No offer for a course now in Clearing?

[Tarjet]

I’ve been looking at clearing places for DS (just in case his results aren’t what he hopes) and I found a course he applied for - Comp Sci at Durham is now in clearing. He met the entry requirements on predicted grades but didn’t get an offer. Does this mean his PS wasn’t good enough and he wouldnt get a clearing place if he tried for it? Or would there be another reason? Obviously no interviews were done for Durham so it’s hard to know

I assumed clearing was for courses that were not filled by suitable applicants (ie with the predicted grades required) but TSR was full of rejected Durham CS applicants (inc my son!) so I’m very confused!

Here's Liverpool now (another RG Uni) with a load of courses at BBC or BCC.

https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/clearing/courses/#p

I'm rather wondering now what happens to all the universities that usually rely on clearing. If people can get to Liverpool Uni with these grades how are Liverpool John Moores going to fill their places?

Those grades are low for some really popular courses
Why are universities finding it difficult to fill these places?

I've just started a new thread with links which is....eye opening.

I'd be wary of applying to Durham through clearing. Plenty of anecdotal evidence on forums that they can keep you waiting for 2-3 weeks before deciding, during which most other decent universities fill up their clearing vacancies.

Not for the faint hearted

And Durham has a massive financial shortfall, so I'd avoid..
Anyhow, it is rather sad how little people understand the RG con, the specificity of university subject rankings, the way in which lifting the student number cap set the path for destruction for other non RG unis and less popular courses, given schools' compounding of the prejudice for RGs. When buying something for over £50000 you'd think people would be better informed.

What’s your official source for saying that about Durham@TizerorFizz ?

I have a contact in a university that is suffering financially and he says Durham is okay. There are more questions about others ranked in the top 10/15..

Literally all universities have a redundancy program or have had recently.

You can look here. Durham has 20 days of liquidity: UEL, by contrast, 161.
www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/finances/table-14

I mentioned on the other thread that Uni of Nottingham has History and Geography at CCC in clearing. Birmingham is BBC.

I suspect that those courses at Notts won't actually go as low as CCC. Kids who never expected to have the grades for Notts will just trade up.

Do you mean that they will take time to consider all those that phone up this morning and only confirm offers to those with the highest grades? Seems unfair to keep people in limbo. If they want higher than CCC they should say so.

That's what I'd expect although I could be wrong.

I don't see what other way would be fair. If someone wants to trade up from Nottingham Trent because they got BBC you could argue they're more entitled to a place at the other Nottingham than someone who got CCC.

Clearing is first-come first-served in places like Nottingham.

If you ring with the CCC grades, they will take you. A bird in the hand….they need bums in seats.

A few very selective places with v few clearing places might keep you hanging, but this isn’t the normal experience in Clearing for most.

They will bite your hand off if you meet the grades and send you an email with a short timeframe before the offer expires. They need to fill the places this week. By next week, loads fewer people will be looking and they will then find it harder to fill. They would rather get multiple students who are a bit weaker than risk having a few who are a bit stronger and then later either not filling or having to offer even lower entrance grades.

In Clearing, the early bird catches the worm.

Although, also worth bearing in mind that some people will receive several clearing offers and be sitting on those emails deciding which to accept and formally enter into UCAS. You can only enter one. They will reject the others then and some who are looking full might have a few spaces later tomorrow or next week.

Being on it, checking websites regularly and ringing more than once, even if nothing shows could result in someone ringing at the right moment when something becomes available. It’s a dynamic system like dynamic pricing of EasyJet seats. Hose who persevere and out time into it or act fast do well in Clearing. Parents can be helping with the research but candidates should be making the calls.

There’s a huge misunderstanding on here about RG unis plus. These include Bath, St Andrews, Lancaster and Loughborough. The other 100 plus unis were not all former polys! Some were plate glass unis and some were humble colleges of HE who barely offered a degree pre 1992. Saying DC have better A levels at these, overall, than most RG or RG plus is rather silly. There’s a huge cross over between RG and ex polys mainly because of lifting caps on student numbers. Students do get more choice and RGs can suck in lower qualified DC if DC want to “trade up”.

It’s also perfectly clear that some courses are falling out of favour, eg English, MFL, Philosophy etc. DC seem to prefer degrees that are more vocational. So clearing reflects that.

