University choices - the best of the 'rest'

[SlightlyJaded]

I was on the A level results thread last year and anyone who was on it will have seen our experience. DD predicted all As was completely blindsided by terrible results. We were all shocked as was her school. As a result, she missed her first choice and her insurance choice - it was bloody awful and clearing was a very much a scramble. She is ok-ish now, but still hurting and feeling the fallout...

DS is in his A level year now and we've done a few Uni tours and he is trying to get focussed on his UCAS, finishing his personal statement and whatnot. But having witnessed what his sister went through, he is wondering about going for a much 'easier' insurance option than she did. Her choices needed AAA (first) and AAB (insurance) and he is now saying he doesn't want to be aspirational at all with his insurance as he'd rather know he had something if he fucks up.

I don't think he will fuck up, but I sort of get his logic. He is leaning towards a solid/Russell Group first choice that will need AAA/AAB and then one of the city 'second' tier options: MMU / Nottingham Trent / Leeds Beckett etc. He is keen to do Northern City but not wedded to it.

Is this a silly idea? From experience, he would be more likely to get one of these in clearing I think so maybe should stick with more aspirational for insurance? But again, he doesn't like uncertainty so I get where he is coming from.

His predicted grades are still moving a bit but broadly AAB - possibly ABB. He is smart but not A A A* academic.

I want to advise him well but just not sure. And if anyone has good experience/recommendations of that second tier, I'd love to hear them? I don't mean the non-RG ones that everyone knows are amazing: St Andrews etc, more the genuinely 'lesser regarded' ones that are still pretty good.

Thank you!

I really don’t agree sorry. Anyone who achieves A*s their A levels is very bright.

Yes - but not guaranteed 3 x A territory I don't think? I am not sure if I am doing him a dis-service by projecting the shock of last year onto him, but DD is really smart and her preditions seemed completely reasonable and even likely...

And to be clear, it's not just me thinking like this. It was DS who said he wanted to drop the aspirations for his insurance which is what got me thinking and asking on here....

I can understand why you are taking this approach OP and for its worth I think it’s sensible. I’ve seen too many people trip up thinking an offer = a place then flounder when they miss out. A bit of strategic thinking at this stage is canny.

On the point of recruiters ‘not bothering’ about A level results, isn’t this because their university gives an indication of how they did? Not many people who got A*x3 would go to Oxford Brookes when they could go to Bath?

..particularly as Bath is ranked 5th for Mechanical Engineering and Oxford Brookes is ranked 47th.

DD in year 13 and wants to do history and economics. We were both much more impressed with Reading than I expected, which was helped by being shown around on the campus tour by a postgraduate history student. She spoke very highly of the history department, campus, Reading experience etc. The history and economics offer is BBB so I imagine history/ politics will be a similar ballpark.
Not a big buzzy city but close to London- it wasn’t her top choice overall but we both came away very positive.
Good luck to your DS and also agree with your sensible approach.

Well this exactly. When we recruit, we know that students from top universities come with certain grades. Of course we care about A level grades when we recruit for grads schemes.

I am sure there are brilliant people I never get to see and miss out on. Like I said, I cannot interview 100s so need some selection criteria’s

@thing47 Im sorry but on this occasion you are not correct. Oxford Brooks feeds the motor sport industry around Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire and other Motorsport teams. It’s not the only automotive engineering course that does this. Therefore it’s fairly niche. It obviously is near Mini
too. So it rightly has its place. Traditionally JLR people went to Warwick and the long standing tie in there goes back decades. For banking it would be odd to look at grads from this course over engineering grads from Bath or Bristol or Warwick. It’s just that they may well be more mathematical and have proven higher ability in the fields banking wants. It’s not really a slight against the course at OB.

@SlightlyJaded I would look at outcomes for possible courses. Who are the employers he would be interested in? What do they want? Are internships competitive? How many wannabes don’t get them? A friend’s DS was surprised how few were actually offered when they were trumpeted at another uni. Hull politics is in clearing. Not particularly sought after.

Very sensible approach. If he wants a good Northern Uni that sometimes goes under the radar as it's not RG have a look at Lancaster. It does well in the rankings.

Specific question related to grades/clearing:

Using made up examples:

Uni offers "Student A" a place based on grades of AAB
UCAS shows lowest offer made last year by that Uni was BBC (realise there is no guarantee boundary will not drop 'that low' again)
"Student A" puts Uni as first choice
"Student A" actually gets ABC
"Student B" who did not put Uni down as a choice gets "AAC"
Does the Uni offer to Student B in clearing first - meaning that Student A has to wait for better offers to be met in clearing before being considered, or does his 'choosing that Uni' count for something?

