Oxbridge - what happens if you don't quite meet the offer?

[quiltofstars]

I've noticed on the website for both Oxford and Cambridge there's information for what happens on results day that suggests that if students don't quite meet the grades, there's a process where the college will make a final decision based on how 'close' the results were.

Does anyone know how this works in practice? For example, if your offer was Astar, Astar, A, but you got Astar A, A...are you still in with a chance?

Not sure I've ever head of anyone actually getting there without meeting the offer grades exactly! Thanks in advance x

They won’t know which uni has passed them to insurance. If insurance offer is met then it is confirmed, if not the same discussion about whether to accept or reject lower grades occurs.

They do know. Once applicants have made their decisions, all five of the applied to unis then know who the five were and where the applicant firmed/insured. At clearing and confirmation we get the results of all applicants, not just our firms and insures, and we know the final outcomes.

That’s interesting @titchy . Does each university then feed this into their algorithms to assist with setting offer grades and making offers the following round?

I’m a bit surprised as it feels a bit like too much personal candidate information is being shared with people who don’t really need it. (Or at least there’s no obvious benefit to the candidate in having this personal information shared.)

I’m just curious ….

Yes we absolutely do use it. It’s valuable marketing data!

Don’t forget the personal candidate information is data they’ve given us when they applied.

Happy to be corrected. Had not real-used there was a point it changed.

As a tutor closely involved with admissions decisions at Oxford, I've never seen any information on where else our candidates have applied to or have been made offers from. But that doesn't mean that no-one in the central University has access to that information. I've never asked! It's not relevant to our decision making.

But then, we don't tend to be an insurance choice. The only students I've (personally) ever known turn down an offer have been international students.

Coming back on to say thanks so much for all the valuable insight and interesting discussion here!

Curious also to hear more on what information is shared with other universities when. Interestingly when my DC turned down one of the highly competitive London universities, they emailed to ask why! 😂

That’s very interesting @quiltofstars. What were her reasons and was she happy to share them with the university?

we’re just at the beginning of the ucas application process so threads like these are coming onto my radar and I’m learning lots!

We do that too! Quite a lot do - called a decliners survey. Invaluable market intelligence - it’s so competitive these days. Sadly.

What was the uni?

@Fgggz - LSE.

@Muchtoomuchtodo - sorry I didn’t see your message there! Reason for turning down was DC has a Cambridge offer and while the LSE course was brilliant, studying in London didn’t appeal as much as going elsewhere. So they insured with another RG uni…good luck to your DC on this journey! These threads can be very informative indeed x

Interesting. Many moon ago DC initially has LSE as their insurance choice and had firmed a lesser ranked uni. After a convo they switched it around but in the time LSE was the insurance LSE never emailed to ask "why did you not firm us?"

DD had firmed Cambridge and put UCL as insurance. KCL called one day at 7:30 in the morning to ask for reasons why. 😜Safe to say she was taken aback. She’s going into her 3rd year at Cambridge now. 😜

@hampsteadmum - how funny! Hope your dd is loving Cambridge x

What subject?

@quiltofstars “Loving it” would probably be a stretch 😜, but she’s doing well. High 2:1 and doing well with internships etc. Cambridge is not for the faint hearted, especially for certain courses. In answer to your original question, most colleges over offer. They over offer massively in maths but also in other subjects, e.g. engineering. The faculties would like to have more students, but the colleges do not have capacity to accommodate them all. If a student narrowly misses their offer the College that has accepted them, if they decide they can’t accept them for any reason, they may put them in the summer pool and they may be picked up by another college. I know of students that were accepted this way and others that sadly were not.

I think most unis send constant emails to their applicants - quite tedious in some ways. Lots about clubs and societies, well/being, accommodation, offer holder days, general promoting themselves. Given you’ve got 5 applications in, you’re quite likely to get 8-10 from each.
One of these is quite likely a follow-up questionnaire asking why you didn’t firm (if you didn’t) and easy to miss or ignore! It’s reasonable to ask and such useful info for unis to know and work out where is proving their closest competitor that year. Given filling courses is SO important and they absolutely need to market themselves, it’s vital info to know people opted for elsewhere because of X modules or Y course structure or something about accommodation or perceived reputation or whatever.
Totally optional to answer or not, but I’d be amazed if they didn’t follow-up to be honest.

Cambridge "over offer" in Maths, but they control the marking of the paper (STEP) that forms the core of the offer, so they still control the numbers. Usually, around 40-50% of those with Maths "acceptances" don't get the required STEP grade - it's not about faculty wanting more, it's about how they whittle down the candidates. It's a pretty harsh way of doing it.

My comment on the faculties wanting more students applies to faculties in general-not maths specifically. The faculty of Engineering and Law for example would gladly have more students, but Colleges do not have the capacity to accommodate them. We’ve been told this. 😜 A great number of students that have been deselected would cope fine with the courses. Maths is a little different as they expect about half the students not to meet their STEP grade requirements.

My DD has a friend in her college that got in from the summer pool. This was a contextual offer student who did not get an offer in January at all. They got a first in second year (and firsts are not easy to get at Cambridge) and ranked 12th in the year. It goes to show how flawed the selection process can be sometimes, but kudos to that College that spotting their potential.