I suppose, that given most will offer to everyone who meets their standard offer requirement, there is ‘equal consideration’ regardless of whether they offer now or later. The vast vast majority of courses will be offered like this. The fact they’ve offered to some now, won’t disadvantage any who don’t apply until Christmas….because they know they will still be able to offer to everyone who meets the standard requirement and even then will often have to put some places into Clearing.
For the few (and it really is a few) courses in very popular places which can’t offer to everyone who meets the standard offer, they are actually far more likely to wait until later to give offers. In this sense equal consideration is given. They might make their first offers to some who have top grades and are contextual applicants or those with grades in hand already, or international students. As they get to the bulk of non-contextual UK students with predicted grades, they might have to also look at GCSE results and PS in order to rank applicants. These very very popular courses might hold off offering to those who just meet the standard offer, in hope more applicants who are stronger will appear. Many will essentially be ‘on hold’ through Jan, Feb, March. They might be very strong applicants, even with 3x Astar predictions or grades in hand, as the uni watches to see if some firm and insure other places (Oxbridge applicants with Oxbridge offers might well do this) which means their applications can be discarded. As more time passes, Unis have a smaller pool of those waiting to receive offer/decline (some waiting might decline as other places start offering accommodation to firm applicants) and also find some of their own offers are declined. This allows them to have a clearer sense of how many further offers they can make. Unfortunately, with some of the very very popular courses at places like London, Durham, Edinburgh, many are essentially ‘on hold’ until the deadline, when eventually the unis have to make their final offers and decline the rest. These really top level students don’t know if they will be offered or not. Some get sick if waiting by Feb/March and accept and firm somewhere else, but others will hold onto th,e bitter end. They might be pleased or disappointed.
But for these students, it probably doesn’t matter if they applied in September or in January. Essentially for them, there is Equal Consideration, as very few earlier offers are made and when they are made early, there’s often a reason such as contextual student or other special circumstances that everyone else doesn’t know about. And for all the the other unis and courses, early offers don’t impact equal consideration, because they will need to offer to everyone meeting the standard offer…and whether the application goes in in September or if January, an offer will be received anyway. It’s worth telling students this….they honestly dont need to panic. Whilst it’s nice to have 2 or 3 offers in the bag now or before Christmas and this perhaps is a benefit psychologically and allows them to get on with their A Levels, in terms of offers, it really won’t make any difference i the end.