Oxbridge 2021: another 6 months of fretting

[DahliaMacNamara]

Will they make the grades? How will grades be awarded anyway? What the hell are Cambridge up to with that nasty little clause?

Hi @DahliaMacNamara - is this our thread 7?

I'm guessing this is thread 7!!

following on from previous thread; you would hope Cambridge would not actually bump anyone to another uni - so cruel (and I do think would be breach of contract - even with that get out clause!).

Alternative college and deferral would be the only 2 acceptable options.

Yes (and yes, about half a second after posting, I realised I'd omitted the 7).
Link to previous thread for newcomers etc www.mumsnet.com/Talk/higher_education/4133512-oxford-cambridge-2021-thread-6

Thanks Dahlia.
I'm presuming the Cambridge clause 4 is on every offer and not just a selected few???

DS decided go ahead and firm Oxford with Bristol as his insurance. He hasn't heard from UCL yet, but decided to withdraw his application as it was never going to be an insurance possibility (Bristol has offered contextual so it is a clear choice).

Now that he has made his official choices he is getting very excited, looking at course options and, like @Jalfrezi 's DD, wanting to visit at some time, even if it is just to walk around. We did pay a short visit to Oxford last summer (most of it at the Ashmolean) but he didn't know his college then obviously so it will be different to go with that in mind.

That's exciting @LaundryFairy!! Yes that is exactly why we want to go revisit Oxford. We also went in the summer but at the time she wasn't set on a college and just getting a feel for for the place.

Yes, it would be lovely to visit. We had a walk around back in the summer but we could only put our eye to the small gaps in the big wooden doors. Reassuringly they all seemed like impregnable fortresses!

Thanks for the new thread

Mildly freaked out to find myself still here, to be honest. I dreamed last night that DH and I were desperately looking for somewhere to stay overnight in Oxford, and eventually found a terrible B&B that charged £278 a night for an actual bedroom, but had packed rooms of seats like railway carriages all the way up to the top floor. Perhaps I'm just missing crowds of people. I wouldn't need to look for a bed for the night in Oxford.

With no skin in the game I've a somewhat different perspective on the Cambridge clause. I'm not surprised that those of you with offer holders are discombobulated by it, but sometimes a disinterested view can help. I got an inkling from my DD of how very difficult it was last year for the colleges , due to the circumstances which could in no way have been anticipated when they made the offers. It's actually quite remarkable that they seem to have managed to accommodate this 'bulge' as well as they did.
So... should they have played safe this year and offered even fewer places than they did or make a best guess how things would go, but with this caveat? Among the offer holders there will be some who actually wouldn't be devastated by a change of plan - my DDs preference for Cambridge versus her insurance choice was quite finely balanced.

I’m not affected either way, but I know that my dd with an Oxford offer would be so stressed out by it, to not even know when the grades come through whether or not that is going to equate to a place.

I think it is preferable to make fewer offers, and honour them tbh. I was firmly of the view that they should make EE offers this year, and only offer the precise number of places they could honour.

Before the offers came out, DD was of the mind that they more or less were ultimately unconditional, regardless of what grades were asked for, given the 2020 farrago and the likelihood of exams being cancelled again. Safe to say she sees things differently now.

UnityUnited Cambridge says it will dish out places on a fair formula so that will either be on admission scores or according to grades achieved - so any student asked to defer etc will be the bottom of the tree, on whatever ranking basis Cambridge uses.

If this is as @Goodbyestranger says, then part of the problem is that those who are asked to change College /defer / change course / shuffle off to ANOther Uni won't necessarily be those who are happy to. If they offered to defer entry for any who might be happy to take it up, rather than targeting individuals, it would seem much less stressful for all.

Oversubscription

1. If, as a result of circumstances outside the reasonable control of the University and/or your College, the number of applicants meeting the conditions of an offer of a place on your course exceeds the number of places available at the University or at your College, the University and your College will allocate places on a fair and reasonable basis. If you are not allocated a place at your College on that basis, the University and your College will, wherever possible, try to offer you one or more of the following options:

(i) assist you to move to another College where places are available; (ii) offer you the opportunity of deferring your place to the next academic year; (iii) offer you a place on another appropriate course; or (iv) support you in moving to another institution.

