How hard is it actually to get offers?

[redskytwonight]

Just wondering ...

I'd perhaps naively assumed that DD would have no trouble getting university offers for her universities of choice, but having spent too much time on here and in WIWIKAU it now seems that even stellar students are not getting offers so I'm starting to worry.

She's not applying for medicine/vet/extremely popular/Oxbridge courses.
Her GCSEs are good although not by MN standards (i.e. not all 9s and even include a 5!).

She's predicted Astar A A with the A star in the degree subject she's applying for.
Her other 2 subjects are known to be ones where it's difficult to get an A star.
She's likely to get an A star in her EPQ (submitted already).

Her 2 top choice universities both make standard offers of AAA. One reduces to AAB with an A at EPQ.

Likely to get offers, or does she still need a following wind?

Nottingham currently asking for ABB for English in Clearing, on their website

@PettsWoodParadise is that true that parents are discouraging their DC from applying/going to Nottingham due to the incident in June ?

I agree that it was a tragedy of the worst possible kind, but it could just as easily happen in any university town/city across the UK.

It was after most put in offers, so more likely to affect late appliers or deciders and I only know of a couple of families who’ve discounted as a result so not exactly scientific! It could happen anywhere. So tragic. I was in Birmingham doing my PG when a knife attacker attacked people in a department store (that I was in at the time). My parents didn’t want me to go back but I did. I think us parents worry more than the DCs.

It very much depends on the course.

DS applied to study History at Durham. His predicted grades were higher than the standard offer, but he still didn't get an offer. I believe there was around 14 applications for each place, so unsurprising really. He had offers from all 4 other applications, got the grades for his first choice and is very happy there.

DD is looking at applying to LSE next year so I'm very much trying to manage her expectations.

I think specific to Nottingham there, what with the sad decline in popularity of Englush, its placing its requirements a touch high, leaving typical students choosing between Birmingham and Nottingham. Birmingham has similar features to Nottingham , and is ranked higher. Nottingham shpukd ask for AAB in the first instance, I reckon.

DD applied to some of the same Unis as friends doing STEM and typically for her English course the requirements were lower. For example DD was asked for A star A A at Cambridge (no specific subject for the star) but friends doing Maths were A star x 2 and A. The exception seemed to be Durham that asked for same as the STEM students and so DD couldn’t put it as an insurance. Her friend applying for Classics did get an offer from Durham of 3 x A so it is very dependent on subject and possibly student too.

IIRC York was AAB and Leicester ABB with lower requirement if good result in EPQ. DD spent four days deciding between UCL, York, Leicester for insurance and loved the English course at Leicester but felt it was perhaps a bit low. She got a lovely letter from them though and they are top of her list of ‘if all goes wrong’ on results day and she doesn’t get her firm or insurance.

Yes, we had the same issue of not being willing or able to use Durham as insurance. Their offer for history is higher than Oxford, for example.

Nottingham generally has a lot in clearing - in my ds’s year (2 years ago) they had most subjects and a lot from his school picked things up from clearing there. I always feel it suffers the same problem as York in that it’s a lot of peoples insurance choice.

As utterly tragic as the 3 murders in Nottingham were (and it wasn’t just students) I can’t see it really impacting on people applying - a Man Met student was tragically murdered last November pretty much outside the entrance to Uni of M Fallowfield campus Uni of hasn’t really got anything in clearing the same as usual.

English is also declining in popularity as an A level subject. Don’t know if that will feed into university offers yet, but it’s certainly less popular than it used to be which bodes well for students predicted A* s!

@Piggywaspushed If maths, did he chose universities that required the MAT? I know a student who only had 2 offers for Maths (despite good A level predictions) as the others universities relied on MAT and their MAT score was low, hence no offers.

There is little benefit of keeping a ‘just in case’ gap in your UCAS application. Apply for 5, get the application in early for 2 reasons:

1. the early you submit the less stressful as it is done, and you start getting offers quickly
2. if you apply before Oct 15 it looks like you have applied for Oxbridge (she has the grades) which means some other unis can try to poach.

