Insurance choice - how much pragmatism needed?

[RoseZinfandel]

Wondering how people go about choosing insurance choices.

DC hasn’t applied yet, but is planning application.

Top choice (Newcastle) published offer is AAB, which I think is realistic-aspirational.

Second favourite (Liverpool) published offer is BBB, but they don’t guarantee accommodation to insurance.

University in commuting distance (Manchester) published offer is ABB. No need for insurance accommodation as could commute, it’s about an hour and a quarter away. But DC doesn’t like the course as much.

Other option is choose a university with a lower offer that guarantees insurance accommodation, but they seem like hen’s teeth!

So the questions we are wrestling with are:

How likely is firm choice to take you if you drop one grade? Do universities publish this information anywhere?

Is having your insurance just one grade below your firm too close to be useful? When I applied 100yrs ago, we were advised 3 grades below, but perhaps things are different now.

How much of a nightmare is it trying to find accommodation if you end up somewhere via insurance? If anyone had experience of Liverpool in particular that would be really helpful - also interested to know about Glasgow, Leeds and Cardiff.

Hi op.

I would start by saying that imho a 75-min commute is not a reasonable commute. My dc were/are both at unis nearer than that and both lived in the place. Much better experience.

Wrt insurance - ds’s insurance choice (Leeds!) was actually the same offer as he wasn’t so keen on one that was actually below his first choice offer. No idea if they would have flexed tho - luckily he got first choice. He said he would have just reapplied if not.

wrt accommodation I don’t know about unis you mention, but I know that Uni of Leicester (v underrated here imo) guaranteed accommodation to clearing students (this was dd) so I am sure it’s there for insurance choices as well.

I think whether unis will flex depends on the subject tbh - if it’s psychology or economics they probs won’t need to, if it’s MFL or something less popular then maybe.

I don't know much about solarisation as both my daughters wanted to stay home and commute.
But my eldest has a 90 minute commute into London and manages just fine. It's never been an issue

Just to say I wouldn’t be concerned about Liverpools accom - you might not get university owned but there is so much available in the city! Loads of UoL students end up at non uni owned because it’s cheaper or more central so he won’t struggle

first and foremost your son needs to decide if he wants to live at home or at university - that has such a significant impact on the uni experience and should be the driving factor.

thereafter it depends how far into the aspirational of realistic -aspirational AAB is, but I’d say BBB was a good insurance option. Both my older DC chose insurance offers that were one grade off.

The accommodation not being guaranteed is a big stress though so I would think carefully about ensuring there’s a high chance of getting into the first choice.

im not aware of any unis guaranteeing accommodation for insurance applicants

Of those options I'd put Liverpool, there's a safer margin on grades and a course she wants to do. The accommodation should be fine, even if she's not in uni halls, they'll be a house share or something. Might not be the full 'student experience' from a social point of view, but closer then commuting.

Going back about 15 years buy DH got 2 grades below his offer and newcastle still let him in.

I think it depends on how competitive the course is.

DS firmed Leeds for History and MFL AAB . The admissions tutor said they would not accept any drop in grades. He insured Liverpool ABB (realistic).

He got BBC, Leeds rejected him and Liverpool accepted him. However, he turned down Liverpool and went into clearing where there were plenty of RGs offering his course (just not Leeds!).

Nottingham and Sheffield guaranteed accommodation to those going through clearing.

Staying at home and commuting is definitely a poorer option, dc would prefer to live away from home, and would probably look for a house share for 2nd year. I agree over an hour isn’t ideal, but I think it’s doable for a year.

It’s reassuring to hear about Liverpool having plenty of accommodation in the city, and especially that they seem to accept dropped grades!
Not sure how competitive the course is at Newcastle, it is combined honours, so perhaps more popular. At Liverpool it will be archeology with a modern language, which I would think is less competitive.

Sheffield doesn’t do archeology, - I think we did consider Leicester and possibly Nottingham, but dc really wants a city rather than a campus, and to be able to do language modules alongside the main subject.

It’s hard to know which thing to compromise on!

Knowing what accomodation they were going to was very important to my two when applying so neither actually had an insurance choice: they would have rather taken a gap year and reapply with grades in hand. It depends on how important this factor is to your DC and whether they are happy to accept some inherent uncertainty re the insurance choice and accommodation options

I wouldn't worry too much about accommodation for the insurance, I'd go with an option that DC would be happy to take up if it came to it. Accommodation can be worked out if needed, but if he/she doesn't get his firm and then decides he/she doesn't want the insurance place because of the course, you're then into clearing anyway.

