Southampton publishes Clearing grade requirements

[HPFA]

I think this is the first time I've seen an RG Uni publishing Clearing grade requirements before Results Day.

It's not for all courses but a lot of popular subjects nonetheless

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/clearing/course-vacancies?subject=All+Subjects&filter=&studentType=uk&availableOnly=true

Not sure what it means for those students holding offers at Southampton - does it indicate how far they can drop grades and still get in?

Yes I agree with @Lampzade, I sat in on the Oct 2024 open day talk for economics and they said that PS are not read / taken into account.

Yes, exactly. UK higher education is in crises and Universities are desperate for students (esp international ones).

Of course it us cynical @mids2019

I don’t think aiming for the highest ranked place you can get in Clearing is the best strategy unless there was a good, one-off reason why your exam results were not higher.

But this isn’t a popular opinion. And occasionally someone who underperformed at Sixth Form turns over a new leaf when seriously challenged at university. That’s wonderful to watch.

All of this is why I prefer the Irish applications system, although it got plenty of its own issues. You put your preferred courses in order, 10 for Hon degrees, and 10 for a normal degree. Then the results get fed into the system and they place you in order of your preference. Points are based mostly on popularity and spaces and go up and down depending on the year. If a course is at max points and is oversubscribed, it's names out of a hat time. Brutal but fair and everyone knows what the lowest admitted points are from previous years.
Of course DD wants to go to the UK so we're trying to figure out this modern version of clearing and what happens if she misses a grade.

I wouldn't call it cynical. I would call it a competitive and uncertain market.

Universities understandably want to fill with students that have the highest possible grades. They set their initial grade boundaries based on a combination of aspiration and and demand. Demand varies annually so they don't always get it right - that's what Clearing is for.

They don't set boundaries based on the level they think students need to be at to access the course, but they may have to vary the teaching to cater for the cohort that they get.

Southampton will never be as attractive a city as (for example) Bristol. However, Bristol Uni penalises reserve applicants and Southampton doesn't - helping to balance out their popularity. Southampton needs to market their offer to students, so this early publication of clearing grades is one way to do it. They also do targeted visits to Grammar Schools etc in SE England to encourage high performing cohorts to consider them.

I've known some very academic young people head to Southampton after missing their Oxbridge/Imperial/Durham grade boundaries by just one point, i.e. getting one AStar rather than two.

You should all know by now that TizerorFizz knows more about Bristol University than the people working there.

I work at both Southampton and Reading Universities and last year Southampton and other higher tier universities hoovered up many of the students who would have gone to middling tier universities like Reading in clearing. Partly as a consequence, Reading is going through a programme of voluntary redundancies. As a red brick university, Southampton is also more attractive to foreign students such as the Chinese who want to buy into the British higher education experience, which gives it another advantage.
HE is certainly going through a period of rapid change and there will be casualties whilst it finds a financially sustainable operating model.

I am worried about this. My son really likes Reading (did the outreach programme this year) and wants to study geography. But I am concerned about its sustainability with universities like Southampton now having in clearing grades lower than Reading is asking. I did wonder if Reading though was not hoovering up students from the lower tiers like…Kent (?) or Canterbury.

Reading has got a very good Vice-chancellor and seem pretty good with managing their finances so I think that Geography will be fine. We have had voluntary redundancies previously, so they have been cutting their cloth already. Reading has an excellent reputation in the field of climate change/meteorology/agriculture so Geography sounds like an excellent degree to pursue actually. We have had departments amalgamate and the Chemistry department was under threat but I don’t think that Geography is an issue at all.

Thanks @fluffythecat1that’s very reassuring. The modules for it all look great, it’s a lovely campus and far away enough from home without being too far. I think he would be happy there.

@Lampzade Here you go. Not normally is the wording. Look at when they do consider them and even give info on what they look for! And yes, this is for Economics.

As a former RG admissions tutor in a School with a very high offer, I do call it cynical.

My opinion isn’t about Southampton per se, which offers some excellent programmes suitable for able students. The local outreach you describe is commendable.

