Durham - deeply disappointed child - any admissions insight

[albertandlilylight]

First choice university by a mile and really really wants to go there and college system would suit very well. 43 (IB) in predicted grades, am told by school very good school reference and personal statement. However, got an offer for a course did not apply for and for which has no interest. Don't understand at all. Worked so hard all the way through school, told hard work rewards and then this. Anyone got any insight to how Durham are offering and is there anything that can be done from here?

My assumption re the likes of Durham, LSE, Edinburgh etc. who respond very late:

Applicants who haven't been rejected by now meet the acceptance criteria but, due to quotas, are on waiting lists/backup lists, which slowly start to drain as other offer holders decline/firm somewhere else.

Once it gets to May 18, the tap switches off and those on the waiting lists unfortunately have to be rejected

Of course, I could be 100% wrong and these admissions teams are spending their days doing the crossword, playing wordle etc.

Personally, I'd like UCAS to move the cutoff date earlier (no later than the end of April) so there's an explicit gap before exams start.

Durham admin is chaotic.....really never experienced anything like it.

.....the admin teams are very busy. Never seen a group of people who attend so many meetings. They all sit there taking copious notes in their moleskin notebooks using expensive looking pens.

Personally, I'd like UCAS to move the cutoff date earlier (no later than the end of April) so there's an explicit gap before exams start.

Exams are well underway by the end of April in Scotland. Many pupils will have finished their exams by 18th May. But I agree about needing to move deadline forward though I would go for end of March. I am sure the deadline to apply used to be earlier too?

Apologies @Shelefttheweb - I wasn't aware of that.

End of March would be better in that case with a mid December cutoff for applications

I agree re the point about lack of transparency - not knowing why or any sort of rational. I think the contextual is rather a blunt instrument and in my view I feel that it would be better if all applications were considered individually - the whole postcode and underperforming school situation is not as clear cut as it seems. It could be a child in a post cost designated as disadvantage is not given the fact that postcodes are not decided by disadvantage but by geography, a child at an underperforming school may be accessing lots of private tuition. In addition the first generation university doesn't relate to income or necessarily disadvantage.

If you're going to have any kind of contextual criteria at all, it inevitably has to be broad brush to some extent, as it's simply not feasible to research every individual applicant's circumstances. A student at an underperforming school who has to attend private tuition sessions in their own time to compensate for the school's failings is still at a disadvantage compared to a student who gets good teaching at an appropriate level during school hours, thus leaving non-school hours free to pursue other activities.

Very few (if any?) universities consider students being the first generation to attend university to be a contextual marker. (My children fall into this category and attend a state school but neither were given any contextual offers).

I agree that contextual criteria need to have a broad brush otherwise you run the risk of people sitting in judgement as to whether a student has been sufficiently deprived which is wholly inappropriate.

Also all arguments levied complaining about contextual offers really do sound like the privileged complaining that the world is being made more equal to those less privileged. Despite many claiming otherwise private schools are not discriminated against - if they were Durham would not have students from them so disproportionately respresented!

@QuintanaRoo what subject do you do admissions for?

@Ooonafoo This thread by the nature of the title will be skewed by disappointing experiences. To offer some balance, DS is a first year and all the admin was fine. Received his offer in the February, months before St A rejected him. He got his fist choice of college and two faculties have been very helpful in accommodating his non core module to avoid timetable clashes. I think the PS did play a role as he had great A level grades predicted but not all GCSEs were 9s.

Despite many claiming otherwise private schools are not discriminated against - if they were Durham would not have students from them so disproportionately respresented!

That doesn’t necessarily follow. How does the proportion of private school pupils admitted compare with those who applied?

But as for contextual offers being unfair, when it leads to NO pupils without these factors even being considered, as was the case for nine courses (including law) for Scottish pupils applying to Edinburgh last year, then yes it is unfair even on those otherwise privileged pupils. But the contextual arrangements they used actually excluded the majority of deprived pupils. Postcodes favour cities where housing density is higher and ignore rural poverty as they cover much bigger areas. In Scotland they also favour SNP constituencies - with the SNP government setting the admission targets.

(For additional context: whilst fees are paid for Scottish students, the universities only get £1820 per year and the number of funded places is restricted. Hence places offered in clearing often excludes Scottish pupils.)

I agree with you for it being a blunt instrument, although I do agree with contextual offers. The problem I can see is if they start becoming a bigger thing then it could be manipulated.

If I give an example:
DD1 did not get contextual offers. (as I would agree is right)
One of her friends who went through exactly the same (state) schools as she did, did get a contextual offer because they moved in year 11 to a different postcode. Before then they lived at the same as she did, and they moved for a bigger house, not because circumstances had changed.
Another friend got a contextual offer who'd been to private schools all the way through to year 11 and then moved to a small state 6th form. Parents had decided they'd be better to spend the fees on tutoring, and basically regarded the school as a place to do the exams, and a bit of social time.
Both of those were, if anything rather bemused at getting the contextual offer. Don't resent it at all, but it shows how blunt it is.

Another one I know, family really struggling, neither parent got anything beyond GCSEs, been through multiple really difficult patches. And in year 10 finally got a council house having been in B&B for a couple of years. But it was a nicer area, and the (state) school, which was her local one, was classed as not a bad one, so no contextual offer. She definitely deserved one if anyone did.

