Help us narrow this down please. (Uni choices).

[MouldyFridge]

DS needs to narrow the short list down to 5 courses. (Currently has 8 from 6 unis).
Looking for experiences of the courses or the places (or anything really) that can help narrow this down.

Cambridge and St Andrews are definitely going down.
He likes Lancaster but can’t decide between the courses.
He likes Loughborough but can’t decide between the courses.
He likes Lincoln but not sure on the course.
He likes the sound of the course Durham but wasn’t so keen on Durham itself.

Cambridge - NatSci
St Andrews - Chemistry and Physics
Lancaster - NatSci or Chemistry
Loughborough - NatSci or Chemistry
Lincoln - Chemistry
Durham - Chemistry and Physics

Some context:
We are from a rural part of the North West (don’t know whether that makes a difference).
He’s at a state school (always has been).
Predicted grades A stars and As in Chemistry, Physics, Maths and Further Maths + EPQ.
GCSEs - 8x9s, 1x8 and 1x7. (8 and 7 were English Lang and lit).
He has a ton of work experience and career wise thinking something so do with energetics/energetic chemistry
He is out of year (should have left now but only going in Y13) because of issues earlier in secondary school (he re-did Y9 when he started a new school).

Not sure why, but Lancaster is low on the league tables (Complete University Guide) for Chemistry - it's ranked 33 for Chemistry, which is in marked contrast to its overall position of 10, or its position of 11 and 9 for maths and physics, respectively.

Agree with the pp - ditch Lincoln. My dd studies natural sciences at Bath and applied to Cambridge, Loughborough, Exeter and can’t remember her fifth choice. She was really impressed with Loughborough but chose Bath as nearer to home.

deleted as posted twice

Leeds, Nottingham and Birmingham are alternative NatSci 'safe' options instead of Lincoln.

Get him to look at the clearing grades for all the courses he's interested in on Thursday - he might find his safe choice doesn't need to be as 'safe' as he thinks.

Nope ignore that bit about Durham from @Mumteedum. It has about one third privately educated - as does many of the top ranked universities. My DD says there’s actually quite a bit of anti private school sentiment - she did go to one but definitely does not volunteer that info!
There is no housing shortage anymore.
She has not come across and ‘gown vs town’ sentiment and as she is the charity liason for her college comes into more contact with the ‘natives’ than most students. Of course there is some resentment as it is such a small city and students do quite overwhelm it, and I imagine the rental situation is tough for local people but it’s local people who own the housing! Anyway my DD says by and large everyone is friendly and take some pride in having the university there. The college system is not like Oxbridge but does give students a sense of identity and instant social life. I cannot comment on the course you mention however.

@MiddleAgedDread that's interesting that you say that about tuition fees – I mentioned similar once on a thread but was shouted down (fair enough – no personal experience of Scottish unis, more just the thought that DS2 had when applying).

In fact I now know a couple of students from near me in England who have had a great time in Scotland and AFAIK the fees issue has not come up. One likes it so much they are staying in Scotland for their work role.

The OP's DS clearly is happy with a small town and in fact seems to have chosen those on purpose. What is the reason behind that @MouldyFridge ? I can't lie, much as DS loves his uni and course at Lboro, he sometimes wishes it was a bigger place. Mind you, he is looking at doing a PhD and was at first saying "deffo Notts" but now that has become "hmmmm might stay here" :D

Do you live somewhere small? Or maybe a big big city and he fancies a more cosy feel? Mate of DS's from school started with him at Lboro and hated it so much he left after 5 weeks and restarted the following year at Brum. Mind you he didn't love the uni thang overall, so he's not a great guide,

Lincoln use to be ranked highly for chemistry but not sure know but lots avoid as it’s known as the uni that everyone got an unconditional offer as desperately needed bums on seats, they swapped this last year and gave offers then swapped most to unconditional offers a couple of months before results.

That was my thought too.

