URGENT: How to help Dd Decide in next 2 weeks ???

[StripeyChina]

Dd has Autism, severe Dyslexia & Clinical Anxiety (poss ADHD but unmedicated).
Still requires a lot of support. Not yet independant re timetable, transport, cooking etc. Has had a gap year, volunteering at a local repair shop (special interest). MAY be offered part time paid work here (will know this week)
So, that seems the sensible route (plenty of home support) but shes watched her friends go to Uni & wants to go too. Shes seriously bright (seriously SEN too)

She applied to 3 Unis (5 courses). She has been offered a place on all 5.
MUST reply by 6 June or will lose places. But is paralysed by the 'hugeness' of it.
Because of her ASD, she finds it hard to know how she feels so wants to make the decision based on facts but is very anxious about it. As am I now!

We are in Scotland so if choose a Scottish Uni (#1 or 2) there are no fees to pay.

Uni #1: 90m away - commute not very practical (no car, poor public transport) Uni is average at best, poor experience with SEN support. Halls expensive & not great. Dd is not enthusiastic (unless it could be combined with the 'job' above?)

Uni #2: is the 'sensible' choice. Outstanding Uni reputation. Doing a subject that she is good at (previous good exam results & a private passion for plus highly employable too). But she isn't sure he wants to study it at Uni. She doesnt' much like the Uni, doesn't like the Town or the Halls. So, shes 'probably going there as its the sensible & Best one'. But there is no sense of excitement at all.

Uni #3: is the wild card. It's in London. So, FEES. It's a much wider course at a fairly new place (London Interdisciplinary School). Dd is much more nervous about the course material (as it's a very broad based curriculum & fairly open ended - seems to attract a lot of confident students?). BUT is also excited about it. Very excited about living in London. Likes the accomodation (can stay 3 yrs).
There are only around 60 students in the cohort, all studying the same degree, so it would be much smaller & easier to get to know students & staff. They seem to 'get' her already & have been very friendly (plus there might be a bursary!)

Right thats enough of an essay to start with (didnt' want to drip feed).
I think she might need actual straightforward advice at this point.

Can anyone help me think it through please?

@SenDev from my experience with young grads at the moment, the lack of a CS degree is getting them filtered out very fast. Now of course, I expect that to change as the market improves but certainly, I would want a solid CS qualification under my belt if I were job hunting at the moment. Open source contributions/hackathons/certs etc all very important naturally too.

The conversion masters in my country are highly rated, I can’t speak to how they are in the UK. Certainly DSA is covered. The grads from it I find preferable to CS undergrads because generally they have working experience and the soft skills are there already.

for me Cyber is like Data Analytics, it’s a bit ‘sexy’ at the moment and the LinkedIn influencers are pushing it hard. Both great areas to get into. However, I don’t have much time for the unis that slap Cyber or Data into course titles just to wow students and get bums on seats.

I would also be wary of the small course, OP. Small is great, if you can find your tribe in it. If not, it’s very isolating and if there’s no other courses in this school, you’ve not got the option of making friends through university clubs etc.

This. I am autistic and went to uni at 21, having very little in the way of independence (due to family anxiety rather than me not being keen) until a few months before I went. I only survived because my family were a 20 minute drive away if I needed them. As time went on I needed them less and less (and by my second year I hardly needed them at all) but I'd never have stuck it out if they were in Scotland and I had been in London.

She's got enough to contend with given her neurodiversity, I think going somewhere where she's not excited by either/or the course and the university itself should be taken off the table. That leaves London and that's not ideal because it's going to be harder for you as her family to support her.

I would strongly encourage your daughter to take the year to work hard on her life skills and then go to London in 2025.

OP I think you are underestimating the amount of support you are currently providing for your DD compared to what is realistic for a university to provide and the support most people going to uni need. It sounds like you are still making phone calls on her behalf even. If your DD needs reminding to eat, shower etc how is she going to manage? Can she budget, do the food shopping independently, cook meals independently, organise her own workload, clean, prioritising tasks accordingly, cope if there is a tube strike / sudden line closure, cope if someone with severe mental health issues was next to her on the tube, cope if she was mugged, saw a fight, wash and dry her own clothes, know when people are just using her for money, roof over their head, sex, copy of uni notes, recognise if her mental health is deteriorating and action accordingly, got a bad grade in an assignment, became unwell, self manage medication, know what to do if the grill went on fire, know what to do if her phone got lost or stolen, lived with a noisy housemate etc?
She sounds very bright and that's great, but without some basic life skills that unfortunately means very little. Why not spend the next year really working on achieving them with her and looking at a uni that will suit her better?

