Another path to greatness - part III

[chopc]

Here is the new thread

knew being

www.dur.ac.uk/study/ug/apply/un/

They do state they consider the application as a whole and not just grades so that by its nature makes it a subjective decision. There was a lot of publicity about them paying people to defer from last year.

Although we have had some seemingly odd rejections on the whole our success rate this year is similar to previous years with a few decisions yet to come in which could go either way in the current climate.

[quote SeasonFinale]@LoonvanBoon no it wasn't you who referred to other people they knee beibg weaker on paper.[/quote]
Oh sorry that was me. I didn't mean that as an insult at all and I'm very sorry if it was seen as such. DD has friends who were made contextual and early offers and I wasn't referring to them. It was just that this week they have rejected students with stellar grades and offered to students with slightly less stellar grades and I couldn't understand why. I'm really sorry for my thoughtless comment and apologise for any offence.

Apologies if my share of The Times article moved the debate off piste - that really wasn't my intention. It is healthy however to allow individuals to air and process their feelings which would never happen in real life if we all met in person. That's the beauty of this thread and why it's had over 150 contributions in less than a day.

@Chilldonaldchill I would personally prefer this to be a place people can rant/ offload freely without fearing they will offend others.

Happy to think I don't represent the majority and just have thick skin though

Exactly @jano69 . Please don't apologise

As per the link Season sent , you can request more feedback from Durham. Wonder if anyone has done this in the past and got a better understanding of Durham's decision?

The thread is reasonably on topic despite interlopers like I am occasionally chipping in. it is certainly a very different position to have children out the other end in terms of university (or doing post grad in our case) than being in the thick of getting places particularly in a pandemic something my 5 never had to experience. Historically my daughter's subject at Bristol 13 years before her brother read the same subject there had half the places of when the younger one did the same subject as the Government released the cap on universities offering places for those with AAB plus as long as the university had space in halls and lecture halls. I am sure my son would not like me to say it but it was easier for him to get into Bristol in 2017 than it was for my daughter 13 years before that as there were simply more places (they got the same A level grades). However comparing years is rarely fair . I got the same grades too in 1979 but they were very unusual in my day and neighbours walked up to me in the street in shock and they were the best results in the school. All young people can do in any time is do the best with the system presented to them and the covid 19 challenges (actually it is the state's reaction to covid not the virus itself) make it very hard for them at the moment. Let us hope when they get in somewhere decent as most of those who try for Oxbridge manage part of the 3 years will be wonderful, free of restrictions, parties, boy and girl friends, risk taking galore (if they want that) and good face to face academic work.

(Typo in my last post above I meant even if you fail as I did (in being a partner at law fir)m you can then set up on your own etc - in other words often your failures make you how you turn out)

Anyone rejected by Durham but going to Exeter will do fine. The list of where law firm trainees are recruited from shows the wide number of universities and I expect the list would be similar at most of the higher paid City jobs www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/law-firms-preferred-universities-2019 although some are trying to recruit institution blind and others have programmes for sixth formers from different backgrounds www.rarerecruitment.co.uk/slaughter-and-may/lead-in-to-law/

I’ll reiterate that a considerable number of applicants - offer holders - would in a normal year be disappointed on results day. You may well have been grieving in August instead of January or now.

Universities are in a tricky position to say the least. Normally they’d give unconditional offers to those with grades achieved (ie a slew of A*s) but they can’t do it this year (or next) because there would be too many of them and it would radically reduce the places available for the normal cohort who have yet to be awarded grades.

They are having to balance those with grades in hand with those from this year, knowing that virtually every place will be a definite one.

It’s tough on this year’s group, for sure, but there are still the same number of slots.

Regarding joining a state school in the sixth form - dd has a couple of friends who moved from private schools to her state school. The reasons were very much more financial than upping university chances!

I’ll reiterate that a considerable number of applicants - offer holders - would in a normal year be disappointed on results day. You may well have been grieving in August instead of January or now.

Very true Ima. The number of applications are up, the grades are down to teachers who know the students, rather than exams marked by strangers and so the cull comes now which just feels unfair, rather than being given a chance to prove those grades against their peers in exams.

I also think that if Durham really wants every candidate to tailor their PS to them (in a way incompatible with what Oxbridge say they want), they should just insist on applicants doing a separate one and everyone would know where they stood.

