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?

Wow, such low grades for RGs. When my two were applying a few years ago, their offers were all AAB to A*AA. To me, it says universities are really struggling to fill spaces because young people are turning away from a life-time of debt with no hope of a good grad. job at the end of their 3 to 4 years study. I am sure shockingly high rents are also a turn off for young people when considering going to university. The dream of having a highly educated workforce is crumbling because the high paid jobs at the end of their study are just not there.

I just checked 3 RG unis who have the course DS applied for in their clearing already.

DS’s offers from them were ABB (the standard offer). They’re all in clearing now for BBC or BCC.

such a shame he’s applied for 2026 (gap year) and not 2025 - he’ll definitely be getting those reduced grades or better! And I guess they won’t be confirming a 2026 place on BBC/BCC if he does slip a few grades.

such a stupid system- can’t they speed up the marking/ admin/ process so kids can apply with grades in hand rather than all this guesswork?

@Paris66 Because they have dumbed the courses down? I think most employers see that all the time. They don’t trust grades and some universities already and certainly some courses.

have to fill the course with unsuitable students

In what way are they unsuitable? Do tell.

@RainbowBagels Aren’t Lincoln champs of reeling in students - used to be loads of unconditional offers now it’s just low grades. My cat will be qualifying soon.

Plus, for law, who needs 25,000 plus grads a year excluding international students? When added to all the other arts and humanities degrees, the cream rises and it’s so dispiriting for the others.

Yes but then you have some employers doing uni blind recruitment where a 1st from a uni ranked 75 accepting CCD could possibly be judged as better than a 2.1 from a top 10?

I think a few points have been missed here.
Firstly these unis have for years been offering lower entry requirements for international students so some of it is just taking a few UK students on lower grades to replace the lost international students on lower grades.
Secondly you cannot compare 2024 and 2025 results with the three preceding years when there were teacher assessed grades and lower grade boundaries and more people attaining top grades.
There was also a huge inequality of teaching in the covid years so some bright students are probably still catching up.
Finally A levels are an indication of uni success but for some courses the skill range needed is far wider eg health science courses with a practical element.
Yes there are some subjects that require top grades to be able to succeed on the course but a lot of the grade requirements are also based on supply and demand rather than needing to be A* material to cope with the course.
I think it’s more of a concern that unis have been giving out more top grades than a generation ago and that must be the issue for employers.

@Paris66 How often does that actually happen though? Employers are not looking at ability to get these degrees in detail. They might be looking at critical thinking, ability to articulate an answer, presentation skills, general fit for company and trainability. Lots of things that aren’t degree related. I think it’s now accepted university blind hasn’t changed much at top employers. Cream rises. Grads with lesser qualifications need to score highly in other ways and quite often they don’t. Plus there are jobs that aren’t that fussy.

Grads with lesser qualifications need to score highly in other ways and quite often they don’t

Quite often they do. And they have qualities that can't be taught - or bought. Social skills, work ethic, initiative and so on. Employers aren't daft.

I do think that there is room for everyone and some of the best academics that I’ve met have come from non-elite universities. There are many paths to excellence and such diversity is enriching.

@fluffythecat1 I think the academic world for young grads is very different from working in a business with demanding clients, very tight deadlines that mean significant hours at work and with $ millions involved.

I looked at the grad requirements of a magic circle law firm recently. It’s looking for resilience! That’s because they throw a lot at recruits at pace and they know Oxbridge with short terms will probably produce resilient and intelligent people used to working hard to meet deadlines. That doesn’t mean they don’t look at others but not so many recruited will be CCC at A level and come from a low ranked university even when they don’t know which uninersity. I realise that’s aspiring to a very highly paid job but many employers will want similar attributes as well as competence.

Some scientists clearly don’t need all these attributes but the most disappointed grads are arts and humanities.

@TizerorFizz i was talking about accommodation for year 2 onwards - it’s possible in lots of cities as I’ve been doing my research for Ds. A lot of unis still have some first year accommodation at around £5-5.5k too which isn’t much more than minimum loan.

Oh I didn't know that about Lincoln. I know people who went and liked it. It was the low grades that put us off tbh. It looks like a really good course and right up DS's street in terms of modules but the low grades made DS a bit concerned.

Ignore my earlier post - it was meant for a different thread 🤣

DD has friends at Lincoln. They love it.

This is another reason why universities pitch entry grades as high as possible - they know that low entry grades can be potentially offputting. It's a difficult balancing act.

It’s exactly like the market trader bartering with customers. They have to gauge the right starting price and expect to drop the price in order to sell in most cases. Only the very exquisite items will sell out at the asking price, leaving a queue behind if people who wanted it and didn’t get it.

The opposite of dropped grades is Maths at Imperial and Cambridge. They over offer - and are then over-firmed usually double the amount of places. This is knowingly done and because so so many of their candidates have perfect A Level predictions and perform well in interview. The final stage is the STEP exam taken in June which shows understanding at a level A level cannot measure. The psss rate is set at a level to fill the places - usually half will fail. As this is part of the UCAS offer, half of the firmed offer holders find on results day that they didn’t get in as they failed STEP despite getting all A star at A Level. It’s a different way of rationing places.