I don't know if I've asked very well.

I'm trying to understand whether those lower offers are only made in clearing and whether they fill places from higher grades down, or whether choosing somewhere puts you ahead of higher clearing grade applicants?

Can someone confirm that those much lower grades are made during clearing? If for example, DS put Newcastle ABB but got BBC - would they first go to clearing to try and find people who got BBB even though DS put it as his first choice?

I dont claim to know the answer to this - but that would make sense. However if they still had places after all those with BBB had accepted - I would then assume that your DS would be offered a place with BBC as it was first or insurance rather than someone with the same grades from clearing?

But thats just my guess as to how Uni keep their average grades up?

I'd expect mainly 8s and 7s to get A*s and As, maybe a B, if they chose subjects they like and work at and have decent teaching, must be honest.

I think your experience with DD is influencing thinking, understandably

The grade acceptance tool can be misleading as it may not necessarily refer to one specific course. You need to check which courses are covered by it. In very small writing it states how many courses that particular data set covers. I teach on a course that requires much higher grades than the other courses in the set so this misleads applicants into thinking that we accept much lower grades than we do. It becomes clearer when they actually apply but it's something that needs reviewing. When it was being trialled I checked competitor courses and it ranged from a data set for one course to a data set covering over 20 courses, so not comparable at all.

The vast majority of courses at most unis would accept the student that held the firm offer and missed by one grade, rather than go to Clearing and hope to get a stronger student.

This is because the firmed student wants the place, is emotionally invested in it and has only missed by one grade. Clearing might throw up some candidates with higher grades who will be ringing around and may get several similar provisional clearing offers….and go elsewhere. Clearing is a massive rush with most places dealt with within 48 hours and it’s an uncertain process for unis for need bums in seats. A bird in the hand with a grade lower is usually better than a bird in the bush, which they might never ‘convert’ into someone who turns up and pays their fees.

This won’t be the case for a small number of courses at some universities. If you don’t get your Astar in FM for Maths at Imperial or similar, you are unlikely to be given your place if that was part of your offer. But lots of competitive courses such as Medicine take candidates each year who narrowly miss their offer. Trends indicate it is likely, but for an individual course in an individual year you cannot be sure. If more people achieve their required grades than expected, the uni won’t be taking people who miss. In that embargo period in the week before students know their A Level results, this is what the unis are looking at. They have the results a few days early, they are number crunching and working out how many have met their offers and looking to see how many insurance candidates they will likely have, and if they need to or should accept applicants who have missed by one grade, by two grade and even more.

I’d say that in the region of courses where the standard offer us AAB or AAA, most will accept a grade lower in reality, from someone who has firmed them or insured them. You can bear that in mind when deciding where to apply to and where to firm and insure.

You should also bear in mind that less than 80% of predictions are accurate and most are too generous….and good numbers do miss their predictions or offer by a substantial amount. Sometimes people crash and burn and perform substantially below the standard they’ve worked at through the course. Sometimes the predictions were wildly unrealistic and the student never worked at that kind of level. So having some kind of sense of if the predictions are aspirational (achievable on a good day and after lots of work) or just pie in the sky is worth it. Students really do have to be realistic….it’s no good applying to places they like where they have no real chance of getting the grades or bullying g the school to raise the grades to daft levels.. Erring in the side of generosity is good, but we’re talking about possibly 1 grade higher than the level they’ve worked at in exam condition work, marked to proper exam standards in yr12….not 2 or 3 grades.

If the uni was going to accept student A they would accept them before results day. If they weren't they would decline them. When they make that decision it is before clearing opens so what student B got is irrelevant that point.

The grade acceptance tool also doesn’t show you if some of the accepted grades were contextual offers or standard offers. Often the lower end are contextual offers.

I know that wasn't quite the point of your thread but I note you said that your son wasn't quite so at ease with the more social stuff. If so, I wonder if northern cities are the best way forward? Having worked and studied in various unis, I have found the ones in bigger cities perhaps more intimidating for shy students.

I've never heard of universities providing feedback on a graduate's A level results? Can anyone who works in tertiary education confirm that this happens? Try posting a thread on MN asking whether employers hiring graduates ask them for their A level results – previous threads on this subject seem to indicate that, with one or two exceptions of course, only financial institutions and big city law firms give a monkey's about A level results. Good A level grades give you more options for choice of university, that's about it honestly.

They might choose Brookes over Bath if they specifically wanted to study motorsports engineering and/or get into that industry because they would know that a number of motorsports marques recruit direct from Brookes as the course there equips the graduates perfectly with the skills and knowledge they require.

