility (or privilege) of the university to decide which applicant would or wouldn't have achieved their offer. At least, that is my understanding of the recent announcement.
www.gov.uk/government/news/further-details-on-exams-and-grades-announced

But surely the predicted grades for UCAS must have been based on the same kind of calculations - eg performance through the school, essays / coursework, internal exams, GCSE performance, mocks etc - a combo of all this. Otherwise where did the predicted grades come from?

Wouldn’t predicting certain grades and allowing the students to run with these in order to gain places, only to withdraw them two terms later, seem like setting students up? Or massive incompetence in the sense that they shouldn’t have over-inflated the grades in the first place? I can’t see what extra insights / info teachers are going to have now really.

At DS’ school, for instance, there was a talk recently. They said that they don’t over-inflate grades for UCAS predictions. They said that unless your predictions are at least 2 A plus an A, don’t bother applying for Oxbridge because their tracking shows that students whose predicted grades are below this profile tend to not be successful. I was surprised at this because I know some courses eg History at Oxford “only” ask for AAA, but maybe they mean that you can drop a few A and still get in. Or maybe they were talking about sciences, I don’t know, But this school does get around 20 odd into Oxbridge every year so they should have a good idea and don’t need to set students up to fail with over-inflated grades. So what would they change now?

But surely the predicted grades for UCAS must have been based on the same kind of calculations

But now with half a year's more completed work to go on - and minus the pointy-elbowed parents, whose little darling has just got to get offers from certain universities...?

Sorry, a little tongue in cheek, that last bit, but isn't one of the major issues re DC at big standard comps not going to those very universities meant to be down to said comps not understanding how to play the game, insisting on only predicting realistic grades, or even below?

I don’t know Marching - I think the schools that are used to “playing the game” will continue to play whatever game is they’re playing because no school wants to see its Oxbridge / RG / Ivy League ratios fall. Plus if you’re the only pupil to have an Oxbridge offer in a comp where you’re an outlier, they’re even less likely to take that away from you when you’ve done so well to get that far. Every school wants it’s success stories and no school wants to be dealing with irate parents up in arms demanding to know why predicted grades have been reduced. They’re will be uproar and I can imagine it could get very unpleasant indeed. I think schools are more likely to just hand them all over to unis with pretty much the same predicted grades and let the unis deal with the bulge year. Ok, they’re two terms on now, but these are the terms when the vast majority of students step it up, particularly when they have conditional offers in hand and the end is in sight.

Aren’t the raw results being amended to follow a similar distribution of grades as last year? I thought I had read that.

@errorofjudgement - yes I think that's right. It would make sense for the grade distribution to follow a similar curve nationally and by school. That said DS1's year group got a stronger result than the year above then at GCSEs so that would need to be reflected I think?

It won't be enough for teachers to submit grades if they need external moderation to fit the typical grade distribution and boundaries, raw scores by paper will be needed. Difficulty is while some would still be teaching topics, others have finished the material and would be polishing exam technique. After all who would want to be the teacher who marks a pupil down and knowingly loses them an Oxbridge place. Predicted grades at best were based on one year's syllabus, often less. Also wondered how those unis over-offering might determine who gets the places or how they might cope if they have to take more than planned. What about those offers conditional on STEP? Can it be done online?

Dd has accepted her offer (post results unconditional) just in case UCAS gets frozen or offers explode.

Will there be raw results or will they issue just grades? If they issue just grades then there will be no boundaries to follow a similar distribution line.

Agree that some schools may not have finished syllabus so how can they give raw marks... DD only finished her syllabus on Friday after one teacher fitted in a double session.

I think it's also probably unfair that some schools like my Dds are still teaching remotely so she has more opportunities to submit work to support her grades...

I guess some schools might try and do some kind of computerised assessments in the next term to try and get some “raw scores?” But that would be so dodgy because how can they tell if it was the student who even did the assessment, quite apart from the fact that some families might not have a computer, or the whole family live in two rooms or something and there would be nowhere quiet for the student to complete the test.

Teachers know that mock scores (if low) can often act as a wake up call. I think unless something particularly drastic has happened over the last two terms, they will have to give all students the benefit if the doubt and stick with predicted grades. As pp said, would you want to be that teacher who denied a child their uni place?

The government has already said they’re not going to publish the school performance statistics / league tables etc for this year and it’s probably because they know it will be a very high scoring cohort indeed. Teachers would need strong evidence to prove a child would not achieve their predicted grades, but clearly they will not have this so will have to give them the benefit of the doubt? The unis will have to deal with it - buy up extra student housing for a year? Maybe they’ll get extra funding? It will be the unis that usually receive a lot of students through clearing that will be very hard hit because there will be far less “filtering down.”

The difference between an 8 or a 9 grade can be so minuscule and, in an exam, it could go either way for most students. How can any teacher possibly say who deserves an 8 or a 9? It’s totally arbitrary. It might be possible to argue, at the other end if the scale, a student would not have got a GCSE pass, or 4, but that’s about it. In linear A-levels they have very little or no coursework to go on even, let alone raw scores that can be assessed against grade boundaries.

This is the first thing that has really made things clear to my two teens.

We are now relieved Cambridge rejected DD after interview. She's happy that her mocks and her predicted are both above the offers she accepted. She's firmed St Andrews and put York as her insurance.

A few words of advice for panicking students. I work in a University, not in Admissions, but high enough up to hear much of the conversation. The things to remember are this:

1. Students in the 2020 intake are at the bottom of a demographic dip. There are less of them this year than any other year for the last decade.
2. The situation with international students is unclear. We are working on the assumption that the numbers will be down.
3. Many, if not most, higher education institutions are in financial peril.

What this adds up to is there is fierce competition for students. The chatter is around the softening of entry requirements, not what we do with too many students for too few places. Resources will be re-arranged, some courses will be closed, but these will probably be Masters degrees, where the number of international students tends to be higher.

We are currently looking at running online courses for potential students. Nothing big, but a "keeping warm" and slight upskilling exercise. My workload this morning went from "how do we manage online exams" to "how many MOOCS can we crank out at speed".

Keep an eye out for them appearing over the next month, especially if you are borderline in your grade predictions. No decision has been made yet about whether or not to use them as part of the admissions process but we are definitely thinking about the logistics.

Thanks for the information slug, interesting to read.

Thanks @slug

Thanks that's helpful

Thankyou @slug that's really helpful.

Also thankyou for the video @Kingscote (it helped me, never mind the teenagers! )

Sorry to ask, but what does MOOCS stand for?

MOOC = Massive Online Open Course

Was about to ask the same thing! Thanks Slug.

Just heard the Office for Students has put a 2 week moratorium on universities handing out new unconditional offers. The scramble for students has begun.

Durham's 'it will all be ok' email said that if the students were approached with unconditional offers they should shop the offending university to UCAS.

STEP hasn’t been cancelled...yet. DS is still preparing for it. He got an ‘it will be fine’ email from Manchester but they obviously aren’t promising anything. His latest school ‘on course for’ grades match his offer exactly, no wriggle room. It’s a shame as I think he could have pulled up by at least one grade. But it is what it is.