1. The University will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from any inability or failure to admit you

to the University or your College as a result of oversubscription that is outside its reasonable control.

That's the clause. It uses the phrase 'fair and reasonable' for allocation of places, so one has to assume that they would create a rank order. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't request voluntary deferrals first.

Waves to everyone continuing their Oxbridge journey. We have trodden this path and I sympathise with the highs and lows.

I am appalled by the new Cambridge clause. How is it legal? I understood that meeting the terms of an offer meant that an institution was obliged to find a place. I know that Cambridge is over-stuffed thanks to last year’s exam cancellations, but that is no excuse for over-offering in 2021. Cancellation of A levels was announced on January 4th and Cambridge offers came out later - 25th I think? I feel very sorry for students who have done well enough to receive and offer, only to have further uncertainty thrown their way.

Could I offer some reassurance?

The 'new' clause is, in substance, something which has always been there as a practical solution. Most years for most subjects, colleges have not needed to do this in the past; only exceptionally have there been students who have been deferred. Deferral generally reflects a particularly strong subject cohort.

As others have said, better to risk this than make too few offers.

Anyone planning to try and visit at some point? I was hoping a day trip over the Easter holidays (lockdown permitting 🤞)- even if just to walk around the city and soak it all up.

This has taken me back 12 months. We were wandering around DD's future College gardens on her 18th birthday. Track updated to tell her that her preferred insurance option had turned her down. She went to the nearest pub & bought her first legal round of drinks for us!

Deferring is one thing, but what other university is a) likely to be acceptable to someone who wants to go to Cambridge and who was under the impression that they had met the conditions of their offer and b) likely to have a place available? Presumably a) would be sort of answered by the place that the applicant had set as their insurance, but surely other universities also calculate how many students they want to take and have taken the firm / insurance / likelihood of offer being met relationship into account when making offers themselves?

If I were deciding whether or not to firm Cambridge, I think I would like to know a little bit more about the fairness and reasonableness of the process and especially about the finer point of option iv) before I committed myself.

Some people may want to take advice from a solicitor on this clause if it is new and has not been part of the deal before. It is a consumer law contract and terms have to pass certain tests, be fair etc etc I am not saying either way if it is void or not but it certainly needs to be checked carefully by lawyers tying it also into the UCAS rules too.

I think a few lawyers have already commented Xenia, including referencing fairness (the old thread).

I think it should be incumbent on Cambridge to accommodate all those who meet the terms of their offer. There is no new info since they made the offers, as there was last year, and all universities are having to offer places with the knowledge that more applicants may reach their offer grades.

With the amount of brain-power at Cambridge, presumably they could have offered accordingly. As I said on a previous post, schools have to do this every year at 6th form, it’s not an unusual process. What is unusual (unheard of!) is for a university to make an offer and then essentially say ‘even though you’ve met your grades, you can’t come as we have no space’.

THIS is the time they make sure they have enough space, not after the grades have been achieved.

Yes as I said on the last thread too Bilberry, you'd have thought that Cambridge could have adjusted between notice of exam cancellation and offer notification day, possibly shedding a few here and there. But it's arguably equally reasonable to stick with the decisions made in December and stick in this clause. Given it's phrasing, and the likelihood of how it will play out in reality, it doesn't seem inherently unfair. Those affected are very likely to be the same students, given that the process will require ranking. By one method, they get no offer, by the other, they're asked to defer/ change college etc.

There is an issue in that their chosen insurance may well not be the student's second choice, if the real second choice is also a high tariff uni.

Urgh, how to start Cambridge with even worse imposter syndrome than usual: ‘We’ll take you, but honestly you’re one of the lowest-ranked in your year, so if you wouldn’t mind waiting a year or moving college? Thank you kindly.’

Or am I misinterpreting their fair and equitable system for doing this?