Oxford Open Offers

[Memba]

DD has received an open offer from Oxford. She submitted an open application as she thought that might boost her chances and she wasn't particularly fussed about which college. She was allocated to and interviewed by St Anne's and has since received an open offer, underwritten by St Anne's (ie. if she meets the offer and no other college has a space, St Anne's will take her).

Just wondered if anyone has previous experience of this? If so, where did you/your DC get offered a place? Are there colleges she is more or less likely to end up at? I assume there are no offer holder days for open offer holders as I think these are organised by individual colleges?

Any further info would be welcome!

Anyone?

Just also wondering how it affects accommodation...

Hello My DC got an open offer last year. They applied to college 1, got a second interview at college 2 and then the open offer was underwritten by a 3rd college.
On results day they were allocated to the second college.

No offer holder days, but this wasn't really an issue. Accommodation choice was not affected as the college allocated that on the day of arrival, so we didn't know details of that in advance.

That's helpful @Dandelones thank you!

Not all colleges do offer holder days anyway, I believe.

You can get a bit of an idea of which colleges might take I suppose by looking at your child's subject by college on the Oxford tableau table, although the "imports" there captures everyone who was offered by the college without applying their, so reallocated applications, open applications, open offers, pooled etc. Still it does that there is quite a variation in import %s.
However, whilst it offers scope for gazing and fiddling, the number are so lumpy that drawing any particularly robust conclusions would be difficult. After all, it takes someone to miss the offer grades or turn down the place to create the space, which isn't very susceptible to analysis or prediction.

https://public.tableau.com/views/UniversityofOxford-CollegeSuccessRates2022/CollegeSuccessRates?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&:showTabs=y&:showVizHome=no

A friend had an open offer underwritten by Univ and received a place at Univ. Accommodation is given to all freshers and won't be an issue. They know how many rooms will be available and offer accordingly. Results day will be a lovely surprise, but make sure you have the list of college codes to hand when she checks UCAS as the number will be given not name.

Don’t worry about accommodation - all first years at Oxford are automatically given accommodation in their college and none of this is organised until after A’level results come out. I imagine she’ll be invited to the St Anne’s open day. I know they run one. She’ll love it - it’s a very friendly down to earth place. If she ends up at another college she’ll almost definitely end up loving there too! Many congratulations to her for getting an offer.

My daughter has an open offer too, she did a named college application and her offer is underwritten by the college she applied to. I think it might feel a bit more 'real' if we knew which college she would end up at but perhaps not being able to spend the next few months researching it and following its social media etc might help maintain a bit of healthy distance as afterall, she will still need to meet her offer on results day.

St Anne's was one of the colleges we looked around at open day - I really liked it there and found it one of the ones with the warmest welcomes of those we visited.

The idea of an open offer is that the university knows that a certain proportion of candidates will miss their grades and so some colleges will have spaces opening up on results day. Oxford doesn’t do clearing and will usually only accept missed grades where there are strong mitigating circumstances. So many subjects have open offer schemes where they identify some candidates who deserve a place at Oxford who could fill those extra spaces. The open offer has to be underwritten by a college, but the person might actually be taken by a different college if the spaces turn out to be elsewhere. It means that your Dd was definitely considered worthy of a place at the university and is not connected with the fact she made an open offer. Try to encourage her to think of it as an exciting surprise like a lucky dip. Almost all Oxford students end up feeling whatever college they end up in is the best one, whether or not they applied there.

Acommodation is not allocated until after results day so no need to worry about that - she will not be disadvantaged. All colleges offer accommodation to their first years anyway.

She may be invited to offer holder days at St Anne’s (if they do them - not all colleges do). Once she knows her college she could always go and visit in August or September- if she explains to the porters they will be happy to let her look around. (There will also be an open day in late September but by that time it will be close to the start of term anyway).

Thank you for these replies - very useful and reassuring!

Congrats to your DD @WutheringConniption!

I like @foxglovetree's suggestion that it's like a lucky dip!

My DD didn't get offered the course she originally applied for (which included international studies/year abroad) she just got an offer for straight law. But she is wildly excited that there is a slim chance that she might still end up at one of the older 'gleaming spires' colleges.

Now there's just the small matter of those A levels to contend with then a loooooooooonggggg wait!

Another open offer here, for DS. It's underwritten by the college he applied to originally (he wasn't interviewed by anyone else). Thanks for some helpful information on this thread. I'd been wondering about open days so that was particularly useful.

I found this helpful comment on another site from someone involved in college applications.

DS not that bothered by it - he's just delighted to have an offer at all.

My daughter applied to College A, was made an open offer underwritten by College B, who also interviewed her. She was not invited to any open days, but she had already spent a few days in Oxford during the interview process (albeit based at College A) so I don't think she would have felt the need.

On results day found out she was going to College C. She had not been interviewed by them, but we assume because one of the people made a firm offer by that college had not got the grades they needed.

I don't know if there were any other open offers made for her subject, so it's possible that she could have ended up at College D or E.

She was very happy with College C (very central and reasonably old (15th century).