Is it worth calling Manchester (first choice) if you miss offer by one grade?

[thestudio]

Hello - would be very grateful if anyone can advise. DS has an offer for a joint honours humanities degree at Manchester Uni. If he gets a B instead of an A in one of the subjects, is it worth contacting Manchester directly to (effectively) beg them to reduce their offer?!

Would this only be the case if he has missed the grade by a few marks (and will he be able to tell from his results?)

And if so, which department would he call and who would he be trying to contact?

Thanks v much in advance for anyone who has advice or experience. I know he is anxious so although he might already have this info himself I would rather not prod him too much.

Former Admissions tutor here: it's a blackout until results are released. If you telephone or email, you won't get any sort of answer. We are under a STRICT embargo.

Wait till Clearing. If the departments wanted him, they're likely to want him with one grade lower, unless all the other students met their grades.

We get the results 24 hours before the pupils. We spend the day assessing those who didn't make the offer to see if we will still confirm their place. We'd usually rather do that than go into Clearing (at least at my place). But it will depend on how far below our offer an applicant has fallen.

There will be a central "hotline" number to call - don't try to get the department. The central hotline takes details and feeds them through to Departments. I imagine if you go to Manchester's website, the hotline number/s is already up on their home page. We employ loads of people - or redeploy them from other duties - to answer the phones, and each department will have a rota of academic staff ready to take TRANSFERRED calls. There will be many applicants - don't try to circumvent the system of try to get special treatment - we can't do it. We're bound by regulations of fairness & transparency.

Don't panic. If it's just one grade in one subject, unless the course is over-subscribed, it's likely his place will be confirmed.

Everything @poetryandwine says, and especially this:

I cannot recall that we were ever moved by special pleading. Nowadays an Overseas student might get somewhere, because everyone needs the dosh so badly. But mainly this type of phone call (and even email) just gets in the way on a frantically busy day.

Your son will be considered, along with any other applicant in his situation. We have to do this fairly & transparently.

Yes it is. I got one lower grade than they wanted at my A Levels and my university still accepted me. Didn’t even go through Clearing they just got accepted on UCAS.

But @TheGreatWesternShrew this would have happened whether you called or not.

Honestly don't call - the admissions team will do everything to let him in - foundation years. Or offering a similar course will lower grades - e.g History and Politics is normally high but History and Sociology will likely be 1 or 2 grades lower - so they may offer you that. By the time they've rejected you, they've considered everything - so just get on with other unis who who can consider for clearing. Even with extenuating circumstances during exam season (normally called Disrupted studies) you should have told them by the end of July and during exam season.

He will probably get a place if he is one grade down .
My friend’s dd wants to study Biomedical Sciences at Southampton but was worried that she would not achieve the grades.
After reading a thread on MN about Southampton lowering the grades in clearing , I told friend’s dd to check the clearing grades .
She was shocked to discover that Biomedical Sciences is now BBC or BBB.
The irony is that post Covid 2022/2023 those grades wouldn’t have been sufficient
My cousin’s dd got a ABB in 2022 and lost her place at Southampton . She then went to Portsmouth and recently achieved a first class.

Wow. At other Unis it’s AAB ( or was a few years ago in my sons day )
is this a case of less students going to Uni

Interested in this because my DD has Manchester as her firm for Economics (3As). Appreciate all you are saying about consideration of near misses etc but in terms of contacting them, would you say it was still worthwhile to do if DD slightly missed a grade? I’m thinking we will find out at 8am ucas decision and then she can collect actual results at 9am from school so if she just missed an A, is there really no point phoning and pleading her case?

Someone else gave the advice to let the School know if an exam is near the boundary and being re-marked. I thought that was good.

Gently. as @ParmaVioletTea, @AelinAG and possibly others and I have been saying, it really doesn’t help. If the target is met with applicants who made their offers, that’s that. Otherwise, the Admissions tutors will use a fair, transparent criterion for admitting some or possibly all of those who dropped a grade. Eg I have no idea whether Manchester’s Economics degree is highly mathematical; but a mathematically orientated Economics programme might, if the numbers work, start with the criterion of admitting those who dropped a grade in a non-quantitative subject.
If numbers are very short, everyone who dropped a grade may be admitted.

Tutors will prioritise being fair over being exact. Eg in my first example above, the School may be 15 Home students short and this criterion may yield 22. No one is going to exclude the last seven alphabetically, or all the Leos and Scorpios , or anything.

Thanks. I really appreciate your insights and we just need to keep fingers crossed my DD did well enough. She thinks she might have A star, A and B so hoping Manchester will still accept but I worry her handwriting is so bad that she could suddenly have a C in there!

Even though that’s not technically the offer, most admissions tutors would admit A star A star B in lieu of AAA if at all possible!

You can take this as given.

I don't think one can compare grades attained last year (24) with the year before as grade boundaries rose last year and therefore a lot of people missed their predicted grades and the unis adjusted what grades they were prepared to accept accordingly.

It is true to say that international student numbers went down and may have gone down further this year and so maybe there are some UK students who have benefitted from that.

I needed AAB for my course at Manchester. I got AAC but got a Welcome to Manchester email before I went to collect my results. I had such a fun time. Best of luck to your DS

My son applied to Newcastle to do Economics as his first choice but missed one of his required grades by a couple of marks and was in absolute pieces thinking he wouldn't get in. He got an acceptance email from them as we were walking back from his school.

They would rather have someone on the course that put it as their first choice and is keen to do well, even if they missed the grades by a couple of marks.

Tbh
No.
Get on clearing as soon as it opens
Plus Manchester Uni are putting up lists of all courses going into clearing the night before results

I have now, thank you!

Manchester are saying clearing courses will be listed from 5pm Wednesday night I think!

Always worth a call!
(no I don’t understand the new process but I do believe in kissing frogs 🐸)

9am for actual results release by school isn’t v helpful.
Clearing opens at 8am and best places will be snapped up by those with results. UCAS doesn’t have the actual results so unis in Clearing won’t know if an applicants grades are sufficient or not.
It’s late now, but I’d point this out to the school tomorrow and say results are needed at 8am. Last year, some top okaces had a v few places in Clearing on popular courses at 8am, but by 9.30 sites had been updated to reduce the no of courses available.
Schools and colleges should not be disadvantaging their candidates by releasing results late.

Thanks. I have emailed the school making this point so will await their response. Obviously it is late to raise this. It’s a shame because it is a state comp in a deprived area that previously met contextual offers but is now so high performing that it doesn’t …but I think these are areas where we are possibly disadvantaged still.

It’s really NOT worth a call - unless it’s to a Clearing hotline.

There is a fair and transparent process. You will slow it down by trying to get special treatment. You won’t be the only one or special.

I agree with @ParmaVioletTea

I’m just looking at my work emails now (I’m technically on hols but of course the work never stops) and we have several emails telling us that we should not engage in any discussions about places and grades. Absolutely not.

Oh absolutely, one problem I found though was that while academic and admin staff knew this, the wider public didn't so you'd still have to shut down phone calls/emails etc before d day. As people would try, and can't really be blamed for that.

Could we have a Time Machine to make the next 36 hours fly by 🤣. DD needs three A’s for Manchester. Doesn’t want to go anywhere else. I am predicting A*A B so good to hear that there is still a possibility of getting in with a grade drop. Keep saying that this will not define her. Good luck everyone and as I keep telling my daughter “what is for you won’t go by you”!