I wasn't referring to offer grades. I was simply refuting that the course would not be challenging. I know the course material for this particular course and my view is that it would be engaging enough for a bright student.
Being a former admissions tutor does not give you intricate knowledge of every STEM course. Especially in Scotland

I would second/third/fourth the suggestion that she stops rushing towards university. She's not yet ready to deal with it, and that's fine.

My eldest is autistic. Even though he took a year out first, he had to restart and resit the first year, and still struggled the whole way. I lost count of the number of crisis calls and emergency trips to see him and joint meetings with his department and 'special adverse circumstances' forms we helped to deal with.

He has deeply regretted going before he was ready to cope, and wishes he'd takes several years between school and university -- as his younger sibling did, and thrived.

I would second/third/fourth the suggestion that she stops rushing towards university. She's not yet ready to deal with it, and that's fine.

This^
She's not ready to go and she really won't get the best out of it.
I know it's difficult when all their friends are going and they get swept along, but she needs to set some very clear goals around independence which have to be achieved first otherwise she won't cope.

I would also want her in a Uni within easy travelling distance so you can see her every week if that ends up being needed.

I would think about taking the job and having another gap year. I don’t think any of those options sound like the perfect fit.

I would think about what she wants to do after university and what type of careers would work for her eg would a WFH role be better, how well does she cope with team work, people facing roles etc Then look for the best courses that lead to that career at universities that can offer the support she needs, and the financial options/implications, bursaries/DLA and whether she is eligible to have a supporter to live with her funded by DLA etc. Maybe consider a different London university?

If engineering is a good fit and her passion, why doesn’t she take the job and get the maths qualifications she needs this year?

When you say she is seriously bright, is she Oxbridge bright? Might she be eligible for the foundation year course at Oxford or Cambridge? Also, Cambridge has several mature student colleges for students over 21. There are plenty of slightly older undergraduates. Living in a small college community with full catering and accommodation for 3 years can work well for ND students, as can the tutorial/supervision system of lots of teaching in small groups. Oxbridge also has a lot of financial help available. My ND DC found the pastoral support excellent too. The workload is very intense though.

My other ND DC found Imperial great, if your DD is happiest in London and is considering engineering. They also have generous financial support and good pastoral support. DC was offered university accommodation after the first year as they received DLA. I don’t know if that is guaranteed though. Again, the workload is heavy.

I never suggested the course material would not be challenging either. Do not put words in my mouth, so to speak.

But it is a fact that when lots of the brightest students (your words) elect a particular course, the offers are higher than the offers for these courses.

That is why I took care to acknowledge that I am sure there are some very bright students on the course. Their achieved grades, and how those grades compare to the grades of various CS students elsewhere in Scotland, are a matter of public record if you are interested.

2 is my suggestion. No fees, great subject and most importantly good for future jobs. if it is Edinburgh, my son had that as his back up (after Bristol where he went - he qualified as a solicitor earlier this year). Don't choose London - fees, college that I don't think most people have heard of, extra costs (we live in London and I am still putting you off it)....

Still requires a lot of support. Not yet independant re timetable, transport, cooking etc

seems to attract a lot of confident students?). BUT is also excited about it. Very excited about living in London

I think with your parent hat on with lots of life experience, you need to read back these 2 statements you made in your initial post.

Your DC is unrealistic! Has she ever lived independently in London with a lot of very confident people? Does she understand what this entails?
Can she understand how far off this she is at the moment and how she will get to that level of independence?

You were directly quoting my post where is was responding to this comment from another poster:
'I wouldn't go to Abertay if seriously bright. She will lose motivation.'
This poster was suggesting the course material would not be challenging enough, that was what my original post was about.
Being a former admissions tutor does not give you the over arching view of what evert student on evert course will be like. Unless you are a current admissions tutor at every university for every course and have live data that shows what EVERY individual student is like. I am in possession of data that shows that very bright students from Scotland are attending the course at Abertay (not English students I will give you that but I wouldn't expect it to be much of a target university for English students)

Fir the third time, I have never doubted that there are some very bright students doing CS at Abertay.

However in the Complete University Guide Abertay ranks 8/14 of the Scottish universities offering CS degrees. This is the very definition of ‘middling’.

I'm not sure whether the rankings for Scottish students and universities are comparable nationally. Funded places are limited and in any case, the amount per student is much lower than the annual 9.25K per other UK student, let alone the limitless amount chargeable to international students. Similarly, many Scottish students who could've gotten into better English universities baulk at paying the full fee, choosing a 'worse' university for a free degree instead.
Furthermore, Computer Science is a very competitive subject thanks to its perceived high earning potential.