There are not enough highly qualified DC with physics and maths to do Physics courses. They might prefer engineering for example with an obvious employment route. Many options are open to these dc.

Lastly, there’s RG and RG. They are not all the same. Newcastle is dropping like a stone in league tables. Liverpool not so great either or QML. However all offer some outstanding courses.

Look at A level results in the north. DC in the SE aren’t likely to choose Liverpool over Warwick or Exeter. So where dc live matters. It’s difficult to get away from the fact that we have too many uni courses for the students who initially qualify. However the IFS still thinks a RG degree pays more over a lifetime, especially Economics and Medicine. They still think which uni attended matters. Personally I think ambition, personality, personal qualities and self motivation matter a great deal too.

So it could be that only overseas students would get in with BBC?

Nope.

Lancaster did this last year. Ditto most of the RGs that were offering DD's humanities course.

Can a a student get onto a course in clearing when they weren't offered it initially if their achieved grades match the clearing ones?

Yes

Looks like you were right about Nottingham @HPFA They appear to appear to have emailed confirming a clearing place then claimed they are full leaving a student high and dry

That's outrageous.

I imagined that they would decide between all the applicants and then make offers to those with the highest grades.

To make an offer and then withdraw it is terrible behaviour. Poor girl.

If they emailed confirming an offer that had been given verbally and included a timeframe for acceptance, and the student genuinely met the conditions and followed the procedures within the timeframe, Inwoukd certainly follow this up as a breach of an offer.

If an email and conversation said an offer was being considered, that’s different. But v few do this. Nottingham needed to take large numbers through Clearing and is unlikely to have been messing about….they would make an offer and want the candidate to accept it quickly in a formal sense, so they know the place is filled.

Don't want to derail but there's a story on the BBC News website that's relevant here, I think.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ced1y0y38yvo

That article probably articulated that some unis should not be unis. A bit of culling would not go amiss. Both have alternative unis not far away!

Please tell me what unis should be culled? Should it be the ones that transform the lives of people from less privileged backgrounds? How does it work that other institutions just suddenly absorb them all? Anyway name names and I will show you how you are wrong and don't know what you are talking about,

The difficulty is that the sector has become a free market, but one which is constrained by government.

If you think universities should operate as social enterprises and be fostering social mobility (and I think government does have a definite role to play in that) then government needs to provide sufficient funding to make it happen.

The reality is that universities are having to work to attract the best students they can, but are facing a maximum price they can charge which is insufficient to cover costs. That £9.25k isn’t enough for the unis. It feels too much to most families which is why it’s politically difficult to raise it to sensible levels which would cover costs, as the impact will be felt unequally. If government wants large numbers to go and it to be affordable, they have to fund it properly.

At the moment, the free market is at work and is driving the sector to contract. In purely economic terms there are too many places offering certain courses. It’s seen by the fact they can’t fill with quality applicants. They lower the grade tariff or price to fill. The unis that the less advantaged are likely to go to - yes they provide social mobility for some, but not all. But government aren’t funding that social mobility. It’s partly because at certain levels of the market, it’s not very good value. We all know there are some degrees which don’t boost prospects. And yes, arts and cultural skills can deliver huge value to society but aren’t valued or rewarded economically. Government has limited funds and doesn’t want to fund them and for some unis and courses, the unis increasingly find students don’t want to fund them either.

It’s a mess, is the basic point. It’s a mixed up system with mixed messaging and signals going on that is likely to drive a proportion if the sector into the ground at some point…but no-one wants to address it, because so many competing values and costs and ideologies are at play. It’s hugely complex.

We essentially see a society with growing inequality of opportunity and a state which would like to address it but can’t afford to. And so the inequality of opportunity will grow.

I agree with @WombatChocolate on this.

Admissions teams recognise that the stakes for applicants during Clearing are very high. The burden is on us to get it right and to very quickly correct any mistake that is made.

We can’t know from the excerpt presented exactly what happened, but leaving an applicant hanging is simply unacceptable

We know the market cost of education. You only have to look at private schools to provide the information. It’s circa £12k at a minimum.

we are however a flabby sector. There are way too many people who hide in HE jobs doing not very much. Hence all the job cuts throughout the sector.