Is it getting impossible for Scottish kids to get into Scottish uni's

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Please tell me it isn't so. Hearing Strathclyde business school is 5A's in first sitting these days. What are your experiences? Don't know what to advise my child for their choices as the entry requirements seem so high.

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@Stroopwaffels DD wants to do primary teaching at Strathclyde. Went to the open day where they were told they got over 1000 applications but only 150 places were offered. She's very worried and so am I. What hope do our kids have?

She may meet the Strathclyde WP criteria due to the school she attends, but Glasgow doesn't take school into account. She could move in with her grandparents (wealthy but SIMD2 postcode) but I think she may need to be recorded as having living there for several years (and they don't have room anyway!)

@Stroopwaffels one of the issues with kids travelling down to England to go to uni is that the maintenance portion of Scottish loans is less generous, the income cut off for receiving the maximum maintenance loan is lower in Scotland ( ie, greater amount of parental contribution needed) and last time I looked there wasn't a London weighting element.
I admit I haven't checked this recently but it was enough for us to say sorry, we can't afford a London Art School to DS3 having looked at the cost of halls, luckily he got into GSA.
We currently have three students in the house, luckily one is living at home and one is self funding a Masters., but there's no extra money.
I've looked into this a lot, as two of mine applied for courses with with v low acceptance rates for home students ( they both got in).
Incidentally DS3s girlfriend got into Edinburgh without 5As to do a Modern Languages degree, she lives in a deprived postcode. However she has struggled, not because of ability, but because she has been left to get on with it on her own, struggling with commuting as her family couldn't/wouldn't help her with sorting out accomodation and other hurdles. In comparison, I made helping my two get in virtually an extra part time job and was able to call on various people for advice, middle class privilege.
Many more pupils from the private school local to me are applying down south to places like Exeter and Durham or London unis and loads seem to go to Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh definitely not seen as a shoe in these days.

Its not just Scottish students that struggle to get offers.

My DS applied to Edinburgh from England (so fee paying), would have met course requirements with predicted grades and would also have received a plus flag due to home postcode and state school. Didn’t get an offer. He did get offers from his other (rUK) choices.

I don't know quite how this connects but it was striking to me when looking at the Times university rankings list that came out last week that, which ever Scottish university you looked at, the average tariff was significantly higher than it was for the other UK universities surrounding them.

So for eg Glasgow and Ed are ranked 12 and 13 respectively, with entry requirements of 206 & 191 Ucas points. The universities immediately above and below them require 158 & 148. Its even more pronounced further down the rankings - Stirling is joint 53rd and requires 171, vs Chichester (also joint 53rd) which needs 126 and Lincoln (54th) which needs 120.

I know the rankings are flawed and that other rankings would throw up a different order - I was just so struck by the far higher entry requirements for Scottish universities than those required by other universities in a similar bracket.

Looking at it another way, if you ordered the Times list by UCAS entry points required, the list would go:

St Andrews 208
Glasgow, Cambridge 206
Strathclyde 203
Imperial, Oxford 200
Edinburgh 191
Aberdeen 185
Durham 183
LSE 182
Dundee, UCL179

I'm trying to think through whether and how this connects to this thread discussion. Does it reflect both Scottish unis being able to ask for higher grades because there is higher demand from Scottish students (ie no tuition fees) and more constraints on places because of the lower income from fees?

Interested in others thoughts.

@WobblyLondoner thanks for this. That reflects my initial thoughts. I've just been looking at Durham and shocked how comparatively low the requirements are for "such a prestigious" uni. Do kids get in with those grades or is the actual requirement much higher?

What are UCAS entry points?

I went to Glasgow and certainly my impression was / is that Oxford is hugely harder to get into!

www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/student-advice/applying-to-uni/ucas-points

I don't think the entry points works in the same way for Scottish and RUK students as the Scottish students usually apply after fifth year with grades in hands and get unconditionals eg. DS2 got an unconditional St Andrews offer with 5As but by the time he arrived he also had 3 Advanced Highers which would bump up his entry points significantly but had no effect on his offer ( they don't add all the Higher s and AHs together for points, they only count the most advanced qualifications in each subject).
To sum up, our exam system does bump up entry points but this doesn't really affect offers ( unless you are doing second year entry).

Yeah was thinking that Scottish students have a chance for greater ucas points. I know our school is pushing 8 exams over 2 years irrespective of higher or advanced higher.