I think commuting is very dependent on the amount of lectures. DS is 3 hours from home but if he were 1hr15 his course would be quite commutable because there aren't that many lectures per week - one week busy, one week less so. We actually looked at Air BnB as an option for next year to save on accommodation costs (in private accommodation you have to pay for 51 weeks of the year even though the students are there for about 30).

In terms of grades, this year lots of students missed out on their predicted grades due to the government's insistence on returning to pre-Covid marking. So a lot of people got on to their course despite missing grades. This makes it really hard to tell what might happen next year, but I think that's another reason to be sure the insurance place is one that DC could be happy with.

Uniguide tells you the Alevel course requirements and if you scroll right to the bottom it'll tell you what A levels and grades people who took up places actually got.

3 grades lower for an insurance would be incredibly low. DD predicted AAA, firmed AAB, insured ABB but achieved AstarBB. Her first choice rejected her but she met grades for insurance which didn’t guarantee accom but she still got uni campus accom & very happy. She loved the course at both universities and for her that was THE most important thing. Id be having a discussion regarding the preferred course rather than accom options tbh.

@RoseZinfandel I meant to say that the most important thing is the course and that your DD would be happy doing the course at her insurance. Like others have said it depends if her predicted grades are nearer realistic than aspirational - which is a tricky judgement.

Mine got 2nd choice and accommodation but best not to be too fussy about housing. If private rental you will need to guarantee it. It's not a good way to choose a course. The course is more important.

It's tricky when there's not much in it isn't it. My DS has had 3 offers so far, and they're very similar. It's a bit of a surprise as he has had an unexpectedly low offer from his preferred place which we thought would be aspirational so it's barely any different to what he expected to be his insurance options to be. So it's now pretty unlikely he won't get his first choice, but if he doesn't he might not get the insurance either! So he's just going to pick the course that is next closest in content to his first choice and if he doesn't get either we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
I do think that for most people as long as the course is right for them and they go with a positive attitude it will be ok. I ended up at what was originally my 4th choice university and loved it.

If 2024 is anything like 2023 I wouldn’t worry. Very few of DS’s year got their grade offers but most were accepted by their first choice. The grade offers were based on the grades from 2020/21/22 when they were over inflated. The government didn’t announce the grade boundary adjustment back to normal until after offers went out so everyone was caught on the hop.
DS is applying ( having done his Alevels) and has been told not to worry too much about the grade offers unis are publishing since so many had to drop their offers. DS could have gone, through clearing, to a number of RG unis with his grades. A number of parents I’ve spoken to at different schools have said the same. Students who dropped a grade in all 3 A levels were still offered place at first choice. DS’s friend was offered ABB for civil engineering at Cardiff he was accepted with BCD.

Because the unis only had one or two years of the “new” A levels under normal conditions it has been a tricky few years for unis. I think more and more teenagers are not keen on running up student loans. A good 30% of DS’s year have either deferred or taken up apprenticeships despite the school being an academically selective school and 98% of all the A levels taken this year being A*-C.

There will always be guaranteed places that are not taken up you just have to be super organised on results day to pick up an unused place.

Hi, OP-

I am a former Russell Group admissions tutor. PPs have made some excellent points.

I recommend an Insurance choice allowing slippage in two subjects from the PGs, for which the guidance allows some optimism. The differential from the Firm Choice is not important. However in no case should the Insurance have an offer higher than or equal to the Firm. That happens more often than you might think and it is playing with fire.

As to how much slippage the Firm choice will allow, it mostly depends on how well their recruiting has gone. (Ultimately we are all recruiting Schools, whether we characterise ourselves that way or not). We would all prefer to fulfil our targets with students who have made their offers, but only a minority can do this. For the rest, it is a question of how far you want to compromise academic standards for the benefits of a student intake already enthusiastic about the place, vs going into Clearing where applicants are less discerning.

I hope this helps. Best wishes

However in no case should the Insurance have an offer higher than or equal to the Firm.
Is that really an absolute @poetryandwine ? I'm not sure my DS has a real alternative but to do so.
He wants to do a specific course that is only offered at 3 Universities and he has offers from them all. His first choice which he actually thought was a bit aspirational has given him a surprise lower than normal offer. One of the others is a bit higher, the other is the same. Realistically, he should get into his preferred option and if he doesn't I guess it's unlikely either of the other 2 would want him either so maybe an insurance is pointless?
But it seems even riskier to put all his eggs in one basket and not pick an insurance at all than to put one that's higher or equal. My gut feeling is that he should choose the other place with the same offer for his insurance.Then if he does just miss the grades he has twice the chance that one of them might still offer him a place if there's a space.
He does have another, slightly lower offer and one he's not heard from yet but they're a different course that he only applied for just in case he didn't get any achievable offers for the course he really wants to do.He wants to maximise his chances of getting onto his preferred course so not keen to use a different course as insurance. He'd probably get into the alternative course through clearing somewhere if he missed out on both his choices, unless his A levels go a great deal worse than predicted so it seems like a reasonable risk to me. Does that sound sensible?

