5 choices.....

[hmmnotsure]

Hello

Thrashing around with DS trying to pick 5 UCAS choices. Trying to be strategic but in order to do that need the following info, anyone know where we might get it?

• which courses are oversubscribed at which unis?
• which courses at which unis are usually in Clearing?
• how you know which unis might offer a grade drop on results day?

The occasional uni offers up this info eg Manchester , on their course page by entry requirements but can't find the info for most.

Should I have been checking last summer for what was in clearing then?!

@Shimy

I miised your question about the Brum bus. dept, yes we did get to look around a bit. We saw several lecture room..not much else to say really except it was all just fine I guess. We attended the bus. dept drop session and had a long chat with one of their placement officers and a senior lecturer (forget his title now). Very, very impressive both of them full of enthusiasm about the course, the opportunities, the industry links. DS loved it. We haven't been to Lboro but it sounds amazing on paper.

That super good to hear thanks @Shimy

"Not Wales, Scotland, London, Durham or Exeter thanks mum"

Cardiff was in Wales last time I looked.
And it's a fantastic place to be a student.
Everything - including the city centre - bang on your doorstep and some of the cheapest rents (and pints) in the country. DSS is very happy there.

Indeed! Cardiff is my choice and am in process of persuasion.....

Not sure if this helps but on their open day, Loughborough said they usually get 3k applications for their business school (6 courses) and take 400 but if you look like you will meet the grades you will get an offer. They also said they would give a lower offer (ABB) if you had 3 A levels from their preferred list and a strong personal statement.

Bath on their open day said Management was one of their most oversubscribed courses and over half the applicants will be rejected. Manchester also said their business degrees were hugely oversubscribed with some courses like international management making offers to less than 20% of applicants.

The StudentRoom is a good place to look at what sort of offers are being given and at what grades.

@Dancingdreamer that's brilliant info thank you so much.

It would be huge pity if bright rejected the better universities because there are children from the better fee paying and state grammar schools there and would undermine one of the aims of university - that you meet people different from you. So places like Durham, Bristol, Exeter (3 of my children went to Bristol) if you can get the grades are surely worth a shot.

Also do look backwards from possible careers as sometimes a subject is not what those newly hired in the jobs you want was studied at university as you might have expected. So look at new joiners to companies in jobs you want on linkedin and see what subject they did at university and where they went. Don't look at older people as things change. look at people my twin sons' age - they are 23 and their friends who are not still studying are in first graduate jobs.

My 5 children and most of their friends never considered clearing issues. They picked their 5 choices including one with lower grade requirements so if they did worse than expected at A level they had firmed their top offer and their bottom easiest to get into choice in case the grades were not as high as expected. When people do that clearing tends not to be an issue.

Btw, just like there is no obligation to use all five 'slots' on the UCAS form if there aren't five universities / courses the applicant actually fancies, there is no requirement to list an insurance choice, if they have decided, upon mature reflection, that they actually only want to go to one of the universities which have made them an offer.

It would be huge pity if bright rejected the better universities because there are children from the better fee paying and state grammar schools there and would undermine one of the aims of university - that you meet people different from you. So places like Durham, Bristol, Exeter (3 of my children went to Bristol) if you can get the grades are surely worth a shot

This is all very well but if a child particularly doesn't feel comfortable with "the establishment", then perhaps they might be happier and therefore do better in a university which better matches their personality.
DD's best friend is at Durham, from an ordinary inner London comp. She's pretty robust so is coping ok, but some of the tales she tells about the bad behaviour and entitledness of some (not all) of the public school boys she was living with in halls last year are eye opening. I'm sure there is an element of that everywhere, but if it's not your thing (and especially if you're stuck with it in your first year accommodation- remember that last year they had no escape from the people they lived with either) it can be unpleasant and isolating if you feel that numbers are against you. My DD would have lasted about five minutes!

Yup he's at a super selective grammar now and would rather mix with a wider variety of students - international, mixed ethnicity, different class backgrounds etc.

As you say one of the great things about uni is mixing with such a wide variety of people from different backgrounds. I don't think Durham and Exeter are especially renowned for their multiculturalism or social inclusion.

Quite. It’s honestly fine for minority ethnic, working class, northern, boys to not want to live in Exeter. Ds is more comfortable in more diverse communities and apart from Oxford has only applied to universities in large, multi-uni cities. It’s a choice as legitimate as only looking at small or campus universities. Some of his choices have very high levels of privately educated students but are still more diverse over all than some of the smaller universities. Three of his choices are in the top 5 and all are within the top 10 for his subject (which Exeter isn’t) so it’s not a case of choosing shit universities because he’s frightened of “different” people. It’s very easy to be chill about living with people different from yourself when you are part of a massive majority in an area of limited diversity. You are not the one being different. No reason at all for people who are already a minority to make themselves more so. Exeter, Warwick, St. A’s and Durham have all had unfortunate negative publicity over the last few years and it did put ds off.

