DD has higher than expected predicted grades- any ideas for a ‘stretch’ option for economics?

[LysistrataSusanCarter]

DD had a list of three universities she liked in her expected grade range and two insurance options. Her favourite is York, which asks for AAB.

Predicted grades have come back today and hers are A, A, A for economics, classics and maths. I think that York would still be her first choice, but she is being encouraged to at least consider a couple of more ambitious options too and she is now also a little worried she is undershooting. Her interests are more in health and development economics than in finance.

However, we are a bit stuck about other options. She doesn’t want to be in London, wants a campus university and no more than a couple of hours from london on the train. She is autistic and dyslexic, and would need good support around neurodiversity. There are several (e.g Warwick, Cambridge) where an offer is highly unlikely. The only other options we can think of are Bath and Exeter (not sure she has high enough GCSE grades for Bath- they were 6-8’s.) it’s not the end of the world if she overshoots and doesn’t get an offer somewhere as she loves both York and Sussex.

Before we go back to the drawing board, I wonder if there are any other suggestions?

You give preferred departments for the civil service but departments like International Development and Treasury will be ranked 1st by the majority of applicants so you could well be allocated an unpopular one like HMRC or a less popular one. Though once in there are internal only civil service vacancies and people do switch departments.

Nottingham? Campus uni and well rated for economics.

This is the bottom line. If you are lucky enough to find the place that just feels right, go for it!

@OneZanyCat For the Assistant Economist roles, the web site says you can choose three locations. It also says there are 70 recruiting departments and some don’t recruit every year. This year, none in London. Fast stream is possibly different. Eg social research had 16 vacancies and over 3000 register their interest. Like most jobs these days, considering other roles is beneficial. The civil service publish their fast stream recruitment data every year. For 2925, 84,003 registered for 676 vacancies. Diplomatic and Policy were easily the 2 most popular.

Yes they seemed to have changed it. Fast stream now says can apply for 3 different schemes rather than departments. Applying for departments was always a bit pointless as everyone had the same first choices.

www.civil-service-careers.gov.uk/fast-stream/fs-all-schemes/

My DD vastly overshot her grades for her offer from her preferred Uni - needed AAB, got an offer of ABB if she got A in her EPQ. She got two A stars, an A and an A in her EPQ. She's very happy with her choice. There's not really that much difference in between the top slice of Uni's outside the obvious and it depends on the course as well. DD didn't want to apply for Oxbridge, didn't like the vibe or the course, didn't want to go to London so this streamlined the choices!

Birmingham?

Hi @poetryandwine when you talk about Tiered offers, what are they? And why do you strongly disagree with them?
Thanks

@LysistrataSusanCarter All best with choice Op. York is a gorgeous place from the few days I got to visit there whilst in Uni, if she decides to stick to her guns 😊!

Hi, @NamechangeRugby -

I don’t think there is an official name. This is an admissions technique used by some highly selective programmes. They make offers to the applicants with the highest PGs first. Then the next highest, etc. Depending on how it goes, they may never make offers to applicants who appear to be a very good fit based on published criteria, and those applicants may never know why.

A variant of this is culling by GCSE grades, supercurriculars or anything else that has not been published as a factor in admissions decisions. (External exams may or may not be overused, but at least everyone understands their purpose. The transparency is helpful.)

I deeply dislike this kind of tiered admissions system because it is unfair to pupils who apply in good faith. If you can fill an incoming class with students a grade up on your published admissions criteria, raise your standards.

We did, after - admittedly -two years of experimenting with tiered admissions, to make sure we could do it. It went well. But many won’t.

I hope this makes sense.

Birmingham and Bristol. Birmingham is a campus university with halls in parks. It’s really great.

Why not Warwick? My son got an offer for PPE there.

Oh and for the civil service fast stream it’s incredibly competitive. My DD wanted to do that and despite 3A*s etc and doing very well in the online test stage still wasn’t taken though to the next round.

Sheffield is indeed an excellent suggestion. But the uni accommodation isn't close to the station ...

My DS really enjoyed Sheffield as a city, prefers it now to Birmingham.

Birmingham is a good suggestion, though. Good reputation, good support in most departments. Lovely campus.

My DS didn't like his economics lectures. There were huge numbers of people and it was overwhelming.

I think York is ideal. Biased as I went there but it is lovely.

@OneZanyCat There still seem to be clear favourites!

My advice is to always have plan B down to about plan Z! The odds of landing fast stream are significantly worse than landing a place at Oxbridge!

W ho is pushing her? If she likes York she should go there, and the fact she's predicted higher takes the pressure off.

Yes good point about fast stream - certainly harder than Oxbridge. Looks around 750 place last with year with over 72k applicants. Oxbridge is circa 7k places and year with 50k applicants. So it’s over 10x less likely!

Ah yes, I see what you mean, thanks.