Anyone who achieves As their A levels is very bright.*

Actually I do agree with you on this @HistoryMmam. It's more that people who get BBB might be just as bright but not have achieved as well for a myriad of reasons – poor school, no support at home, parents without the 'cultural capital' to maximise their DCs chances etc (universities themselves acknowledge these issues by making contextual offers).

Furthermore the style of teaching and learning at university is very different and will suit some better and others less well: people mature at different ages, some students only thrive when they can focus solely on one subject which really interests them, others may find basic principles easy to master but struggle with more complicated concepts. Not to mention the simple fact that a lot of university subjects aren't taken in schools so someone might be truly outstanding at something they had no opportunity to study before.

Your A - level results are on your CV though?
We confirm the results with the school as well as university grade during screening.

I'd have a look out for the unis like Nottingham Liverpool Lancaster Leicester and Cardiff that are lower RG or very good non RG etc that do accept with lower grades and put a couple down as potential insurance offers. Its probably also worth a look at the stats on graduate careers as some of those unis (Nottingham in particular) punch well above their weight in careers like law. DD reckons its because Nottingham is a very sporty uni so a lot of their undergrads are good at balancing out the demands of academic work and high level sports training.She might be biased though as she trains with a number of people eyeing up LA 2028.

I think you missed my point @thing47 where I said recruiters use university choice as an indicator of A level results. If you go to Warwick for example you probably did better than someone at Oxford Brookes so they use that as a kind of broad indicator.
I do get your point about support from school and family prior to higher education. There is some clear disparity. However the example you cite, Oxford Brookes hasn’t ever struck me as full of underprivileged but talented students. I thought it had a rep for being where posh kids go when they mess up their A levels. I could be wrong.

Why do you think “posh” kids are all bright and deserve better @HistoryMmam? MN likes a good stereotype. Some dc choose Oxford Brookes because it is in a fantastic city. It’s a former poly so it’s only people on MN who think it’s posh.

If candidates lie to get a job, that’s usually immediate fail and if they get a job, based on lying, it’s usually dismissal. Yes, employers can verify A level results.

What? I don’t think all posh kids deserve better. I say that as a very ‘not posh’ person.
I said I could be wrong about OB but I did always think it has a large amount of posh kids.

OP, I can't see anyone else mentioning this, so I might have misunderstood.

I think you're looking potentially at a situation where his predicted grades are lower than the requirement for his first choice? If that's right, I don't think his approach is right for his insurance and it would be a mistake

If (not exact example but illustrative): he is predicted ABB and his first choice requires AAB (let's call it Manchester U), there is a really likelihood he won't make the grades for his first choice. He might, but teachers don't underpredict as a general rule - if they thought it was likely he's get AAB, that's what he would be predicted.

Of course he should accept Manchester if that's his top choice. He might make the grades - particularly if he works hard - and it's where he wants to be.

But on results day, most likely position is he doesn't make the grades. Say he gets his predicted grades - AAB. Maybe Manchester will accept him anyway (probably not), but if not he needs another option.

So in choosing his insurance, he needs to be aware that this is really likely to be the course he's actually going to do. It's not a backup - his first choice is aspirational.

No way in his scenario would I want my child choosing an insurance way below his predicted grades to be safe. He needs to choose the best possible university that he has the predicted grades for (maybe allowing for one to slip) not a university asking CCC when he's predicted ABB. Missing predictions by a lot is what clearing is for.

So he has the following offers: Manchester U AAB, Newcastle U BBB, MMU CCC. He firms Manchester U because on a good day he might get AAB. But if his insurance is MMU he basically is choosing MMU, when he has a really solid chance of making the grades for Newcastle U. Of course his insurance should be Newcastle not MMU.

If his first choice wasn't aspirational (so in this scenario required ABB or BBB), then a low offer safety insurance might make sense - it's a safety net but most likely he'll go to his first choice.

[Note I'm completely making up likely offer grades. For all I know MMU would require the highest grades of the lot. I also know it's not all about entry grades - maybe he'd prefer to go to MMU than Newcastle - then he would choose MMU if course]

@HistoryMmam Why do you think that? You inferred a posh kid had failed if they went to OB? Why would they be nailed on for elsewhere? So in essence it’s full of posh failures?

Dc choose it for valid reasons. One being good coach links to London. It’s really not all posh and like every uni, state dc are the majority. Plus there’s nothing wrong with meeting folk not quite like you. It’s important to meet all types of people and not reject somewhere because you think you don’t like a minority of students there. As a nation we need to grow up about this. Choose a uni based on the courses it offers and location. Not dislike of some hypothetical student who might also be there. Would anyone reject a doctor based on the school they went to?