Unconditional offers

[tipped4]

A work colleague told me her daughter got an unconditional offer for a uni course, and is no longer working as hard as she was on her A levels. Nevertheless, apart from that obvious downside, she''s very pleased with the offer, suggesting it means her daughter must have really impressed the uni with her application. Is that a reasonable conclusion, or is it just that the uni needs to get bums on seats? (Obviously I congratulated her, etc etc, but can't help but wonder).

I don't know which uni it was, but it was a music technology course.

It usually means the candidate was very impressive. It’s unfortunate if the person now has less motivation to do their best in their A levels

Not always. Some universities have a reputation for unconditional offers, although generally they are more uncommon these days after a lot of universities got their wrists slapped for doing so. It is beginning to backfire a little right now as the universities who have been offering the most "bums on seats" unconditional offers are having to make a lot of cut backs with cancelling courses and redundancies.

Although, it depends on what the course is as well. For arts courses or peforming arts corses an excellent portfolio or audition can garner a well deserved unconditional offer.

@tipped4 which university is it?

It depends on the course but a lot of creative degrees make offers based on portfolio or auditions rather than exam grades.

My daughter sat an entrance exam and has received an unconditional offer based on her performance in that. She celebrated by doing another practice paper so it hasn't decreased her efforts to do well in her exams. She had already decided that she was going to that university anyway so it didn't influence her decision to accept their offer. It doesn't half reduce my stress levels though as she would have been gutted if she had just missed out on the grades and not got in to that uni. She was never interested in going anywhere else!

I am a former Russell Group admissions tutor. The government discourages unconditional offers fjor good reason. What @EatNutellabythespoonful drscribes is really a post exam offer, a very different thing.

A portfolio based offer is not really unconditional either; it is a kind of post qualification offer..

Yes, OP, unconditional offers are indeed basically a way to get bums on seats. I daresay this one is not from Edinburgh, which appears to be the only really prestigious uni offering this degree.

PS I have nothing against a degree in Music Technology. It could be a great choice. I just hate snobbishness, especially when it really isn’t warranted. Quite the opposite in this case

I think it's a risky strategy to work less hard on the A levels because of an unconditional. Lots of students give up their course the first time around if it's not what they expected, and either change course, change university, etc to try to get something more suitable. Her future options will be more limited once her "real" A level results are known if less than forecast.

As @taxguru says - know a couple kids who got unconditional offers, scraped through their A levels, did not do well or did not like their course but had very limited options. Both quit after the first year and never returned to uni (both went in to their family businesses, which was lucky for them but not what they may have originally hoped for).

Ditto @taxguru's comments.
The drop out rate is higher amongst students who take their foot off the pedal for A levels. They don't know how to self motivate and can't cope with the volume of work at degree level.

Very common in Scotland as unconditional offers given on the basis of Higher results.

On the one hand it's good as DS already knows he is going to Glasgow and has paid the deposit on his spot in his desired hall of residence, but on the other hand he's extremely unmotivated and unlikely to do very well in his Advanced Highers or crash Higher.

Just to throw another version into the mix here, my DH was offered two E's for entry to Oxford. He got his 3 A grades (this was pre-A star categories existing). When he arrived he discovered all his friends had also been given two E offers and had achieved their 3 A grade predictions. So not everyone slacks off and not everyone suffers at degree level. I'd say two E's is the equivalent of "unconditional" for most folks.

I think what happened when your DH took his A levels @Wornoutlady is not relevant in 2024.
The landscape has changed significantly.

As its music tech your colleagues daughter may already have racked up the UCAS points with music exams in which case its not really an unconditional offer its just that the uni will accept exams other than A levels/highers etc to fulfill the tariff. DC1 is at a conservatoire and was offered 2 Es but told to contact them if anything went wrong as they could always play around with UCAS points.

@RampantIvy Interesting theory. If you can provide some kind of evidence the two E offers aren't still happening, I'd be very interested to read about it.

I’ve recently been in the thick of things, per my comment above, and it is my strong impression that the EE offer has been replaced by the genuine Unconditional offer, as opposed to the post qualification Unconditional. Not that I wish to speak for @RampantIvy

This type of historic anecdata is simply not relevant in today's system. The reality is Oxbridge calibre students would still achieve highly and noone gets let than standard offer these days at Oxbridge and often are asked for higher than typical offer.