(I had looked up AI and it quoted that tiered offers were to do with contextual offers and additional qualifications that would be considered to be in lieu of higher grades, so thought it might be talking at cross purposes as I couldn't understand why you would be strongly against - just goes to show that AI confidentially does get things wrong sometimes!

I'm in two minds. On balance, I think it is ok for DC to have a punt and miss out (happened to two of our children - one was held onto for ages, by Bath as it happens, before rejection) In a way, I'm glad they both had the experience of bouncing back from rejection whilst still at home. It took Bristol and Bath ages to come back... practically sitting A Levels by time of offer/rejection... the delay was really valuable though because he researched and really considered lots of different pathways and options in case things went differently than planned.

York is extremely prestigious for health economics. It's basically York's specialist area within economics and for health economics research it's amongst the top 10 or 15 universities in the entire world. In that specific area in the UK only LSE could even possibly make a case for being better (unless her interest in health economics is in some kind of niche area of behavioural and mathematical economics like economic epidemiology). If she is really interested in health economics as a career then the opportunities to engage in that area, the calibre of York's staff and their connections in the field are second to none.

If she is less sure, York still has a very good reputation in the economics world. Amongst economics academics, I would say it has at least as good if not a better reputation for the quality of its economics provision than the likes of Birmingham and Sheffield. Exeter would be a little more highly regarded due to its strength in financial economics but that doesn't seem to be her interest.

Bath and Nottingham are a bit more highly thought of for economics generally so she could consider adding one or both of them since they meet her other criteria. She would probably get an offer from Nottingham so that might be a good one if she is put off by the possibility of being rejected. Bath would be more of a stretch as it's become increasingly popular for economics, so it depends how she would tolerate that uncertainty. Bath and Nottingham also have the benefit of not being very, very definitively better than York, so it wouldn't be an impossible, looking the gift horse in the mouth-type decision to ultimately choose York over either of them simply because she likes York better.

I think most people entering civil service don't go through any scheme, they just get general jobs advertised on civil service website. I don't think you can compare applying for jobs with universities, two different application processes with different rules. There's people who get through fast stream who are academically nowhere near Oxbridge standards and there's people at Oxbridge who won't get in as can't get through tests, it's different skill sets and no limits on number of jobs people apply for. The people I know who got through to fast stream were very good at talking and selling themselves.

It always used to be easiest just applying for a job on civil service website and avoiding departments like Treasury and International Development for initial job though you still need to be able to score highly on their competency based system. There's definitely a technique to it and it's about ticking the boxes on their scoring system. If you want a civil service career it's worth spending a lot of time perfecting this as every job goes through that system pretty much. I worked in it pre that system when it was a normal interview, but know people who perfected the competency based. I find it tricky as I am an analytical type person who doesn't use buzz words not a selling type who uses the civil service jargon. Definitely worth having lots of options. International development is about hardest part of civil service and also generally requires working abroad, so independence skills are needed and also autism can cause issues with some countries due to extra expenditure on services. That more affects autistic children due to education costs but some countries may not allow entry sadly.

my dd is starting York this year (on a gap year) she was predicted AstarAstarA so she could potentially have chosen elsewhere.

she loved York and was adamant it was the one for her. I am sure there will be plenty of others there with higher grades. In the end she had massive anxiety come on 3 weeks before a levels, only just managed to get into exams and was very glad she hadn’t gone for anything higher as it gave her some leeway.

@thestraycathouse thats really helpful to know. I think my DD will be similar. York just clicked for her and as PP’s have said, it’s got a great reputation.

Thanks to everyone who posted with suggestions. There has been a lot for her to think about, but all good.

Sheffield is definitely having a moment, at least at her college. We know so many kids applying there this year for a range of subjects. I did a masters qualification there, so it warns my heart.

She spoke about applications with her head of uni admissions in college yesterday. As she’s got a gap in her list, she’s going to apply to Exeter and Sheffield as a punt (I knew he’d suggest Exeter! ) so her list of will be York, Exeter, Sheffield, Sussex, Essex (surprising wildcard but apparently it’s an economics dark horse with a strong department)

I’m quite pleased she’s made a plan, and can now put it to bed until next year and enjoy a well earned summer break.

Why do you think York isn’t good enough? It’s very highly respected, an ‘old’ university, lovely city and the students we’ve had go with nd have thrived under the support there.
not heard of Lboro as a stretch choice before, that’s an interesting shift

@LysistrataSusanCarter She’s now picked Sheffield and Exeter that are ranked higher than York in the CUG. That’s 18th and 9th. Quite a few higher ranking unis are in clearing so I would have looked at them. For info: York is ranked 23, Sussex 43 and Essex 50. I don’t get the inclusion of Essex. Loughborough is ranked 17 so not much different to Sheffield or York.

Shame about london as there is an LSE course that looks v good for her BSc International Social and Public Policy with Economics