Bristol Psychology offers

[wondabar]

My daughter has received all her offers apart from Bristol. They did write to her to inform her that they would get back to her once they had gone through all applications as they had been sent no dated with applications. Up till when can we expect to hear from them? I understand that they have been holding offer holder days recently. Could we just not hear from the university at all and therefore assume that she doesn’t have an offer?

Bristol seem to run very late, don't give up yet unless she prefers her other offers.

My DD applied to Bristol in early October with grades in hand, for their Psychology 4 yr MSci. She was offered an "unconditional" place by the end of that month.

However, this was not before many emails back and forth requesting all manner of documentation. It was not as if the admissions people assessed her application and then asked for everything they needed in one go, it was done in a very piecemeal fashion and took 3 or 4 goes with us sending things (certificates / a copy of her ref letter on headed school paper etc).

This would suggest to me that the process is somewhat chaotic.

Which course did your DD apply for and what are her predicted grades / subjects?

DC received an offer from Bristol for psychology back in October, however they have a perfect GCSE score and perfect A-level predictions. The department said they made offers entirely on the basis of these two metrics and they said the personal statement etc would not come into it, so depending on your DC’s predictions they are probably working through the list. It’s only March and is still quite early to receive offers from popular courses, they have until May to offer.

Put it this way, DC will def turn down the Bristol offer and so will free it up for someone else, but can’t do so until they’ve heard from one other university which always offers late because until they hear they are not sure of their insurance, it’s things like this that hold the system up but as soon as they hear it will be released. Think of hundreds of other kids in similar situations and you see why there can be a long wait.

@Umbilicat as you probably know, its not a simple case of one in / one out and your Dc's offer has no bearing on the status of @wondabar's own child.

Every university has a matrix for admissions, depending on subject, often offering to more students than they expect to receive acceptances from, so that when those students accept places elsewhere, there is not a shortfall of incoming students.

Of course I understand that it’s just to show the kind of complexities each university is working with – each child will be juggling probably four other universities and can’t often firm and insure until they in turn have offers or been declined by everyone.

The universities’ algorithm has to bear this in mind and to be very cautious, they’re not going to offer a new tranche until a point where they can expect to receive rejections from a significant number who got the first round of offers. And a significant amount will reject because they’ll have received an offer from somewhere that’s the first choice e like, say Durham that often offers v late– so then they will free up a whole chunk for others, not one in one out but they have to have a rough idea before proceeding. Many good universities like Bristol offer very late in the day and OP shouldn’t give up hope at all at this stage

To be brutally honest, your contribution sounded more like you wanted to boast about your kid's "perfect" grades, expected grades and the fact they weren't going to take a place at Bristol anyway.

A little bit on the insensitive side, I'd say.

Apologies

Sorry was cut off. Apologies I can see it sounded twattish. It wasn’t intended to it was intended to explain to OP that offers will still be coming through for quite a while and to keep the faith.

Universities have until 14th May to respond to on-time applications.

Unfortunately, any applicant not responded to by this date is 'to rejected'.
(See 'Key Dates Timeline' on the UCAS website).

I guess we’re into the phase now where to one degree or another, the most competitive unis are waiting for people to start firming and insuring so they get a better idea of how many further offers to make.
Some people get sick of waiting and withdraw from those that haven’t answered and turn and insure elsewhere. This also gives unis more info and will allow them to make some further offers.

If Bristol says they purely offer on A levels and GCSEs and your DC isn’t contextual, it could be that they are a little marginal at this stage. Are their predicted equal to the standard offer? psychology is popular and like other popular courses you can sometimes need higher predicted grades to get the standard offer. But it’s not been a rejection so there is still a good chance and actually lots of unis seem to make a decent proportion of their offers late like this and not just a few to a remaining few lucky ones.

Hope they get good news and it’s soon.

We're also still waiting for Bristol. All other offers came in quite quickly after application, but Bristol only sent an email asking for documents that are all in his UCAS file. We replied stating that and asking what else they needed but never heard back. It has been 6 weeks since. So frustrating.