Advice re Plymouth offer

[Deliaskis]

Hi, I'm asking for a friend who isn't on here. Her son has a 'stretch' offer from Plymouth, BBC, and he is likely to get BCC (feels very unlikely to get the second B even with a gargantuan effort). Does anybody know generally how likely they are to still take somebody who misses by one grade. Of course I know it all depends on number of applicants and places filled in a given year, but I wondered if some unis are just generally known for being a bit flexible, and some not. He just doesn't want to completely waste a choice, but it's where he really wants to go.

I know nobody can answer precisely, it's just if there is a general consensus that they are very very unlikely to ever accept him with with BCC results, or conversely, if people do know they have sometimes accepted with one missed grade, then that would be helpful context for them.
Thanks

I have found www.discoveryuni.gov.uk good for things like this. Search the course and under the entry requirements tab it shows the range of UCAS point scores for students entering in 20/21. No guarantees obviously, but if a chunk of students were admitted at below the standard offer it indicates some flexibility.

Anothervthibf you can look at is whether the course was offered in clearing last year - but I don’t know how to do that retrospectively.

Oh! I can only assume my friend and her son didn't know about that, because that is hugely helpful, and almost exactly the information they were looking for. Thanks so much!

I am never sure why this is viewed as solution, as an unknown proportion of those people will have contextual offers.

You can have certainty by asking the uni precisely how many people were accepted with grades under their offer for each of the last x years for the course either directly or, if they don't choose to provide the info directly, via an FOI request on whatdotheyknow.com

Course dependent obvs, but I'd have thought Plymouth would be more likely than not to take with a dropped grade.

Agree with Titchy - Plymouth are fairly likely to be flexible!

The DS can ask one of the admissions tutors. We almost uniformly like to help, and the Plymouth admissions tutors are best placed to answer.

It is a flattering enquiry: you are my strong first choice, but I am very nervous about making the offer. I am fairly confident of landing one grade off. Do you have any sense of how my application would be viewed in August, with BCC instead of BBC? If the B is an important subject, say that. (Perhaps a brief statement about how it would be helpful to Firm his Insurance choice for reasons of accommodation, if true). Reiterating the details makes the query easy to answer.

This together with the guidance mentioned@Jaxx should give your friend’s family a good sense of what is going on.

The query should come from the DS himself. He can email anyone on the admissions team and it will be routed to someone who can help, but ideally he will find the name of one of the admissions tutors on the website and address the message to Professor X or Dr Y (rarely to someone without a PhD).

I agree with @titchy that Plymouth will probably take one dropped grade in August, but not two. Good luck to the DS