@Dancingdreamer

Not sure if this helps but on their open day, Loughborough said they usually get 3k applications for their business school (6 courses) and take 400 but if you look like you will meet the grades you will get an offer. They also said they would give a lower offer (ABB) if you had 3 A levels from their preferred list and a strong personal statement.

Bath on their open day said Management was one of their most oversubscribed courses and over half the applicants will be rejected. Manchester also said their business degrees were hugely oversubscribed with some courses like international management making offers to less than 20% of applicants.

The StudentRoom is a good place to look at what sort of offers are being given and at what grades.

An admissions team that needs to fill 400 places a year, will need to make around 2000 offers, since each applicant applies to 5 universities. So having 3000 applicants would mean that about 2/3rds would be made an offer.
Prior to covid admissions teams were pretty good at knowing how many offers to make. The change to how exams are graded over the past few years has made things more complicated so the 1: 5and a bit ratio of places to offers has reduced a bit.

@clary

so *@hmmnotsure* what I mean is, say you were looking at Eng lit, if you looked at Loughboro clearing in Aug 2019 you would have seen places for those with BBB (I know because I looked).

If you looked in summer 2021 there was no clearing offer for Lboro at all - due to so many students with offers achieving their required grades.

2019 was the last normal year for this malarkey; it seems to me (tho I have no skin in the game now, frankly) that 2022 will also be unusual; more students deferring than usual (I know of quite a few) and more popular unis perhaps making fewer, higher offers after being burnt this year. So who knows what clearing will look like in 2022.

What I am trying to say is, I wouldn't bank on a clearing course.

The proportion of deferred places in 2020 was 5.7%. There is no indication from any of the UCAS statistics published so far that the proportion of deferred places this year is significantly higher, and not as high as it was in years prior to 2012. For a small number of regulated courses at particular universities there may be a significant effect. We will know more on 9th December when UCAS publish their final 2021 cycle statistics.

See for example this statement from Gloucester University (which has a significant number of regulated courses).

www.glos.ac.uk/your-application-to-university/admissions-statement/

To add the proportion of reapplicants who applied before the 15th October 2021 deadline was lower than in some other years, although the total number of applicants has increased signficantly.

@jgw1 what is a regulated course?

DD applying for variations of International Management at Warwick, Bath, Loughborough, Exeter and Manchester. Has offers from Warwick and Loughborough but no reduction from Loughborough even with qualifying subjects .

[quote hmmnotsure]@jgw1 what is a regulated course?[/quote]
Those that have the content specified outside the university, eg nursing degrees are approved and regulated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council and so the content is similar at each university.

Whereas two business degrees could have completed different content.

Ah thank you @jgw1 - makes sense.

There is no university where public school DC now outnumber everyone else. So not widening your choices makes no sense. What would a new management grad employee do if they met these awful public school dc in their work? Avoid them? Change jobs? Refuse to speak to them? Honestly: at university they are avoidable by and large. In life you have to meet all sorts. Even drunk students and druggies!

@TizerorFizz - not sure where you are getting that public school children are awful from?

DS has chosen unis where he will be happy. He's not looking to avoid any specific group, but is happier where there is a wider mix of ethnicity and social class.

@hmmnotsure there are some great and some good unis on the long list for your DS - very different set ups from campuses to city ones. Where did he like based on the course content and the uni visits? ( btw you can have a mixture of different uni types on the five - both DSs did)

Accommodation in self catering can start at £82 up to £199 per week for shared. Most are £135-£180 for self catered. So uni 1st year never cheap but some private renting in 2nd year can be cheaper depends on the location.

If predicted is AAB will he get contextual for school or home postcode? If not then I would look at the entry requirements and choose one aspirational
AAA
2 at AAB
1 at ABB
1 at BBB

Unless he tells you he’s not been working at all and thinks he’s under predicted ?!

Looking at entry requirements on discover uni shows previous grades people got in with. Please remember if people did 4 levels it will push those ucas scores up. Use it to consider how many were let in under the grades advertised instead - Remember some might be via access courses as mature students. Also some sample sizes are small so possibly not accurate.

As for clearing last year - many unis asked kids to express interest before results day that we saw, so claimed no clearing places on the day at 10am but many had been calling these students and then filled very early. Obviously lots of the competitive courses were oversubscribed due to the mess that was overinflated grades. These have deferred students using up some of the 2022 places so may make the courses more competitive.

