Durham - maths/ Maths & Comp Sc/Comp Sc

[poet123]

Would like to know how is the Maths course or even the maths and Computer Science course at Durham? There seem to be maths courses available on clearing. Being a high ranked university why does that course seem to have spaces in clearing unlike other highly ranked uni's? or it is just a one offf this year?

No comment on the quality of the courses themselves but I’d suspect that some of these listed courses might not actually materialise in Clearing properly or certainly not at grades lower than the standard offer and not for home students. Until the A Level results are available to them in the embargo period in the week before results are issued to students, they don’t know exactly how many have met the offer or not and how many near-misses there are.

But I guess the fact they are appearing suggests they are prepping and maybe expecting to have some places.

Are all courses appearing in the same kind of format or just a few?

I wonder if many unis are prepping more for Clearing now. Last year, there was a big drop in international applicants and also lots didn’t meet their offers, so more unis went to Clearing. Mosttake people with lower than the standard offer…but some might be prepping to take people who exceed their offer and are looking to ‘trade up’ instead of taking near-misses.

Anecdotally, I’ve heard Durham almost offer another mini application round after results day. People with a missed offer and people who are interested in Clearing can be left waiting for several days whilst Durham gather them all and weigh them and decide who to allocate the few places to. People sometimes complain because whilst this is happening, other good Clearing places are vanishing. Perhaps advertising now, is part if an attempt to raise awareness of Durham in Clearing, as people might not expect them to appear there. Only guessing though.

I don't think Durham normally does much in clearing at all. If they're already saying they've spaces in clearing, then they clearly didn't have enough applicants they thought were good enough this year.

Durham only seems to have Maths, and Maths and Stats listed under Clearing places for UK applicants. Computing Science is only open to International applicants in their Clearing listing. There are two separate categories - you have to check the right category relative to the applicant's fee status.

It's not something new for this year - last year Durham had 94 courses in Clearing

There used to be Adjustment for people who did better than expected in their A Levels and wanted to trade up, and then Clearing, where courses would drop their entry requirements to fill spaces.

UCAS got rid of Adjustment a few years back. Now there's only Clearing, so what you're seeing listed are essentially the spaces that used to be held for Adjustment. I wouldn't expect the grade requirements to drop for competitive courses like Maths and Computer Science.

My DS did mmath at Durham a few years ago and virtually everyone he knew had at least 3 A stars

It is probably quite difficult for Durham to know exactly how many maths students they will get once results are out. The big unknown is how many "Cambridge rejects" they will get. Cambridge makes about twice as many maths offers as they have places, with the STEP exams being the decider. So until the STEP results are out, and Cambridge have made decisions about near misses, Durham won't know how many people will be taking them up as an insurance offer. Basically, there will be around 250 people not making their Cambridge maths offer, so it depends how those are distributed between the next tier of universities.
It's not such an issue in other subjects, as there isn't the same degree of over-offering, so the numbers involved are presumably much smaller.