But demanding programmes dropping several grades to attract Clearing applicants do not adjust their teaching sufficiently to cope with the needs of these applicants. How could they? You cannot require Clearing admits to attend remediation and they are generally loathe to do so optionally, very sensitive to any suggestion of second class status. Instead, extra support is taken up by the keenest students and the achievement gap is widened.

Lecturers who have owned a course for years are also not going to revise it substantially just because the powers that be have decreed that a School must admit students with lower grades. Besides, the syllabus must be completed because all the material is there for a reason. If some cannot keep up, they will suffer.

I much prefer to see all students in degree programmes where they can genuinely thrive. Making the most of a decent opportunity will get you further than bumbling along towards the bottom of a cohort at a university with more of a ‘name’.

I do think that Clearing is driven by financial necessity and that we are in desperate times. I don’t say the cynicism extends to enrolling less qualified students for the hell of it, at least at RG+ institutions and many others.

@poetryandwineIs it not time there was a cull in courses? It does smack of desperation to do this and how do students truly benefit? The scrabble for students is surely wrong?

Just adding Exeter tp the list of unis publishing grade requirements.

www.exeter.ac.uk/study/clearing/vacancies/

We agree on this one, @TizerorFizz .

A small cull is underway, largely in the area of MFL and a few other courses. (I would be loathe to lose courses not deemed sufficiently functional, and that is always a risk) Financial desperation will probably increase the cull. It looks like it will be slow and painful.

Tony Blair had good intentions around increased university access, especially important in this nation where graduate status opens the door to the middle class. But the thinking has not been joined up

Interesting to see that History is only in clearing for Exeter in the Cornwall campus and not in actual Exeter

Blimey, Exeter’s standard offer for DS’s course is AAB so he never considered it (with his predicted BBB grades).

It’s in clearing for BCC.

Thats quite a drop!

At this rate it will only be Oxbridge that holds up its degree 'currency '. I really despair at some of the degree requirements for RG universities as this only exacerbates the Oxbridge or just mentality amongst high achievers and adds to the difficulty for recruiters who have to discern applicant calibre.

And the course description for History at the Penrhyn campus still shows the entry requirement as AAB-ABB.

This system is so unfair at rewarding students "in the know".

@poetryandwine It was John Major who changed the status of colleges and polys to universities - 1992 group. It was David Cameron who increased participation by taking the cap away circa 2013. Both mistakes although I can see the intention was good. Failure to act over the last 5 years in particular is making some degrees very poor value.

Exter itself and Cornwall always have been different - Cornwall was more about a local offer when it started. It’s clearly not the same experience as Exeter city and most applicants do know that.

The arts and humanities are clearly suffering either through poor teaching in schools, perceived job issues afterwards and too many courses. Dog eat dog is clearly problematic. We have now got to the stage where many degrees are not getting dc the aspirational jobs they thought they would get.

Also letting in dc in with CCC is not really helping employers either who will just have to test and test and then test some more!

It ruins the reputation of universities and what they are actually there to do. We desperately need an enhanced middle way via ex colleges of HE.

Surprised to see entry requirements of BBC for neuroscience and BCC for Law and business. Also low for History, engineering etc e.g. all quite challenging degrees (mostly based in the less desirable Cornwall campus) and I wonder if students with these grades will struggle to keep up. Then again, it doesn’t say how many clearing places they have and whether it’s a small number of students or not

Same for my DS. He has BBB predictions but for 2026 entry and hasn't bothered with Exeter even though my friend recommended it. I've just looked and his course is BCC!

Yes I agree that there is clearly an oversupply of courses but it would be a shame if things like MFL go. There is so much duplication though that surely some will have to.

DS loved the Lincoln course. It was by far his favourite but the grades they were asking were slightly lower than his predicted grades. I'm a bit worried he'll choose to go there but then they will have to drop their clearing grades so low to compete with the RG offering things like BCC for Law ( not what he wants to do) that they just won't fill the course/ have to fill the course with unsuitable students. Its such a ridiculous system.

What confuses me is how, if RG are dropping grade requirements so significantly, they are still able to award an ever increasing proportion of 1st and 2.1 degrees? It makes a mockery of the insistence that there is grade parity across institutions.