Durham has never been especially transparent, as I said earlier, and not only that, but its admissions policies have veered all over the place in recent years - which is completely understandable as Durham respond to changes in the educational and political landscape. It's just that their veers seem to be bigger veers than other universities' veers.

In terms of the personal statement it was never the case that Durham wanted it tailored to Durham; more that it wanted a genuinely engaged, engaging and authentic personal statement. The alternative statement is a separate issue here, introduced for entirely different reasons. The emphasis which Durham used to put on the personal statement was evident in fairly recent years when students at our school got feedback after 'shock' decisions. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if when the announcement of cancelled exams was made Durham went oh shit let's just use personal statements to fill the remaining limited number of places.

*responds

Irma - I was about to make the same point about offer holders being rejected in August rather than February. I know that for ds it is actually much better for him to be rejected from Cambridge now, move on and concentrate on his more realistic offers. In my heart of hearts I didn't expect him to get in to Cambridge and I am almost relieved that he has had the rejection (sorry redirection ) earlier. Now I can worry about him getting good enough grades for Durham...

As regards Durham, I am so very sorry for those dcs not given offers with stellar results. DS had very good predicted A levels but two 7s at GCSE (massive failure I know! ). He didn't do a special PS for Durham, but I think so much is down to course choice and I think he was lucky that Geog not nearly as competitive as others.

I think this thread is excellent for having a rant, and any interlopers who don't understand the context can just FO and keep FingO until they find a new thread to stick their oar in. It reminds me of threads where someone is complaining about their MIL and some nob comes in to say 'at least you have a MIL - mine died last year' or some idiocy of a similar nature.

And on a more practical note - my friend's ds is still waiting for Edinburgh....

@Vargas
I’m a bit late to this thread. What do you mean by a special PS for Durham?

Durham offers ,or lack of, is a hot topic of discussion at DD's school too apparently.

2 people have offers. 3 have rejections. 2 still waiting

Interesting fact - the 2 who have offers are Y14 candidates who applied with (excellent) grades in hand. Given that they are not DD's cohort, she's not certain what happened for these 2 candidates last year to result in them making Y14 applications.

@Vargas you are right, the worry doesn’t end with getting a Durham offer. My dd was delighted to receive an offer for Nat Sci but is stressing out that she is not currently meeting the grades in her school assessments. Nerves seem to be getting in the way and the more tests she flunks the more panicky she is getting. I just hate the popular mindset that grades will be inflated in Summer, I cannot see that happening in my dd case.

It is so school dependent. DD’s school is doing mini exams. A letter was received saying quite firmly that they will not be giving grades based on what is required or even what was predicted.

I wonder how other country’s systems work where grades are internally awarded. Is the US system deemed for for purpose?

Fit for purpose, that should be

I think the US system is very subjective but in normal years they would have SAT/ACT and subject SATs which are more objective.

I kind of like the US system - I think you can retake SAT several times?

Plus you can apply to as many universities as you want

Yes the gradings this summer are so school dependent. Why can't the assessments set by the schools be externally marked to make it more uniform?

Following the ongoing fall-out from last year's assessment/grades solution mismanagement I think the UK missed a prime opportunity to move to a system which does away with the offers stage altogether.

A drastically altered timetable to enable applying grades in hand would surely iron out many of the issues with the current system.

It wouldn't solve the reduced availability of places for this years Y13s compared to increase in places made available to last year's but it would reduce some layers of angst in the UCAS process.

No pressure on teachers to provide predicted grades. Students in 6th form already get regular scores/grades for pieces of work submitted. These could inform their outline plans ready for post exam results/applications.

An "intent to apply interview" could still take place ahead of post results applications with scores/notes being recorded on file.

I'm sure there's huge holes in my plan but the pandemic resulted in many, many changes to established ways of doing things that I can't help thinking the further/higher education sectors and UCAS should be obliged to remodel by thinking outside the box in terms of the way forward too.

You can retake the SAT but some universities require you to submit all results.

DD had planned to resit but as it happened there was only one sitting if any US college entrance exam on the island of Ireland last year which was the ACT in Belfast in September. Luckily did that one as the rest were cancelled afterwards.

@maggiethecat Others on this thread who are more knowledgeable than me please correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that Durham is the only Uni in the UK for which you can submit a different personal statement than the one done for all other applications (including Oxbridge).