Durham AAB subject offers?

[Keypad]

Do you need AAA A-levels or above to study at Durham? DS likes it but has AAB predicted currently. I know they suggest lower UCAS tariffs are possible for some courses but do kids ever get offers with B grades outside of contextual offers?

My dd is at Durham. The standard offer for her course is AAB. Her predicted grades were A star A star B and she was offered the standard offer. (She achieved A star A star A).

there are quite a few courses which are AAB standard offers.

I believe they are sticklers for their entry grade from what has been said on here and my own research. Is it AAB for his course? Their entry grade is the lowest grade they offer on so a lot of successful applicants will have 3 A stars or more. Depending on the course you can usually see what grades the successful applicants have, they sometimes publish it or there are freedom of information requests online, you can look at WhatDoTheyKnow website for it.

But the good news is, if your son is year 12 then he can focus specifically on why he isn't getting higher marks. Looking back on the papers he has sat one would hope that they go through the papers afterwards in class and the student adds the relevant missing information to that paper meaning it is helpful as a revision tool. Some students just move on from this but looking specifically at mark schemes to see exactly what the exam board is looking for and what they award marks for is incredibly helpful. He has the summer to work on this and will probably sit more papers where he can prove his improved grade.

Do you want to say what the course he is interested in is? Ds has just finished his degree there.

The offers should be viewable under the specific subject/degree programme found here:
https://www.dur.ac.uk/study/courses/
Find a course and then scroll down to the Typical Offers section. There are lots of courses where AAB is the standard offer such as Ancient History & Archaeology, Anthropology, Education, Sports and Exercise Science.

@Mytholmroyd it is all well and good finding their typical offer but many applicants exceed it, Ds's entry grade would be A star AA he achieved 4 A stars.

Statistically Durham is oversubscribed for most courses meaning they cherry pick who they want with predicted grades being an element they consider. For CompSci in 2022 cycle 570 students applied for 160 places. The available information states that 85 of those 160 had 9 or more GCSEs grade 8 or 9. It can be cut throat depending on the course. The best advice for Durham and any other uni is to work on increasing the grades.

You probably know better than me @bluedressforme - I only work there as a Professor and that is certainly not the case in my Department

@Mytholmroyd well it would be helpful if you specified that. I can only go off years of looking into both compsci and another department for my second child. I relied on all the freedom of information requests that were published by Durham with the grades on. I did state that this was g400 computer science data above.

Perhaps you could give the rough breakdown of grades of successful applicants in your department.

As stated on MN by someone who works at Oxford uni, they tend to offer to those above entry grade level as there are often over predictions by sixth forms.

https://digital.ucas.com/coursedisplay/courses/8db4963d-665e-30d7-3590-b618999dc8ea?academicYearId=2024

Between 2019 and 2023, BSc Computer Science...

Although tbf, it doesn't specify whether or not all of the 57% were Contextual.

Thank you all, much appreciated.

@Keypad well worth looking on ucas.com, for the course he's interested in at Durham, at the new Entry grades data section, which gives metrics for:

-Ratio of offers to applications
-Grades of current students on course - highest, typical and lowest

which may provide more confidence, or not, regarding how he would fit into the "grades demographic" for the course.

One aspect to be aware of is how popular the course is for international applicants - there are separate metrics available on their website providing the breakdown of international vs UK applications/offers per course.

My DS had Durham as his #1 choice when he was applying, with predictions of A*, A , A for an AAB typical offer course, but was rejected. Conversely, some of his friends with predictions of the typical offer for their courses did receive offers.

It's a fantastic university (I'm a Dunelm graduate, albeit a long-in-the tooth one) so if he really wants to go there and has predicted grades meeting the typical offer, I'd say go for it.

He is looking at Business and Management currently. Studied science A levels but feels gloomy about job prospects in biosciences.

I forgot to say - one of the other features of the new UCAS Entry Grades data section is that you can enter your A level predicted grades and see what % of applicants with those grades were accepted

BA Business and Management.

From UCAS again, data relating to 2019 - 2023 as before.

That is promising - I will try to use this UCAS feature.

This may take into account contextual offers however? It may be that they are the ones who get in with lower tariffs?

I am not going to do that @bluedressforme I am not in Computer Science/Maths but I know we make offers below the typical offer besides taking students who have done a Foundation year (Computer Science has a high typical offer A*AA which you might expect for a maths related degree but also has a Foundation year entry).

As I and you said, it depends what course it is some are oversubscribed and others are not for various reasons. Often because students don't consider them because they either don't know what they are or they didn't study them at A level.

