Any downside to higher predicted grades?

[MadamBuxton]

I’ve already got a thread on this but I accidentally put it in further education rather than higher, so someone suggested I try here. Here’s a copy...

My DS has just had the result back from a recent mock and achieved a comfortable A grade. His ‘official’ prediction (school call it the UCAS reference grade) is an A but his teacher said to him unprompted today that he’d be happy to increase the reference grade to A* if DS wants it. The reason he gave for it being a choice is that a University might give a higher offer if he has higher reference grades so it could work against him. Surely not?! My understanding is that an offer would never be higher than the level published on the website for that course and in fact a higher prediction could only help by making it more likely he gets an offer?

Anyone with experience of this?

Hi OP. This teacher sounds very unprofessional to be honest. He shouldn’t be basing predicted grades strategically, on what he thinks unis may or may not offer. He should be awarding the grade he thinks your DS is most likely to achieve, all things being equal. This kind of thing makes a mockery of the whole system.

Anyway, he is kind of right that unis can make conditional offers based on higher grades than those published on the website. I know Oxbridge sometimes do this - for instance if there is a borderline candidate from a “top” school, they might ask for AAA, rather than A*AA, so that the candidate has to prove themselves that bit more.

But I think your DS’ scenario illustrates why unis have to take predicted grades with a large pinch of salt, to be honest. If a uni is going to make him an offer based on higher grades, they will do so regardless. Maybe unis know from experience that the predicted grades from some schools are more reliable than others?

Universities won't make an offer higher than what they've published as their standard offer. Even Oxbridge.

The only advantage to having an Astar rather than A prediction is the small possibility of getting an unconditional, but the regulator doesn't like that practice so I suspect it would make no difference to him at all.

(Clearly if we were talking about a 3 D likelihood applicant being predicted 3 Astars that's a different matter.)

The other reason is to allow your DC to apply to an aspirational uni that wants sat AAA where some might want 3 x A. If your DC does then achieve the A he is not restricted only to unis with lower offer levels.

The thing to remember if you are a parent is that 80% of UCAS predicted grades are incorrect. They are not most likely grades so do not raise complaints if schools needs to use CAGS again that they don't meet the predicted grades.

As said above grades might end up on predictions so that will be a factor.

My sons who got 3 As in AS levels at school (the best you can get) were then predicted 3 A stars by the school for UCAS and although I could understand that I felt it was over predicted but we just let it in. It did not make a difference eg one son got AAA and that was his Bristol offer (AAA) and he got in.

I wondered about this too. In our case, in Chemistry, his result in the end of year test (done at home under exam conditions), was the same as people who got A predictions, but the teacher gave him an A at the end of last year (we think because at the beginning of the year he was ony getting Bs, although he was new to the school, and settling in). The teacher howeveralso suggested that he could sit further tests before UCAS went in this term to get his A star prediction, but DS felt that having an A prediction would just ramp up the pressure, and he didn't need the A*, so he declined.
Then, well, since they have been back, they have been testing them within an inch of their lives (probably because they are scared of going back into lockdown and wanted as much evidence on them as possible), and DS has been doing really well in biology (third in the class consistently in the tests) whereas he felt he only just scraped his A prediction at the end of last year. So the teacher was making noises that if he wanted to ask for an increase, he could, but again DS couldn't see the point. And I have just kept out of it, but I have been wondering if he was right or not. DS only needs AAA for everything he is applying for. DS is not convinced it isn't a blip, at least in biology. Reassuring that it doesn't seem to make a difference, and that it is what he actually gets that is key.

Lots of DC turn up at university with grades higher than the entrance requirement/offer. It’s very normal at places like Durham and Oxbridge but plenty of others too.

Not going for a higher tarif university when you could have done can lead to employers thinking you don’t push yourself. You are happy to Coast at somewhere less prestigious. So I’d be wary of that. Putting at least one aspirational uni on ucas is a good policy. Keeping to all easy to attain is safety first but not always seen as dynamic.

Universities sometimes do make different offers to students based on predicted grades. The thinking being that they don't want to encourage the A* student to aim for an A if they are capable of the higher grade.

Keeping to all easy to attain is safety first but not always seen as dynamic.

Is it common practice these days, for employers to ask which universities one applied to as part of the selection process, then?

Granted, it's many years since I last had to apply for a job, butI can't remember even a conversational, I see you went to LSE - where else did you apply? during an interview, let alone a specific question on an application form.

One lives and learns, as they say.

DD was predicted AAA and applied to 2 x courses which needed this plus some other 'safer' options (AAA). She only received one AAA offer, one dropped the offer to AAA, one kept to AAA, one dropped AAA to AAB and the other AAA to AAB and subsequently offered ABB if firmed "as you are a highly sought after prospect" (can't remember the actual words). So I do think having higher predicted grades benefits, rather than hinders an application.