It's therefore difficult to make any judgement of the cohort based solely on minimum entry requirements. For all you know they might accept international students with CCC for the cool £15K a year. But not Scottish or even other UK students.

There's always the option of transferring midway, or doing a Master's degree at a better university

@SenDev , This is why I looked only at Scottish universities.

Edinburgh and St Andrews take the most English students and are the two strongest Scottish universities for CS. If we exclude them on the grounds that they may be too English, Abertay would rank 6/12, again in the middle.

The CUG also shows that overall Abertay has a very small overseas cohort. Besides, your comment could apply to any university and these grades are on the low side for CS. So I fail to see why it (your argument) would apply to Abertay but not others. Achieved grades are available in the CUG if you’d like to look them up. I am not that interested as I know they figure into the rankings and that’s enough for me.

Apparently the previous poster I was engaging with was taking exception to her own interpretation of someone else’s remark, jumping to the conclusion that a very bright student would only lose motivation because the material was insufficiently challenging. To the contrary, I think that eg being of AAB calibre and autistic in sea of BBC students, for example, many differences that an autistic person may find very challenging could quickly become apparent. Nothing to do with the course material. I think it is possible the PP was thinking along the same lines.

Has she been to London before?

The thing about Computer Science is that, a lot of the most capable people aren't very academically inclined. By academic, I mean exams. Compared to other STEM subjects like Mathematics. In fact, courses at the 'better' universities are probably more like the latter. After all many theoretical modules in Computer Science like in Physics and Engineering are some form of applied, as opposed to pure maths (of course some like theoretical physics is still very abstract). However the hands-on skills required to do a lot of jobs are very different from all the theory.
It's like saying, a mechanic has to have an engineering degree in order to fix cars.

I fail to see what issues an autistic person could have with their cohort, solely based on A-level grades. Maybe your specific young person has issues with his peers, but it's a big extrapolation to link it to grades.

In fact, lower ranked universities have a lot more ND (or could be ND people) IMO because of the spiky profile, inability to do well in written exams, lack of SEND support etc resulting in perhaps not achieving their exam potential. My autistic DH is bright - he can fix anything , and grasps concepts very quickly. He's terrible at anything written! A whizz at technical interviews though. A lot of people I've worked with as well had very bad grades solely because they were shite at the non CS subjects. A bit like Einstein and failing Latin.

All these people also had home servers, been tinkering since they were teenagers, etc. Anecdotally I see far more 'in it for the money' people coming from prestigious universities. So it's passion you're looking for, it ain't necessarily going to be missing. And interviews can be more egalitarian because technical rounds weed out lots of people early.

I would agree that she should aim for a better university if she is bright, and has a theoretical interest, in the academic side of things. And is excellent at exams.

I would not agree if she's bright, as in 'not dim', but not 'excellent A-level grades with straight A's'.

For the record.. I am very unlike my DH.... A*s across the board 😂 his a-level grades were CDU.... he was lucky to get even that after a host of issues related to his autism. He got a first in uni though, where it was all project based and he was with a group of similar peers.

I can’t see that she would cope in London and if it goes pear shaped will be a massive blow after a failure last year.
It sounds like another gap year would benefit her. With a focus on life skills, pt job. Maybe look at short courses or placements away from home.

There is a lot to unpack here. To follow your thoughts in sequence:

I know that many able computer scientists are not necessarily the best students. I also know it doesn’t follow that being a good student is a strike against you. Rather, many of the best students have shared the passions of the more independent folk for computers well predating university (or even high school). For the lucky ones, their university studies have fed off their earlier personal investigations and then vice versa in the form of formal independent study. Formal study and personal passion can integrate beautifully

TCS has a great overlap with Maths, most notably complexity theory but also various aspects of algebra, discrete maths, combinatorics and number theory. However I am not sure why you introduced this topic now?

The question of theory vs hands on skill is important but surely depends on the particulars of the job. So I find your analogy limited - unless, to continue it, you are rejecting the usefulness of jobs requiring engineering degrees. In the latter case we would disagree. All the jobs with their different emphases are important for different reasons

Sadly I have dealt with many cases where autistic students have been taken advantage of by their peers. It is worse when they are the most able and/or conscientious. If they are more able than their peers the risk of this grows. And they frequently find this devastating

Where did you get the idea I have a specific young person? It is incorrect. I have done a long stint on the Mitigating Circumstances Panel in my (STEM) School at a well regarded university. I have quite a bit of knowledge of the many ways things can go wrong for autistic students.

What evidence do you have that lower ranked universities have a greater share of SEND students?

I do see your DH as one type of successful computer scientist, autistic or not - the independent, passionate type. That’s one path to success and it’s fabulous. And I agree that a relatively small proportion of CS students from top universities lack the love of subject. But as I said above, the best ones don’t, and are lucky enough to integrate their studies with their passion.