Unless he's so keen to go there it would be his Firm it seems a bit pointless to use up a choice .as it will be in Clearing

If he didn’t like Durham when visiting, don’t list it. No prob.
But I’d reiterate that the housing issues were due to too many students after COVID grades and those have worked through the system meaning the last couple of years, there have been plenty of housing.

This stuff about private school students …..again! Honestly, all good unis have a number of private school students and they are always a real minority. And most of the careers grads go into have them too. And guess what…they are just people. Uni is about getting out there are widening your horizons and being open to meeting all kind of different people, not wanting to shut yourself away with the familiar. It seems parents often need reminding of this too as it’s often parents on MN who seem to see a proportion of privately educated kids as a bad thing. I always wonder where this comes from or why it’s such a strong feeling for some.

In the areas of the country with the highest proportions of privately educated kids, most go to day schools and most live in streets of other middle class kids are are next down to families doing similar jobs who chose state schools. And they all end up at the same unis. The vast majority aren’t the braying poshos people seem to get in their minds or imagine places like Durham or Bristol are over-run with or needing to be avoided.

“Get him to look at the clearing grades for all the courses he's interested in on Thursday - he might find his safe choice doesn't need to be as 'safe' as he thinks.”

Good point - will get him to do that.

Re the private school arguments. Personally I haven’t given it a lot of thought, and I doubt DS has. It hasn’t been a factor. The main factors are course and location.

Im sort of in agreement with everyone that he should drop Lincoln. However, I am not going to tell him what to do. It’s his university, he needs to decide (with some friendly advice of course).

Im not working on Wednesday so thinking it would be good to see if DS wanted to do a day trip to Durham with me. We can just explore the city and see what he thinks of it in general without the pressure of the open day. If he still isn’t keen then that solves that problem. As a PP said, no point in living somewhere he doesn’t like.

Nope ignore that bit about Durham..... It has about one third privately educated - as does many of the top ranked universities.

Rounding to +/- 20% and redefining "many"@mondaytosunday ? 😀

Durham 39.1% - higher than anywhere else bar RAC

St A 36.0%

Imperial 33.0%

Of other top ranked unis - plenty of scope for disagreement as to how that might be defined - but taking CUG overall rankings

Oxford 31.4%

Cambridge 28.2%

LSE 26.0%

Loughborough 18.7%

Bath 28.2%

Warwick 19.4%

Lancaster 10.0%

Just looking at CUG chemistry ranking in the top ten some of the above drop out and we'd find

York 13.4%

Edinburgh 32.1%

Bristol 24.6%

Liverpool 12.1%

Strathclyde 7.1%

All the stats are published by HESA though probably more easily summarised at somewhere like https://www.thetimes.com/uk-university-rankings/league-table

Whilst that is the inconvenient truth I must admit I've never quite understood the angst about being in a uni hall / lecture / seminar / sport teams / social event with someone who happened to go to a private school.

With those grades and his demographics he definitely doesn’t need all 3 Ls. Possibly only one and definitely not Lincoln. Have you/he checked whether he qualifies for a contextual /widening participation off at any of his widest interest list (excluding Cambridge obvs), as this can change the source of insurance offers? And definitely watch clearing closely - chemistry offers can be hoovered up quite a range of places, potentially allowing him to use his 5 slots more strategically.

Would Bath, Warwick or Birmingham interest him? I assume you have excluded London?

From memory he does qualify for contextual offers based on postcode and household income. (But not for school, he would have if we hadn’t moved him to an out of catchment - long complicated story). I think, but not 100% certain, that he qualifies for contextual offers from all of them. I haven’t nothing better to do for the next half hour so I’m going to have a look and settle that in my own mind.

Off the top of my head
He looked at Birmingham, actually went there but he didn’t like the city - too big.
Warwick was discounted because of the course - too biology based. (But don’t quote me on that, it could have been a different one).
London is a definite no. It was discussed. He outright refused to consider it. He hates London. Too big and busy.