Feel free to look up the many FOI requests on whatdotheyknow.com setting out the admissions data and offers received for Oxbridge colleges if you want actual proof. Alternatively you could take the word of a 6th form UCAS applications officer who has seen over 500 Oxbridge applications with over 150 offers , all of which are at standard offer for Oxford and at typical or over typical offer for Cambridge. This is after scoring for personal statements, assessments, written work submissions and interviews.

I don't think EE offers from Oxford and Cambridge have existed for decades! They weren't a thing when I when to uni. Both my dad and grandad received EE offers but this was really an age ago and at a time when they had their own rigorous entrance exams, which I know they still have for a few subjects but not for all.

Oxford phased out EE offers in the mid-90s and Cambridge even earlier. Prior to this, they relied very heavily on performance in their own entrance exams to select students, regarding a good performance in these exams as a better indicator of intellectual capability for their courses than the A Levels.

The Fair Admissions Code of Practice for universities introduced in 2022 says that unconditional offers (including de facto unconditional offers like EE) should only be used in limited circumstances:
a) where an applicant already has the required grades or qualifications for the course;
b) where admissions decisions are substantively informed by an interview, audition or additional application procedures (such as submission of a portfolio or skills test);
c) where special consideration is being given for mitigating circumstances; or
d) when an applicant is applying to a university of college with a non-selective admissions process that is part of their core founding purpose.

Incentives such as unconditional offers must not be used to place undue pressure on applicants to make decisions that are not in their best interests. Not all universities and colleges have signed up to the code, but the vast majority have and those that haven't tend to be very dubious ones.

Yes, the Fair Admissions Code explains it clearly.

In England, unconditional offers are for those who already have got their qualifications, or for courses where things like audition, portfolio etc, act as qualifications and it is judged that he required standard has been met.

Oxford give AAA rather than higher offers as standard for candidates for humanities subjects, having tested rigorously via admissions tests, essay submission and interview. These candidates are expected to achieve far in excess of AAA in reality, but AAA becomes the equivalent of the old EE offer. Oxford wants those candidates and knows they are good. They want the candidates to keep working hard, but don’t want the vagaries of exam marking in humanities subjects, to mean an excellent candidate they have evidence for already as strong, misses out their offer getting an A instead of an A star.

What OP’s colleague is talking about is different unless it’s for a subject with audition, portfolio, interview etc. It is a bums on seats approach. It is an attempt to persuade candidates to firm them and fill their places, because they fear this candidate might have preferred offers and go elsewhere.

It is strongly discouraged as it tempts candidates to go for a certain but less ambitious option, which is evidenced to result in people working less hard and doing less well in their exams.

Students don’t just need A Levels for uni entry but will out their grades on applications for jobs, so doing the best they can is really important.

What is seen these days instead of unconditionals is some places offering a one grade lower offer if candidates firm them. This is different to the grade lower offer if they get A or above in EPQ. Lots of students like it. It’s fine if that was the place they wanted to firm anyway. It’s less good if it sways them towards that place when somewhere else would be better. As ever,it’s offered by unis which might be good, but actually need to employ tactics to ensure they fill their places. The most popular courses at the most prestigious unis rarely do it - they don’t need to.

Thanks and sorry for diverting the thread! I think my example is not completely irrelevant - because it shows that people can get conditional offers, still do well in their exams and then at university. To say everyone flumps their A levels and struggles at University after getting an unconditional is too much of a sweeping generalization. That was really my point, not the timing of my anecdotal evidence. I am grateful for the updates and links though, because I couldn't find them on my own.

I know this will sound pedantic and I apologise for that, but I really think it is helpful to distinguish between Post Qualification Offers and (truly) Unconditional Offers. The purposes are, as you’ve said, very different

In Scotland , teenagers can sit highers in 5th year and then different ones in 6th year, so students can get their unconditional offer based on 5th year grades before sitting their 6th year exams.

happened to both my teens who worked hard in 5th year to gain the qualifications to get on their desired university course and they treated 6th year at school as a more socially fun year with a few exams at the end of the year, however they didn’t have the worry that they had to pass wih x amount of grades as they already had accepted their uni place.

Yes same here. We said to our son last year to work his butt off which he did and has been rewarded with the offers this year but has definitely taken his foot off the gas. He did one day of study and a half a past paper for a crash higher 🤦🏼‍♀️

Yes, but the sort of applicants that Oxford and Cambridge used to give EE offers to were really not the sort of people to stop working hard, just because they didn't need to get As to get in, or in some cases, they didn't actually have to work that hard and still got all As.