For students who do not/might not get on their course of choice - we have a range of joint honours degrees plus it is possible to take up to two modules a year in a different department so you can for example choose a language module or, if you are doing a geography degree you can do two modules a year in maths to build the degree you want/need. There is flexibility in the system.

For example, the typical offer for straight Classics is AAA but that for joint honours Ancient History and Archaeology jointly taught between Classics and Archaeology is AAB and they are very similar degrees except the joint honours is broader in scope/skills and not as oversubscribed.

COVID and teacher assessment made a real mess of predicting how many students would make their offer - the % of A grades shot up in those years so they are hard to compare I think.

The standard offer listed in the Durham website is the offer they will make (with the exception of contextual offers). My dd and all her friends (on a wide variety of courses) were all made the standard offer. Sadly the unknown variable is whether they will make an offer as just because predicted grades meet the standard offer has no bearing on whether they will offer.

Someone mentioned GCSE grades upthread. My dd has all 8’s and 9’s but they have no bearing on whether or not her course makes an offer - they don’t consider GCSE grades at all. Her course states they take PS into consideration but not all do.

Business and Management has a standard offer of AAB so that is the offer they will make for all except contextual students.

I've said it in other threads but that new UCAS tool needs to be a guide, not a dead cert.
I looked up one of the courses my DD was rejected from (not Durham) and she exceeded (she already has her grades) the supposed 'highest achieved grades' accepted. A level subject combination, GCSEs and PS may all be taken into account.

@KittyMcKitty I believe they do take GCSEs into consideration as if you are rejected from Durham they tell you why. One of the reasons is listed under "Achieved Grades" and states that they were "Less Competitive than Other Applications." That could only mean your GCSE grades are not as high as you haven't yet sat A levels. GCSEs are also an indication of how well you perform for exams and Oxford absolutely uses them as a marker of future success.

Plus it has been stated that they do offer to some applicants below the entry grades for some courses. This isn't something they would advertise though as they do like to sell themselves on holding a hard line on grade slippage over the years.

@Mytholmroyd It is why I asked what course they were applying to. Computer Science does have a foundation course but this is limited to certain criteria applicants, basically POLAR is the top priority https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/centres/academic-development/study/foundation/eligibility/#:~:text=Only%20applicants%2C%20who,to%20be%20studied.

I do know that some applicants will just take any course they are offered as they play a team sport and that is their in to Durham or just having any offer from Durham is seen as prestigious and so they take it and I cannot blame them. I agree COVID has seen several schools take advantage and boost their students' predicted grades. It does some students a disservice to tar them all with the implied they didn't deserve their grades brush. For Ds1 as his A levels were maths/science and he was achieving A star all the way through he knows his A stars were deserved. Ds began researching Durham and other uni stats in 2018 when he was in year 10 so he had been compiling data for quite a while. He does love a spreadsheet.

Yes it is certainly true @bluedressforme that some students just want to study at Durham because of sport rowing/fencing/rugby etc (two of my daughters picked their university based on where the national performance centre was) and some students just want to come and get a degree from Durham and the subject isn't the main focus - there are lots of jobs that just ask for a UG degree and they are not too bothered what it is in. So you might as well enjoy what you do.

All the students coming out with a History degree won't become historians.

Also, the rules tend to change a bit for mature students, i.e. over 21 who can do Foundation courses.

I just worry that there is so much focus on getting in to the right university on the right course and it's a once in a lifetime chance/some sort of race - which is just not true - some kids just need to stop and take a breather and get off the treadmill. I have seen so many students come and then swap courses because it's not what they thought or they find they are interested in something else they didn't know was a thing once here.

Mostly students coming into my Department not leaving it 😊

My son applied to do Biology which is AAA and he was offered a place with predicted grades of AAA. He did do well at GCSEs but it's worth noting for some courses you don't need to be predicted way above the required grades to be offered a place.

On a slightly different tack my dd applied to Durham as her first choice. She loved the Professor who did the open day / offer holders day (and is doing her module next year). She loves the course, she loved the city and she loved the college (she was lucky to get her first choice).

She finished the first year and came home the other day and she has flourished as a person - is frepping in Sept, on Welfare Committee and running a ball next year. She has had just the most amazing time and has grown in confidence enormously.

I do think the college system encourages that and that Durham is a very special place (and they’re not all Oxbridge rejects - dd knows hardly anyone who applied 😊 )

How lovely @KittyMcKitty

DS had an AAB offer for Computer Science. It was a contextual offer (predicted 2 Astars, 2As).