St Andrew’s Offer - Confused!

[StAndrewsConfusion]

Have name changed for this, as details are outing and don’t want it connected to other posts of mine.

DD has received an offer from St Andrews for September. She applied for a joint course, one subject is her absolute passion and the other is one she wanted to study at A level but wasn’t able to due to timetabling issues. She really liked the idea of picking it up to study again and the course she applied for doesn’t require an A level in that subject.

The offer she has received is for the second (not her passion) subject only, not the joint course she applied for. We’re a bit bemused by this and were wondering if anyone has any ideas why they might have done this? None of her A level subjects are connected to the offer subject at all.

She really loved St Andrews on the open day, and is delighted to have an offer. It is her first choice. We think in the first year she has to also study two other subjects, so we figured she could choose courses from her ‘passion’ subject. She won’t want to give that up completely.

Her other Uni choices were for her passion subject only, apart from one other, which runs a similar course as St Andrews where you don’t need A level in the second subject. It meant her personal statement was really tricky, but it must have been ok, as she has offers for all of them. St Andrews is actually one of the lowest offers!

Hope that all makes sense!
Does anyone have any advice or opinion on any of this, we’d really appreciate it?

Given the subjects are so different I think she might be best going elsewhere. I suppose it depends on whether being at St A’s is her priority or studying maths.

Not St A’s but my son is currently enrolled on joint MSci maths and computing science degree at Glasgow and because he was accepted for both he was
guaranteed modules on both maths and CS, if he had only been accepted for maths or CS he could have tried to get on the other course too as you need to do 3 subjects at Glasgow in first year but there would be no guarantee.

That wouldn't be unusual - so few people do language A-Levels now that language departments are happy to take students with GSCE or starting from scratch.

Again, with the flexible degree structure it's probably not so much a case of wanting to make the German degree viable (though this is also a consideration). Because all students take three subjects in their first year, many courses will actually only offer one 20-credit module per semester. So first year beginner's German will have all the students on joint or single honours beginner's German degrees, and also all the other students who have decided to pick up German as a second or third subject. The same goes for maths, which is why it's plausible (though needs to be checked) that there is space on the core module for more students than are actually required to take it for their degree pathway.

For admissions purposes, though, I suspect St Andrews is more restricted than some other universities because the town is quite small and there's not really room to expand, especially without really pissing off local residents. So if they are only recruiting a few thousand students per year, and have to divide these between all the available degree programmes, this will be why places on maths degrees fill up, even though they have capacity to actually teach more students (most first year modules will have capacity to teach more students, they'd have to if everyone is doing extra subjects not in their degree). So in this situation, admissions have gone to both schools, the candidate is qualified for both programmes, but maths have already reached their quota for offers and German haven't. So admissions make DD an offer for the available programme.

@ThatsNotMyTeen is right to say that DD would only be guaranteed a place on the German module, as that would be her degree pathway. If she e-mails colleagues in maths, they are unlikely to say 'yes you can definitely do it'. But if you ask questions like 'is there a cap on the number of students on the core module', and 'how often is this cap reached', you may get some useful information.

I agree, and this is really problematic for students who are good at MFL as they find themselves on MFL courses with people whose relevant cultural hinterland is extraordinarily heterogenous.

One of our DC is at university in London and does an MFL (Italian) as an optional subject (hosted in a different University of London institution's language centre) for 15 credits. There is a great deal of flexibility in the organisation of the language centre and our DC is in classes with students from different year groups and a variety of academic courses, according to test results ie there is fairly extreme streaming. Our DC spent a year in Italy before going to university and the main degree course content covers quite a lot of Italian culture. There are other ways of learning language and culture without doing a full undergraduate MFL degree with the vagaries of student recruitment that entails.

Just be careful, OP. The only things DD can rely on are those that have been put in writing by an admissions tutor or subhonours adviser per @ZacharinaQuack

My DC is at St Andrews and started off doing two languages (among them German) with maths as their additional subject - which they then loved so much that German was ditched in favour of maths; this didn't seem to be a. problem.

This.

Also it's probably a course with low numbers and they need to fill it, hence not offering her passion choice which was probably over subscribed - but offering this once (which would also explain the lower entry requirements).

Once again, thank you all for your replies. They really are so helpful. Especially @ZacharinaQuack, I really can’t thank you enough for your insights. We are definitely taking some of your advice on board.
@poetryandwine I had actually seen your post about finances at Edinburgh, it does sound quite worrying, and definitely warrants some close scrutiny before DD firms/insures it.
@user1460670891 thank you, what your DC has managed to do at St A’s is exactly what we are hoping DD might be able to do. It’s really good to know it is possible.
@WombatChocolate her other offers are Lancaster for just maths and also for maths with German and Newcastle for maths. Lancaster is still in the running as she really liked the maths department there.

DD has emailed admissions at St A’s, so hopefully she will get to speak to someone soon, and she is booked on their post-offer day too, so we’ll see where this goes…

Lancaster is a much better option. It’s similar to st Andrew’s in that you do up to three subjects in year 1 so she can still do her language or even switch to joint honours. It’s one of the cheapest universities to live. It’s three years of fees not four, it has absolutely loads of accommodation including the option for second and third years to be on campus. It’s top ten in the rankings so extremely close in ranking to st andrews. It’s collegiate with really strong college identity and very supportive community feel.

it has never to my knowledge had a prince attend. However it has hundreds of ducks, peacocks and a campus cat and a tree growing in the middle of the library.

The choice always has strong personal elements but Lancaster Maths is excellent. Also (like Glasgow) Top 10 in the last REF and strong student satisfaction.

Lancaster seems to be particularly hard hit by the financial crisis in the university sector.

In December, it announced in an email to all staff that it will need to lose 400 full-time equivalent staff in order to remain sustainable.

Sadly this is not particularly unusual, @Sapienza

Have they said how they plan to do this? Eg any plans for a voluntary redundancy scheme?

A voluntary redundancy scheme was already in place in Lancaster before the email in December.

I work in senior management in the sector and lancaster is actually not one of the universities that are most in trouble. Most universities are running severance or exit programmes and it's the ones who are proactive who are going to be in a better position.

My dd went to St A's - all
Scottish universities require 3 subjects in 1st year and 3 in second year - when entering junior
Honours (3rd year, you will
Narrow down to either one subject (single hons) or two subjects (joint honours) for which you need to have done in 1st and 2nd year.
Basically if there's space in maths semester 1or 2 then it doesn't matter what she applied for if that makes sense.

The admissions team are excellent. Give them a call.
Edinburgh is nowhere near as good a university for maths as St A's or indeed Glasgow which has an excellent reputation for maths

I don't know how St A's approach it but at Oxford, if you go there to study Chinese they stream the language learners, so those who are fluent are in one group, intermediate in another and those who have never taken it get a crash course, with the ideal being everyone is up to the same reading / speaking standards by the end of it all.