See when Edinburgh uni say "Scotland Fee Rate students
Scotland fee rate includes UK nationals who are normally resident in Scotland, and EU nationals with settled/pre-settled status who are normally resident in the UK. The Scottish Government places strict limits on the number of Scotland fee rate students that Scottish universities can admit. This means that Scottish universities are limited in the number of offers they can make to Scotland fee rate applicants."

Why is that? I thought it just gave them insufficient money then the uni's had to offer to non Scottish for more money?

Because Scotgov pay the £2k per student per year fee to the universities. So there will be a budget as to how many places they can fund as well as it being less than the uni needs per space.

Students aren't charged those fees at all.

In 2018 DS got 4 unconditional offers inc Glasgow, Strathclyde and Heriot Watt and an offer to go straight to 2nd year from 2 of them but a rejection from Edinburgh. He had 4 As and 1B with his B being 1 mark from an A and the school refused to appeal.

@Bigboysdontcry that's a scunner.

The Edinburgh business school example I looked at from last year had 11% Scottish places. No breakdown on widening access and scot gov say "By 2030, we want 20% of students entering university to be from Scotland's 20% most deprived backgrounds."

So where does that leave the kids.

The points required is a bit misleading for Oxford as applicants have to get through the entrance exams and interviews first. Their entrance offer (in terms of A levels) is typically lower than other universities - 3 As vs 3A* for example.

Thanks to other posters for the information about entry points.

Got to say the system does sound very unfair for Scottish students.

Three A* at A level is 168 - that's the most you can get doing 3 A levels (which I think is still the norm - certainly at DS's school). So an average tariff of 183 is pretty high!!

My DD has just started at Glasgow, after time out of school due to her DF being ill and dying, she gained entry via an access course in lieu of highers. Out of 12 in her halls, there are 3 Scottish, a mix of other U.K. countries. Although many Scottish kids commute (halls are costly)
I think uni is attainable for all in Scotland,

I think you’ve misread the stats a bit. The Business degree is massively oversubscribed with over 4100 applications, 498 offers and only 126 actual acceptances. Well over half the applications were from overseas, which is hardly surprising as the school ranks 22nd in the QS world rankings.

Edinburgh Business School had an offer rate of 11% for Scottish students, 15% for rUK and Ireland and 11% for overseas students in 2022.

On acceptances, 24% were from Scotland, 31% were from rUK and Ireland and 45% from overseas.

Yeah I only looked at one course in the business school and was talking about offers. Is the difference in offers to actual uptake down to international students declining places and Scottish students taking up more at clearing?

But Scottish students had exactly the same offer rate as overseas students. Only rUK and Ireland had a higher offer rate.

I seriously doubt that course would be in clearing.

You can't accept a place you've not been offered so it's the offer statistics that are the most important as far as potential students are concerned. I'm sure they have an algorithm that predicts how many acceptances to expect so they know how many offers to make in the different categories.

Most international students will require more support than a UK student so the higher fees are reflective of that. There will no difference in the needs (overall) of a student from Manchester compared to one from Aberdeen.

I live in a Scottish university city and at the start of the uni year, the local Facebook free sites are inundated with overseas students asking for free stuff, anything from fridges to bikes to food etc. Either they are not being supported by the uni properly or are looking for a free ride, I'm really not sure...

Sure, but 1 in 9 Scottish applicants were offered a place, as were 1 in 9 overseas applicants. 1 in 7 rUk & Ireland applicants were offered a place.

That seems pretty equitable, unless you’re saying that Scottish applicants should be treated more favourably?

I might be wrong, but I think it's if the school is in a deprived area and not the pupil postcode.
I work in quite a deprived school but there's some pretty fancy estates in out catchment but also some pretty poor areas. We had a kid a few years ago (5 higher A's) applying for medicine and I remember the head saying she'd get extra points due to where our school is.

@whotospeakto it depends on the university. They all have different WP criteria.

Strathclyde considers what school you go to for their WP criteria, in addition to postcode, being a carer, refugee etc.

So DD, who is not a carer or in a SIMD1-4 postcode, would come under their WP criteria as her school is a low achieving school.

Glasgow, on the other hand, don't take what school you went to into consideration, just the postcode, carer, refugee etc. So she would have to meet their standard entry criteria.

And then there's Dundee, who have a very broad WP criteria, to include gender identity. Tell your DC to identify as the opposite sex and they're in.

meant to add - Glasgow offer widening participation taster schemes to Glasgow City Council residents / school pupils, but not those from outside Glasgow.

And what is wierd is that despite offering these pre entry schemes based on school location, the actual WP course entry requirements don't appear to take school into consideration.