It is extremely unlikely that she will not get any offers but if she doesn’t (never know it) then once you have all 5 rejections you can apply to 1 extra uni at a time until you get an offer. Which is why she doesn’t need to keep a space.

But that isn’t going to happen, she will get offers!

No, it was economics.

Predicted grades of AstarAA should be able to attract offers, definitely, especially accompanied by a good EPQ predicted or actual grade.

Entering essay competitions, work experience, other extra curricular activities relating to the degree your DC is applyinh for also make a candidate stand out. Worth looking into in yr 12 and the summer before yr 13.

@TravellingLightToday How does work experience relate to applying for English/ History? Very difficult to make that relevant. Most dc don’t do competitions and don’t need to. Just a healthy interest and a well written is good enough.

Perhaps not experience for English/History, you are right. Essay writing competitons - also not a "need to", but if DC has intetest, why not?

Well yes but it’s presumably literature so being well read pays dividends leading to some knowledge of authors and genres is helpful.

if you apply before Oct 15 it looks like you have applied for Oxbridge (she has the grades) which means some other unis can try to poach

This (and the other side of the same coin that sometimes appears on here - "my DD delayed applying to Durham so they wouldn't realise she had applied to Oxbridge") never makes any sense to me. Why would a university be more inclined to offer to an Oxbridge applicant? It doesn't tell them anything meaningful - anyone can apply to Oxbridge - and they are perfectly capable of assessing whether someone is right for their course. Plenty of DC every year get Oxbridge offers along with rejections from elsewhere.

If anything, an Oxbridge applicant might be a slightly worse bet, because if the DC gets an offer from there they are very likely to firm it. They are un-poachable in that sense. Maybe this is why some people try to disguise their Oxbridge ambitions. Equally pointless imo, because the chances of an offer are so slim and thousands and thousands of these excellent applicants each year have to go somewhere. Other unis will be happy to have high quality students, whether they have applied to Oxbridge or not.

If it's midwifery or children's nursing then don't bank on it. It would perhaps help to tell us what subject.

She has!

My two were offered everywhere they applied, not top tier like Oxbridge, UCL or Durham, but RG unis eg. Manchester, B'ham, York, Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds. This is in the last three years for arts and social sciences subjects with predictions matching entry requirements.

I do think the pinch points are at unis with few places that have not expanded or where there’s high international demand. Plus some subjects. Other unis are likely to offer if Dc meet criteria.

DS got 5 out of 5 RG offers for Politics & Economics and PPE. Apart from the medicine people pretty much everyone got at least 4/5 offers for RG ranging from english / History to lots of economics / management and quite a few biomed / biochem

My DS got 3 offers - Exeter, Bristol and Heriot Watt, and 2 declines - Durham and Edinburgh - for A&F.

Predicted grades above all typical offers, except for Edinburgh, where they matched.

Disappointed about Durham, especially as (outside HW as insurance), it was the lowest typical offer.

What we learnt we should have done: research admissions metrics for international vs. UK applicants.

In hindsight, he wouldn't have applied for Edinburgh if we'd known those.

School next to useless with advice - no up to date knowledge of how competitive admissions are, with the assumption that if your predicted grades matched typical offer, an offer would be given.

If you look at the student room forums some universities have spread sheets with offers and rejections by subject which might give you an idea. Also the applying for 2023 threads active between October 22 and April 23 on here. DS applied for universities with typical offers at and just below his predictions. He got into 4 with a rejection from St Andrews. Apart from St Andrews, they were all Russell Group.

What we learnt we should have done: research admissions metrics for international vs. UK applicants.

One of the real admissions experts will hopefully clarify, but I don't think this is necessarily true. Universities are required by law to give equal consideration to all Home (ie UK) students who apply before the January deadline. Some Universities may prefer international students to home because of the revenue they bring in, but my understanding is that many of the Universities who attract large numbers of overseas students formally/informally ringfence places for home students. Indeed anecdotally it is easier to get into Imperial, say, as a home student than an international one.