UCAS deadline and predicted grades

[Revelschocolates]

DD's school sent out a communication last night giving UCAS standard application deadline as 16th October. Have checked,mand this date appears to be the early application deadline for Oxbridge/medicine etc. They appear to be forcing students to apply early for some reason. Is this normal for state schools?

This is not great as we thought we had until 31st January for DD to finalise Uni list and get predicted grades to where she needs them to be (a bit low at the moment). Can school force students to apply this early?

Thank you.

I wouldn’t have thought so! That is madness! Are you sure the school wasn’t talking specifically about medical applications?

Or have just made an error?

Agree, it is madness! 😫It definitely stated that is was the standard application date. It had the early application date as the 2nd October.

That's nuts. Has she written her PS? My daughter is applying to Cambridge and her deadline for the PS was last Friday.
It seems mad as it is putting an awful lot of pressure on the school themselves to get it all done in time! But knowing how awful my DD's old school was with dates I'd check with her school Monday. If it was so early they should have told everyone last term.

Draft of personal statement had to be in by last Thursday if you wanted a teacher to look over it. I guess if you missed the deadline then the school wouldn't bother checking it. DD got her draft submitted fortunately.

You expect schools to send off all applications on the final day? I don’t think date is unreasonable as it allows for checking and changing. We send all ours off before Christmas. Some courses don’t wait until the deadline before offering so you could miss out on a place.

Your dates seem fine. 'Before Christmas'is still two months away from the mid-October deadline that we've been given.

That does seem early. But for context, DD was advised to get her form in during the autumn term (this is in 2018-19 btw) so she did (not as early as mid Oct, but certainly by mid Nov).

They were told this in summer term of yr 12 so had time to prep PS over summer and also we went to a lot of open days in June/July.

If your DCs' school did not warn them in April/May and start working on PS in tutor time then that's a bit crap tbf.

FWIW DD got all her offers in hand before Christmas, ie way before the UCAS deadline, which was helpful, and meant she had time to think about what to firm and insure.

DS2 was very different but then it was a Covid year so the deadline was later, no open days etc.

School cannot insist she applied early, no, she and you have to complete the form and pay, not the school. They don't necessarily have to revise PGs tho; a lot of schools make these early in the autumn term and won't revise them in December IME.

Oh yes @Thelondonone her old school wanted 'regular' applications sent off before they broke up for Xmas but that's ages away! And it gave those who weren't happy with their PGs to either do work over summer to be reviewed or do another exam in the Autumn - they'd only be doing that now. To have the deadline mid October doesn't leave much time to do another draft of the PS or whatever. My daughter's deadline was late as she wasn't going to apply to Oxbridge until she found out her grades. I imagine the other candidates had much earlier deadlines.
It just seems odd to put the pressure on the students and the school itself, and open days are still happening as late as November.

It’s not reasonable if this is the first they have heard of it. If they have been warned if this deadline since before the summer, then it’s fine.

Many places will have set the predicted grades now. Most aren’t prepaared to keep adjusting g them upwards…if they did, there would be no clear cut off and it would mean many students would delay under the impression they could boost them up. Most will base their predicted grades on yr12 work and the students are told this from the very first day of yr12.

The admin job to get the personal statements checked, references inserted and all the other admin info on the form checked is huge. It’s probably hard to imagine the hours it takes, especially in a college with thousands of yr13 students. Therefore, they need to get them in to process.

The other thing that people forget, is that UCSS is time consuming and absorbing for students. Getting it done and off means they can focus in their A Levels. This is much better than dragging it on and on over weeks.

Actually, a hard deadline is good for helping them focus and get on with it. Most can write and improve their personal statement. And they have had the whole summer to be thinking about where they wanted to go.

All that’s said, the school or college cannot enforce the deadline. Applications can go in until late Jan u def equal-consideration and can even be submitted after that.

However, it isn’t reasonable to think that if there is a delay, your DC can expect to have their predicted grades increased after that. If the school is setting a deadline, that will include for the predicted grades too.

I’d be really surprised if this info hasn’t all been spelled out previously. Is it the case that the info hasn’t been relayed to you by DC or you’ve missed emails or some kind of meeting?

Ultimately your DD’s application is between her and UCAS, and it is their deadlines she must adhere to.

However the school may set its own schedule not only for reviewing the PS and determining PGs, but for writing letters of reference. Whilst I am very much on your side, I agree with PPs that the PG ship has likely sailed and I also think you need to find out what ‘s happening with your DD’s letter. If she puts in her application later, are they willing to delay her letter? Or do they insist on finishing with the letters now?

We'd want them done and submitted before Xmas. They're a huge amount of work for the school. So 16th October would be unusually early and possibly an error (or maybe that's when they want personal statements written by?), but 31st Jan would be extremely late. Teachers will probably have done their bit by end of November even if your DD hasn't done hers. Discussions around predicted grades need to have happened before then.