Going against the grain here, I think accommodation is a key factor - certainly if you've applied to Manchester and end up in halls in Preston for example, as happened this year, that will have a massive impact on the student experience, regardless of whether you love the course or not.

I think its worth a call to the admissions / accommodation team at the unis you're considering. I know Loughborough for example publishes (at least did last year) on its website that they don't guarantee accommodation for insurance / clearing, but when I spoke to the team, they said they'd been able to offer halls to everyone that wanted them for the last 6 years, they just had to cover themselves that it wasn't "guaranteed".

I would also say be cautious about expecting unis to take you if you drop a grade (or more). Last year was chaos, and some unis needed to take students who hadn't met their offers. I think that is very unlikley to be repeated this year. Even this year, for popular / competitive courses, that didn't happen (in our experience) - you mention Leeds at the end of your post - Leeds was one of the unis that did not offer any flexibility at all for its competitive courses.

I would also suggest that Newcastle has a Partners programme which gives eligible applicants lower grades - either contextual / if you do a summer school (a week). Offers reduced from say AAB to BBC so lots of applicants sit of low offers and therefore means not as many miss their grades.

Also have a family friend at Cardiff via clearing but was relatively late confirming (i.e. quite a few days after the results day scramble) and is in uni owned accommodation (a house rather than halls).

However in no case should the Insurance have an offer higher than or equal to the Firm.

Have to say whilst this may be the case at the uni you worked at it is not the case for many many unis.

Having worked in a 6th Form Office for years I could accurately predict the unis which will take with dropped grades (2 covid years excepted). There are some whereby we would even suggest they make them firm!

But I agree Liverpool shouldn't be an issue for accommodation if used as insurance.

OP, @Spirallingdownwards and others -

My perspective is that of being begged on Results Day to consider pupils with, say

A star A star B

who have been rejected for failing to achieve

A star A A.
. And when our standards were increasing, it was similar. I am used to dealing with many, many applicants who have been rejected on what may seem very narrow grounds, and we were hardly ever in Clearing.

If you use a risky Insurance strategy you should definitely consult the CUG, as @ouch44 suggests, to check the historical odds that you’ll get an offer if not too far off. Schools that need to work to get bums on seats routinely do this, and it is no kind of yellow flag in itself. @Spirallingdownwards has institutional knowledge, as do many others.

I agree that there is no sense listing an Insurance choice you are sure you don’t want. The problem is that the definition of what you are sure you don’t want can be elastic. What looks rather meh and dismissible now can look awfully good after a bad set of exams, especially compared to the available alternatives.

Being locked out, with no plans for a gap year, is the worst option. A gap year can be a great thing; the question is whether the applicant is prepared to risk it and can make plans for using it to benefit the next application.

I wouldn’t try to tell anyone’s DC what to do. I would urge them to consult the CUG for a sense of historical flex in offers and to keep in mind what I’ve said about desirability and perspective.

Yes and I would say the ones I have knowledge of that do routinely accept with dropped grades are not of the calibre of course that require A*AA

Hi OP - which course is it? I think that might make a difference.

My concern of a commute of that length would relate to the social side of uni. They are going to want to go out in the evening with new course mates etc, and hopefully join some clubs/societies. Would they be happy/able doing the commute late at night?

@RoseZinfandel I assume he proposes to take MFL modules at Newcastle? Is this clear from the application? Many MFL depts are recruiting departments. Fewer and fewer take MFLs at A level so not that many degrees are competitive. Overall, Liverpool ranks a bit higher than Newcastle for MFL and Archaeology but there’s not much between them.

So I really would firm what he really sees as his first choice. Living in a house in first year would not be great if you really want a hall of residence. There’s a big difference. Most dc just have to deal with the issues thrown up by an insurance choice and accommodation can be a curved ball. However not choosing what you really want due to possible housing issues might lead to many regrets. If he likes both courses equally, then just decide on which city suits more. I might look at employability too. What’s the plan? Which course gives a better platform for a career?