I’m all for egalitarian interviews.

It would be helpful if the OP would be more precise about her DD’s abilities

The fundamental difference in logic here is that. You see an AAB student as very likely, fundamentally more capable and conscientious than a BCC student. And so likely to be taken advantage of if they're autistic, or somehow not fit in with the peer group.

I'm telling you that this isn't true. You think your experience as a 'stem panel tutor' is relevant here, but it's really not, because of the fundamental difference between Computer Science (and related subjects) and the pure sciences.

To return to the analogy that you have failed to understand, I never said an engineering degree is useless. Rather, it's clear that one is needed to build, but not necessarily fix cars. An Automotive Engineer does the former, and is not expected to be a mechanic.

However, the sort of modules in a CS degree plus the jobs after are of varying difficulties and qualifications, it can be likened to both building and fixing the car! It's so variable, there aren't really any standards, and your competition as a computer science graduate, depending on what field you choose can be people who don't even have a degree.

Having hired, worked with and done lots of outreach etc across many universities ,I notice, in lower ranked universities a lot of students are passionate about computing and computer science, they're just not academic enough to get great A-level grades, or work with very abstract theory . It's not just my own DH. It may also be that the course has a more practical focus.

So, unless you're suddenly going to say that your , erm, STEM panel is all about Computer Science or a related subject, then I don't think you know what you're talking about really.

P.S note that this is all about the behaviour of the cohort - academic achievement is another aspect entirely. Of course it's easier to work backwards from theory, so if someone is very academic they should definitely go for a higher ranked university, and a more theoretical course as @mactire said.

However , if it's passion and commitment to the course, that's another thing altogether. And there are good questions that will highlight this, rather than just assuming that lower entry requirements = less committed people, and not someone's tribe.

(Why does it keep tagging)!

@mactire

Hi, @SenDev

I only pursued the engineering analogy hypothetically, because your wording seemed a bit ambiguous. I didn’t suggest you were engineering degrees - there was a big ‘unless’ there.

I have never suggested I am speaking about all students with autism, because one can no more generalise about them than about any other group of students. But they are sadly and greatly over-represented amongst Mit Circs petitioners, not least for group work gone awry. This is independent of discipline as our liaison from the Office for Students with Disabilities repeatedly attests. Across my highly regarded university there are extensive and ongoing discussions about what sorts of concessions to make for students with autism who request exemption from group work, and their tendency to be taken advantage of or perceive that they are is a big reason why. It is a difficult question.

I am not sure why you refer to my ‘erm’ STEM panel?

The rest of your post just seems to reiterate your prior points, so I will leave it here.

Edit: I didn’t suggest you were dissing engineering degrees - there was a big ‘unless’ there.

I went to uni at 18, miles away from family, studied a 'hard science' type course and absolutely couldn't cope at 20. I ultimately left with a lot of debt, no degree and my confidence shot.

I started again at 25 - having worked for a few years and with that little bit more life experience. Same type of course. Excelled in my studies.

I would advise her to take another year to consider her options tbh, and you can use that year to prepare her. Throwing herself in at the deep end is unlikely to work out in any of the instances you've described IMO - the two Scottish unis because she doesn't want to go to them, and the one in London because she'll be so far from home with little support.

Unfortunately I find 'prestigious' and well thought of universities are often lacking in terms of support. The first one I attended was very 'snobby', for want of a better phrase, and students were left feeling incapable for asking questions or struggling. You were expected to just get on with it. I have some friends who went to different 'top' universities and had a similar experience.

20 is very young still even for some neurotypical people, like me!

To add to what @OpusGiemuJavlo is saying, LIS has at least half non-PhD academic staff - they are all still learning to be researchers themselves, so aren't in a position to teach students how to read and do research.

Is there any option for a college university (Lancaster, Durham)? There is often more pastoral care of the "I can't pay my bills and don't know who to talk to and I'm drowning" type thing, and PIP/DSA will help with a PA, paying for catering (some universities are mainly self-catering but have one or two catered options still - I have a relative with a long term health condition involving a lot of management who went for catered due to time and nutritional constraints).

I know a lad who deferred his offer for a gap year, then discussed with the uni and reapplied in order to take a 2nd gap year. He didn't have diagnosed difficulties but something of a "maturity gap". He turned 21 as he started uni and 2 years on is absolutely thriving.

I'm another who thinks it sounds like your daughter would benefit hugely from deferring an offer if she can, or planning to reapply for next year if she can't, and keep building on the skills and work she has started doing this year.

Very best wishes to you both, I hope she can thrive over the next few years.