Exactly. Then many of those disappointed Cambridge/Imperial applicants will take up their reserve choice. That's why Southampton deliberately makes itself attractive as a reserve. It knows it can't compete with more vibrant cities for firm offer-holders, but it can absolutely compete for reserve offer-holders. It won't know how many Clearing places it has until it knows how many Reserve offer-holders it is getting.

My DC is a case in point. He was choosing between offers from Imperial (needing two A Stars), Bristol (needing one A Star) & Southampton (needing one A Star, but with strong hints of flexibility).

He wasn't confident of getting two A Stars and not sufficiently keen on Imperial to throw caution to the winds. He also knew that putting Bristol as a reserve option would scupper his accommodation chances. In the end he rejected Imperial, and firmed Bristol with Southampton as a very worthy reserve (brilliant department but in a less exciting city).

He will probably get Bristol, but in a parallel universe he could have firmed Imperial with a very high chance of ending up at Southampton.

Just had a look and it says Durham are in clearing although when I click on it I can’t see that the grades are any different to the usual entry requirements…,

Couple of points. Firstly, the Russell Group was set up to campaign for universities with a strong focus on research. Nothing to do with undergraduate teaching. 'Lower ranking' RG universities according to MN are still internationally recognised for their research (not teaching). There are also plenty decent Universities between the RG and post-92 universities, including some Ancient (Aberdeen, St Andrews), some Red Brick (Reading, Nottingham, Hull, Cardiff, Leicester) and Glass Plate (Sussex, UEA, Lancaster, Essex, Kent).

Secondly, the grades students get at A level are linked to the quality of teaching they receive and the level of privilege/deprivation they have experienced. I work in STEM (pharmaceuticals) and there are plenty of recruits with 'poor' A levels and degrees from low ranking Universities who were the first in their family to go to University and are super-smart despite their apparently weak academics. All a RG degree tells us is that Mum and Dad had money, in fact our global head of R&D just has an undergraduate degree from a post-92 University, despite there being a multitude of people with RG PhDs in the company (about half of R&D has a PhD).

@JaninaDuszejko "All a RG degree tells us is that Mum and Dad had money"

This prejudice is crass and unjustified. RG universities have many less privileged students, some of whom will have battled against the odds to be there.

Your other points are valid, but you went too far with this statement.

Yes,that statement is nonsense, even more so now that there are many more widening participation programmes.

And Nottingham and Cardiff are RG (for what it's worth).

Wow, such low grades for RGs. When my two were applying a few years ago, their offers were all AAB to A*AA. To me, it says universities are really struggling to fill spaces because young people are turning away from a life-time of debt with no hope of a good grad. job at the end of their 3 to 4 years study.

Home student numbers are not decreasing. The low grade boundaries are reflecting the fact that the funding model is broken. The tuition fees have not gone up in line with inflation so they no longer provide the income required. This was partly compensated for by taking in more international students. They have been put off by the hostile environment / economic issues in home countries. So now universities (RG especially) are reacting to this by making cohorts bigger. More students in each seminar means some gains from volume of delivery.

@JaninaDuszejko Are you saying Nottingham and Cardiff are not RG? I think you will find they are. I think everyone now knows St Andrews, Bath, Loughborough and Lancaster (and increasingly Surrey and maybe Reading) might as well be RG. They are not post 92 universities.

The big issue is the post 92 universities and their ability to educate low grade A level students taking humanities and arts degrees for a job. This is where there is a huge problem with employment. There are not enough jobs! It’s not sciences where many do a masters to upgrade anyway. History or Law, for example, is much more valuable from a RG or RG plus 4 university. It simply is not the same as a former college of HE! Never has been and never will be.

What any of this had to do with parental income is beyond me, except at extreme margins. All students can get a loan. There’s lots of advice available. From what I have seen students restrict themselves by wanting to stay in home city and not bother to make new friends. Money doesn’t determine this. Possibly culture does.

Plus research does make a difference to teaching. It’s inevitable. All the great universities of the world have outstanding research.

There was an article in the Times last month with analysis by UCAS (British 18-year-olds applying for undergraduate courses hits record high) I don't have a share token but it begins:
"The number of British 18-year-olds applying for undergraduate study has reached a record high, with more than nine in ten applicants receiving at least one offer.

The latest UCAS figures...show that 328,390 British 18-year-olds had applied for courses by June 30, up 2.2% compared with the same time last year.

...International demand for UK higher education remains strong, with a 2.2% rise in the number of overseas applicants. Applicants from China reached a record level, increasing by 10% on last year's figures. There is also significant increases in applicants from Ireland, Nigeria and the US, which saw a 14% rise.

But the data...shows that the application rate - the proportion of the 18-year-old population in the UK who applied - has fallen to 41.2% from 41.9% in 2024."

I've just looked at clearing and in my son's subject are UCL, Durham, Edinburgh, Manchester, York, Nottingham, KCL, Sheffield, Birmingham, Leeds, Exeter....the list goes on and on. They have not dropped grade requirements (yet) though.