I would go to an real open day if not already done or watch virtual open day videos. Go and look clearly about modules and course design. Get him to pretend he’s there - are there enough modules to choose that he likes in years 2 and 3.

Offer days will be December to March depending on the uni so he’ll get a chance to look then.

If you ask now DS should have a pretty good idea about what a very good, probable and bad day will look like grades wise. Ask him and this will give you the range of courses he should be putting down.

Please remember if a course gets 5 applicants per place (unless it’s Oxbridge or a course that’s top of its uk subject ranking where 95% if then offered will put it as firm choice) this probably means it’s neither over or undersubscribed because each student is choosing 1 firm out of their 5 choices. So don’t get too hung up on applicants to places. Places like Durham have a list in their website where things like Biology are 6/1 and management or law is 11/1 or 13/1 (as this a top uni often placed as 1st choice in these two subjects).

If looking on league tables consider the subject specific ones not the overall uni ones. Also realise that these tables have some irrelevant data points for a undergraduate students which can make courses look better or worse than they are. Student satisfaction survey questions - is this course well run / running smoothly? And can students get hold of a lecturer when they need to? ( roughly these words) can be fairly telling - if these scores are low chances are they have issues recently or currently with the course.

Done this x 2 before ( which might think it puts me at an advantage) but this one is the most tricky years as lots of unis haven’t been open to see the facilities, lecturers and get a feel for places plus who knows how exams will pan out this year??

@hmmnotsure
It was a response to Northern boys not wanting Exeter and others and the assertion that you would be in a minority at some universities so you choose based on this. I think it’s flawed and sad. You will never get greater diversity if you don’t apply! It’s also really sad that some DC are scared of mixing with others who they see as different. It’s all about putting yourself in a box and not coming out of it. I’m afraid I do see that as unbelievably sad in such a small island. Why do people only want to stay with “people like me?” Thank God people like Michelle and Barack Obama didn’t think that.

That’s an absolutely ridiculous interpretation of what I said and you know it.

It is a legitimate choice to want to be in a more diverse environment than a small, single university town can offer.

Making that choice does not mean you are choosing lesser institutions and it’s untrue to say it is.

Wanting to be in a diverse environment is not the same as saying “public schoolchildren are awful”. Don’t project your chippiness onto me.

Wanting to be in a more diverse environment is not the same thing as being scared of mixing unless you live in opposite land. Nor is it “flawed and sad”.

My child will be a minority at ANY university he attends. He has been a minority in every educational environment he has ever been in because he belongs to a minority group. It is his experience that things are better for him when A - you aren’t a minority of one, and B - there is some diversity and there isn’t a single group forming a huge majority. It’s not his job to provide diversity to white privately educated children from the home countries who, let’s face it, are not flocking to Exeter and Durham to meet different people.

I made no suggestion that my ds would “refuse to speak” to anyone from a public school and specifically mentioned that he has applied to institutions that admit disproportionately high numbers of privately educated candidates. You deciding that someone who doesn’t want to live in Exeter for 3 years amounts to refusing to speak to a privately educated colleague and some point in the future is hyperbole.

Always amusing o see the criticism of unis who appear to admit disproportionately high numbers of private school kids bearing in mind the assertion that is OK for kids not to apply because of this thus perpetuating a vicious cycle.

Mine is applying to universities that admit a high proportion of privately educated candidates

Even if he wasn’t why is it his job to lead the parade? Nobody would whine that a privately educated white middle class Londoner was applying to Exeter over Sheffield but that perpetuates the cycle too. Nobody leaps on threads saying “ds is looking for a small campus university” and suggests an enormous city university and calls them flawed and sad for not applying. Why is wanting a large diverse university in a large diverse city so offensive? Choosing a university in order to deliberately skew the proportion of state:private applicants (to what ends?) is rather more forelock tugging than can be reasonably expected.

It’s not his job to provide diversity to white privately educated children from the home countries who, let’s face it, are not flocking to Exeter and Durham to meet different people.

Mine is privately educated and from central London. She is at a University (Bristol) which is popular with privately educated kids from the SE. And...

None of her close friends are from either the South East or privately educated. (Her three closest friends are from Huddersfield, Birmingham and Belfast and all three are probably first in their families to go to University.) So what? They all, including my daughter, take their studies seriously but find time for other things. They are all likely to do well in their careers, and wind up in similar places financially, though perhaps not geographically. Everyone, inevitably, grew up in their own bubbles. University is the chance to branch out and make friends based on what you have in common, rather than where you came from.