Does anyone have any experience of UCAS extra?

[bendmeoverbackwards]

Dd applied for Ancient and Modern History to Oxford, Liverpool, Manchester, Exeter and Durham. She got an interview at Oxford but no offer unfortunately.

She's currently got 3 offers and is still waiting to hear from Durham. Of the 4 she's most keen on Durham and Exeter but a bit wary of both due to reports of a bad atmosphere at both.

She now regrets not applying for straight History as this would have widened the pool of universities she could apply to. She likes the look of the course at Bristol and UCL among others. Possibly Birmingham too.

I understand that with UCAS extra it's a huge gamble as you have to turn down your existing offers and then reapply course by course as vacancies come up.

Is it likely that only the less popular universities and courses will have places available in the next few months?

She really doesn't want to take a year off and reapply, she's keen to go this year.

Hi there.

She would indeed need to decline her offers before being able to make use of Extra. She can also only apply to one uni at a time using extra and cannot try another until she has an answer from the one she applies to.

It might be worth asking her existing choices if they would consider her for history rather than A&M. However if she does want to try the others I suggest she call the admissions team and explain her predicament and whether they would consider making her an offer through Extra. Quite often they will give a time limit to accept any Extra offer so she should have an idea in her mind which she would really want before going ahead. Again the ones she is applying to (less so Birmingham) are likely to be oversubscribed so there may not be Extra places available but they may want her due to the fact that she was an Oxbridge calibre student.

I strongly suspect that Birmingham would want to snap her up as I suspect she would be a candidate that would fall into their CCC offer based on her predicted grades (again assuming this because she did apply to Oxbridge).

So maybe get her to call admissions and see the likelihood. They may, of course, say they cannot say yet because of making sure they have gone through all the equal considerations applications that came in by 29 January but worth a try (especially Birmingham).

That said I know plenty of kids at Exeter and Durham who despite lockdown Britain are enjoying uni and not just in 1st year. Is it the racism/misogyny "chat" groups that have put her off? If so I really would urge her to see past a small group of non-representative "lads" who thought they were being clever when really they weren't.

Update - after visiting Exeter dd really didn't like it unfortunately. So now she's wondering if she might have nothing to lose throwing in her offers and trying Extra.

She likes Bristol. She phoned them last week and spoke to Admissions and they said there are places available on Extra. Still a huge gamble though.

Pupils I know who have used Extra have discussed their application with the uni and received a verbal offer before withdrawing other offers. Still a bit of a gamble but in these cases it has worked out well. Worth calling back to see if they would be willing to discuss further.