Conditional offer received - then told by admissions my application is being reviewed

[womanwifemum]

I got a conditional offer on Monday for MSc social work course.

My conditions were that I pass my degree with a 2.1 (on track) and that I get an appropriate academic reference.

My referee sent then the reference on Tuesday morning, I checked with admission if they had received it and got this response.

‘ I can see we received the reference and it has been added to your application.

We are still currently reviewing the application and once a decision is made we will be in touch.’

I’m now worried as surely my application has already been reviewed before making me an offer, so I’m not worried they sent it in error. I have asked her to clarify but she hasn’t responded.

It will probably be something very straightforward, possibly that the appropriate person has not yet logged on and signed it off

Your offer is still conditional even with the reference because you need your degree result. All it means is they are reviewing all the conditions on your offer, they can then remove the reference condition as you will have met that and they will revise the offer to be just on your degree outcome

So it's unlikely a mistake has been made?

At my uni, admissions teams are focused on UCAS undergrad at the moment and the postgrad admissions are slow. It just means they are working on it, but it won't change status until you get your degree results.

I admit students to a postgrad MSc and glance at letters only enough to see there are no safeguarding red flags that would prompt an interview.

@TupilaLilium

At my uni, admissions teams are focused on UCAS undergrad at the moment and the postgrad admissions are slow. It just means they are working on it, but it won't change status until you get your degree results.

I admit students to a postgrad MSc and glance at letters only enough to see there are no safeguarding red flags that would prompt an interview.

Yeah I've had my interview then 10 days later I was given my conditional offer. So was worried today when she said they were reviewing my application and would be in touch soon I was worried they were having second thoughts about my application and were going to take away my offer.

Once an offer is made it’s legally binding unless you don’t meet the conditions

@SometimesRavenSometimesParrot

Once an offer is made it’s legally binding unless you don’t meet the conditions

It’s a conditional offer - and I can bet with almost complete certainty that one of the conditions is the receipt of a satisfactory reference.

It's just standard wording. 'Yes we have the thing, no we're not at the point of making the final decision, because there are still conditions to be met.' It's not that they're actively going over your application again, it's just that it hasn't passed from the review stage to the confirmed stage.

@Soontobe60 you’ve misunderstood my point.

If they make you an offer, that’s legally binding on their side. They can’t suddenly change their mind and be like oh no we take our offer back.

On your side of things, you need to meet the conditions of the offer, which may include a satisfactory reference. If you meet their conditions, you have to be allowed to start on the course. If you don’t, they don’t have to let you start because you’ve failed to meet your side of the offer.

But they can’t just take your offer away when they’ve made it.

Surely this just means they’ve received the reference, they’ll be reading it properly and checking to see it is indeed an appropriate reference and they’ll be in touch to confirm that in due course?

Yeah this totally means that someone in admin has added your reference to the file but the admissions tutor hasn't go round to reading it yet. When they have reviewed the reference and (hopefully!) accepted it they will tell the admissions administrator to approve it and they remove the condition. This will take a couple of weeks I would have thought.

They can't legally remove your offer unless you fail to meet the conditions, find out your app is fraudulent etc or (as it's social work) you fail the dbs and any other legal checks

I work in admissions and I think the last two posts are correct. Someone else probably needs to approve the reference before the condition will be marked as met.