Advice please regarding the wisdom of re-applying

[Niceday203]

DC has two offers -but rejected from preferred three Unis - UCL being the favourite. Now he tells me he was to decline the two offers take a gap year and reapply for 2023 . Predicted A, A A, selective private school student.
I have no experience of how this works - and would be grateful for any advice, experience of others.
I cannot understand what advantages reapplying will offer.
Will he not be less appealing to Unis after a year out?

He has a couple of weeks to decide but I am so worried he will miss his opportunities for good by doing this .

Hi, OP -

In practice it has always been possible to withdraw through UCAS. No one wants reluctant students. However you cannot reapply through UCAS with outstanding offers; in particular you cannot defer a place and reapply.

If he is determined that he doesn't want to go to either his firm or insurance choices, or indeed university this year at all, he could withdraw his whole application. Alternatively he could hang on until results day, see how he feels then, and if he still doesn't want to go to either, release himself from whichever becomes his unconditional offer based on his achieved grades. Technically, this is done in order to find something else through Clearing, but he could just not apply to anywhere else.
www.ucas.com/undergraduate/results-confirmation-and-clearing/what-clearing/declining-your-firm-place

@Notrainagain can I ask if you would put engineering with the likes of law/economics/medicine in terms of competition to gain entry ? thanks

@Iamsodone
It depends where you apply for engineering and which discipline. Imperial, Cambridge and a few others are very competitive. Luckily, MEng courses at lots of great universities are not very competitive but grads will still
get great jobs. We don’t have enough top grade students to fill all the courses. BEng is often a lower tariff too. Don’t forget that young people apply for 5 courses. So 10 applying for one place means that those 10 have probably applied for 40 more places elsewhere. Some might even prefer the “elsewhere” university. Only at a few is there significant competition.

Also law and economics are not very competitive at run of the mill universities. 18,000 students study law every year. Of course they might not all get jobs but getting on the courses isn’t that hard at lesser universities. Again, there are some very competitive courses but some really are not.

I think that 14 day stuff is a cool off period to change your firming decision eg oops, I actually prefer my insurance choice, can I swap. It isn’t about pulling out altogether

Ime you can withdraw at any point, even after the term start date. Once you register after arrival you may incur tuition costs.

Thanks again everyone. Lost without all your help and advice
🙏