Yes, he does qualify for contextual/widening participation offers. I’m guessing that means he will get lower grade offers from the unis and that does change things - some of them are up to 3 grades lower! (But every uni website says this isn’t guaranteed, it’s just “up to” or “typical contextual offer”)

This does however help with figuring out any potential insurance places.

Lancaster NatSci drops to ABB From A+AA
Lancaster chemistry to BBB from AAB
Loughborough NatSci to AAB from A+AA
Loughborough chemistry BBB from AAB
Durham to ABB From A+AA
St Andrews doesn’t change unless I’m reading it wrong because they want A in chem, phys and maths as a minimum.
Lincoln 104 points from 112
and Cambridge doesn’t do contextual offers.

(The + is substitute for star because it was doing strange things).

If he gets an offer from Cambs and firms that and then misses the offer, St A might not be the best insurance – as it is quite likely to be very similar to Cambs. Ofc it may not be. And there is nothing stopping him insuring at the same level (DS2 did – he was hoping if he missed L boro that Leeds would flex (unlikely tbh but thankfully not needed)). But it's something to bear in mind.

I studied a humanities subject at St Andrews then masters at Durham. State school student.

I loved St A’s, did not like Durham. Go with gut on location as it’s a long time to spend live somewhere you don’t love. For context, I found Durham much more ‘rah’ than St A’s.

Things to consider are:

• Insurance offer needs to be a step down on firm offer. Does this work for C vs St A vs Durham? Durham from my limited experience are not flexible.
• St A’s (used to) focus on personal statement vs Durham. Can’t talk to that now but I was also a year behind due to illness, not an issue at St A’s.
• cost - both have very high accommodation costs vs alternates. Just not the supply in town and many students with relatively high budgets compared to other uni locations.

Best of luck.

@clary sorry, for some reason I missed your first post earlier today. He just seems to prefer smaller. We are in the back end of beyond (to put it politely) and big cities and lots of people seems to scare him. He’s a lot more comfortable in smaller towns/cities. We did go to some “big cities” they weren’t rules out straight away but he just wasn’t happy/comfortable. His preference so I’m happy to support that.

Re St A offers and insurance - we will just have to see, it’s the only one (except Cambridge) which he is definitely 100% happy with. Cambridge seems like a random lottery to me so St A is likely to be his firm choice (I could be completely wrong of course). I also might not have been reading the info about St A contextual offers right and there’s something I’ve missed. It wasn’t as clear cut as the other unis. Although, as mentioned by Sunshineat5pm there was a lot about how they put a lot of weighting on the personal statement over the grades.

@Skybluepinky that’s not a good sign about Lincoln giving out unconditionals for “bums on seats”. I wonder if that has skewed their stats towards positive somehow? Perhaps people who wouldn’t have made the grade for uni saying they are happy and course is challenging them? Hmmmm. Thank you for that info.

Has he considered Bath? A very STEM university and they do natural sciences. Expensive for accommodation though.

Yeh my DD got an unconditional from Lincoln if she firmed it. Not for science. Her PGs were lower than your DS's as well – A A/B and B. If I were him I certainly wouldn't waste a slot with Lincoln, esp as he has five other options he likes.

Have Bath and York been discounted? They both seem to have relative smallness as benefits and are excellent unis. I would say that in some ways, Lincoln and York are similar places ( minus the enormous hill in Lincoln!).

Whilst what you say about Highers and Scottish universities is broadly correct, most if not all Scottish students starting at St Andrews to study maths will have Advanced Higher, and most courses allow direct entry to second year if you have the correct results.

@boys3 I don’t get the anti private school angst either. To me it says dc need to mature! It seems to be a form of discrimination we feel it’s ok to promote. It’s about time all dc were prepared to give all other dc a chance instead of being prejudiced.

Who would look at Lincoln in the same cohort as StA and Cambridge? I’m bemused.

Lancaster has a very strong collegiate identity if he likes that kind of thing. It helps with an immediate sense of belonging in a big institution and they each have their own identity. Plenty of friendly competition and rivalry too

Agree. My Dd is studying natural sciences at Bath.