I asked dd if I had asked a friend who lives in a "deprived" postcode if Rachel could use their address for UCAS were there any checks? She said as long as any post they got for her they handed over, then there really wasn't any way of telling.

I think it is right to do it, but I think it needs to be looked at in far greater depth.
I don't know though how you do it without the potential for it to be manipulated by exactly the people who don't need them.
I think though that maybe there should be more levels than yes/no, which is always going to make it blunt. However that then becomes more complicated, plus the offer is rarely more than a couple of grades (so maybe ABB rather than AAA) different, so maybe not possible.

Contextual offers need to be more personalised, definitely not postcodes. Benefits would be a better measure. It would rely on applicants ticking boxes but there could be an element of random checking with people caught fraudulently ticking boxes forfeiting their applications.

@MargaretThursday following on from your post are they not looking to move beyond the blunt postcode approach? (not expecting you to necessarily know the answer btw 😀) Its quite significant limitations were also set out in a fairly recent HEPI (Higher Ed Policy Institute) paper.

https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2022/09/23/postcodes-or-personal-experience-how-best-to-encourage-members-of-under-represented-groups-to-apply-to-university/

To quote selectively from it, with this being specific data from just one uni.

85 per cent of our students who received free school meals did not live in one of the OfS target postcode areas that are taken to signal socioeconomic disadvantage.

Whilst just one uni I suspect its figure quoted does not make it an outlier.

The HEPI paper linked above concluded with :

It is, therefore, very good news that UCAS applications will henceforth include questions that allow students to identify themselves as a refugee or asylum seeker, as having caring and parenting responsibilities, as being from a UK Armed Forces family or a former member of the Armed Forces, as well as having been in receipt of free school meals. It’s now up to universities to make good use of this new information about our applicants.

although as the paper was published at the start of this 22-23 cycle it was not clear (to me at least) whether that much wider range of factors were available as part of this cycle or starting from the 23-24 cycle.

Durham are twats. I got a place at Oxford (one of the very prestigious colleges, not like St. Hilda’s, etc.) but outright rejected from Durham without so much as an interview. I think they’ve got a chip on their shoulder about not being as good as Oxbridge. I’d look elsewhere.

I don’t know the ratings of Oxford colleges. How much does that matter once you graduate? Don’t you just say ‘Oxford Univerity’?

@boys3
In all honesty I don't know, but I hope so. I think when dd1 was applying (2019) it was a fairly new concept, so I hope they're refining it.
Different universities do use different methods, I believe, so it's possible you could get one from one and not from another.

I really think it is something that should be looked at carefully. On average a state school pupil gets a better degree at the same place to a private, I was told years back. And that will include selective states and poor privates, so I suspect the difference between a good private and poor state is huge.

My dd gave up her 4th A-level subject because the teaching (from a very well regarded state 6th form) was so dire. Or at any rate pretty non-existent. She could have done it on her own, but then she didn't have enough time to study her other 3 subjects. But a friend whose dd was at private did 5 subjects at A-level because the teachers made extra time for her. (tbf I think 3 was better for dd who is an overworker anyway)

My df got to university, the first from his family, from a secondary modern. He took his A-level maths at the same time as his teacher and got a better grade. He was working 3 jobs a week to pay for his transport to 6th form (no school bus once you were over the compulsory school age) and towards university. How would his teaching compare to the local grammar who had a class of maths students every year?

But how do you compare it? And if you have a private school A* pupil, you can't prove that they wouldn't have got those results anyway.
It's very difficult to be fair, but I do think (knowing that my dc won't get contextual offers, even though they're not at private) there needs to be something in place to even things out.

I do feel for people who have, for various reasons, struggled to put their dc through private school, to find that they are at a disadvantage at application time, and I can understand that they feel discriminated against. But there are many 17/18yos who have worked hard for all they can achieve with their current situations and will fly at uni, and deserve a little leg up. My df would have been one.

boys3 that is interesting thanks. I know several universities I’ve looked at do allocate you a ‘flag’ based just on postcode (though may allocate one for other reasons too).

Outside the Oxford bubble I guess it’s just “Oxford” but inside you would definitely ask about which college, etc. St. Anne’s is not Magdalen, etc.

Usually you just name the University on forms etc and you’ll only be asked “which college?” by someone who also went to either Oxford or Cambridge, but that tends to just be chat and to start a conversation about whether you know people in common, what part of town you’d have lived in etc. It’s the same quality of degree whichever college you are at, everyone sits the same exams, lectures are centralised and you often have small group teaching in colleges other than your own too. I have never ever heard anyone comment in real life that they consider a fellow Oxbridge student’s college to be academically inferior. That is just rude.

I notice that the grades obtained (2020/21) by Hist and Arch entrants at Durham are very different. No surprise there but perhaps the scale of difference was larger than I expected. They admitted 5 Arch students with lower than BBB for example. (Not that there is anything wrong with those grades I should add). I assume that students with the lower grades required for Arch are less likely to see themselves as Durham candidates, hence more spaces available to offer to History applicants.

Well obviously the colleges are different, but I do not recognise the academic snobbery that you are displaying. And I went to Trinity, Cambridge, so I am not speaking from a position of weakness here @TitterYeeNot .

It’s only rude because it’s true 🤷‍♀️

My comparison wasn’t necessarily academic, but social.