University 2020 :5: Results day approaching and beyond

[MillicentMartha]

Old thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/higher_education/3855474-University-2020-4-The-wait-for-grades-and-better-days-ahead?pg=40

Less than 3 months to go until we have a better idea what the future has in store for our DC. Let’s hope that even if most lectures are online that accommodation is open and they can move up, across or down to their university towns and start their student life.

We should have been in the middle of exams, instead we have this strange limbo of lockdown. It could have been worse, though.

My reply was actually to Peaseblossom because we cross posted.

My understanding is that whereas Cambridge will carry your offer forward to a 2021 start to allow the Autumn exams to be sat to boost any errant calculated grades Oxford have not said they will do so but I may be mistaken.

Yes - it also has altered that old adage of you are not competing against each other but for your grade. The reality is if you are I a setting where the historic data allows say 10 A*s including the expected uplift and there are 12 of you who may have achieved that at exam then you are indeed now directly competing with your classmates!

Yes, it’s going to make results day a bit awkward, if your friend does better than you, you know that the teachers ranked them higher.

Cambridge seems to be a bit of an anomaly, accepting the Autumn exam results to allow deferrals, then. I can understand Cambridge’s reasons, they have entrance tests and interviews so the exam results are just the final hurdle. For Oxford the A level offers are often a bit lower than Cambridge’s, after their selection process. So if students don’t make their original Oxford offers, that would be more surprising, maybe?

I wonder, have any other universities made a statement on this?

If the cohort is stronger this year then there will be more A*s allowed.
GCSE's are being taken into account as prior attainment for each subject.

Sorry I muddled my Oxford and my Cambridge!! But just trying to make the point that there are very few Unis where an offer in one year would not be matched by an offer the following year so most doing Autumn exams should be ok providing they get the grades in the exam. The only impact could be I suppose they will have missed the chance to benefit from the anticipated low numbers in 2020

@Oratory1 Don't you think that 2021 offers will be higher due to greater birth rate numbers plus deferers (particularly international students)?

So a student might be offered 3 As, get CAGs of AAB on August 13th, manage to get the B up to an A in the autumn only to find that the 2021 offer is A*AA.

I don’t think the standard offers change that much from year to year so I don’t think so. What does change is the extent to which Unis accept lower grades on results day so I guess they might lose out on the Unis being more generous in offer day this year. But having said that hopefully most that drop grades due to the standardisation will secure their place and move on precisely because of those low numbers.

We are getting close to the end of this thread so here’s a link to the next one.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/higher_education/3962422-University-2020-6-The-one-with-the-results-at-the-end