Does Bristol ever let students in with lower than expected grades ? Ds feels hes messed up his A levels

[RedRosesParmaViolets]

Just wondering if they have any latitude ?
Ds was predicted 3 a and feels he messed up a history question which would bring that to a b and messed up his biology paper and does t know the content enough for the second one
His offer was AAA would they accept anything else

You don’t need to join UCAS- just search ‘Bristol Biology UCAS and scroll down to the bottom.

This is Bristol Biology (on UCAS). Obviously this will include some contextual grades though...

Thank you

Last year, Bristol dropped grades for loads of students across many disciplines .

Thank you so much 😍

Hi, OP -

Former admissions tutor here. @rhabarbarmarmelade is right: it will come down to the School’s or programme’s need to fill its Home target. If the Overseas target has not been met, this will be intensified.

Right now I would say the situation is fluid. Admissions tutors generally prefer applicants of a given standard who have Firmed with them over Clearing candidates of the same standard.

If worst comes to worst DS will need to check this, but I would expect Bristol to consider resit marks without prejudice. It is consistent with their admissions philosophy. DS may need to think about whether it is worth a gap year.

I hope it works out this year. Biology isn’t nearly as competitive as a sexy Engineering programme but it isn’t MFL either (no disrespect to MFL which I think the country desperately needs).

Best wishes to DS.

Just a word of warning about the lowest grades screenshot that someone has posted above. They go back to 2023. That was the first year that A level grade boundaries went back to pre-Covid levels and lots of students missed grades, but were still accepted by unis. It may be that students were accepted with say BBC in 2023, but its been (say) AAB in 2024 and 2025. I therefore wouldnt place too much reliance of those grades.

But grades weren't lower overall in 2023 than 2024 or 2025 were they?

I do agree that it should only be seen as a guide though, and not relied on.

Sorry if i didn't explain it very well. The UCAS stats posted above show tgat the lowest grades accepted for that course between 2023-2025 were BBC. What I meant was that those grades might be distorted by 2023 which was a bit of a blip - lots of schools and unis got it wrong or were caught out by the change in grade boundaries so unis took students with lower grades than they ordinarily would have. So i dont mean grades overall were lower in 2023 than 2024 or 2025, but if you take 2023 out of the equation in those UCAS stats, the lowest grades might have been higher (if that makes sense!).

A-level students in 2023 faced the steepest drop in top marks on record as exam regulators in England intentionally drove grade boundaries back to pre-pandemic 2019 standards.
Despite overall top marks (A/A) plummeting from 36.4% down to 27.2%, an overwhelming majority of students still secured their top choices. Data released by UCAS on results day revealed that 79% of students successfully gained a place at their first-choice university*

Well in any case it says 100% of students with achieved grades of AAB were accepted onto the course in the last 3 years, which bodes well for the OP's DS.