Do admissions tutors notice or care which school applicants attend?

[inkyfingers]

Sorry if it's a bit basic. But does it matter? At work a colleague said that grammar school applicants are going to get offers because adm tutors are so impressed with the school name etc. Of course my son is at a very good comprehensive and about to enter the sixth form. But wonder if it won't cut it with RG tutors.

I'm hoping its the subjects, grades and personal statement that will count.

Admissions tutors will not take the school into account but some will look at your home post code to check for deprivation and may make a lower offer as a result. Why not phone the universities and ask them? They welcome contact from applicants and their parents.

Unless your school is particularly famous, admissions tutors, unless they have some local knowledge, would be unlikely to have even heard of it.

I went to a private secondary school and every year (including mine and my brother's) people left to go to state sixth form (often not very good ones but had bucket loads of tutoring) as they and their parents believed they were more likely to get/get lower offers from oxbridge/RG coming from an average/poor sixth form. I have no idea if there is any truth to it though.

Clued up admissions tutors will know that 4As from an underachieving comp in the arse end of nowhere says more about you than 4As from Eton ever can. I'd be surprised if they distinguished between public schools and superselective grammars though.

It's been a year or two since I was involved in (Oxbridge) admissions but as I remember you get some relevant info about the school's performance beyond simply its name/type. Someone who is involved in admissions right now could probably corroborate that.

In any case whenever I was doing it we definitely paid attention to the type of school. As dilys said, strong results/predictions from an average school are a lot more impressive than the same from a very well resourced one (like Westminster or Eton). Similarly evidence of lots of reading around and a strong interview from a candidate at a school with, say, very little history of Oxbridge admissions is more impressive than the same from a candidate at a school which we know is v. clued up about interview prep.

I'm sure when I was interviewing it was also evident on the form if students had changed school for sixth form (i.e. had done GCSEs somewhere else), though again, someone who is involved in admissions right now could corroborate that.

As a Head of 6th Form with overall charge of UCAS references, I have been told to start each reference with a short paragraph about the school, then to state how long the child has been there. Admissions tutors would see that. No idea how much follow-up research is done.

Adnissions tutors are told (briefly) about your school.
Is is private or selective. Is it outstanding etc. Oh and how long a child has been there.

If a child's school is particularly poor and the child has been there many years, the university may consider that.

Similarly, some tutors, have particular schools that they will at least give a nod to. But this does not mean an offer.

Yes the school a UCAS applicant attended for GCSE is a factor in admissions. Different universities and courses treat the relevant data differently.

I know very little about the system (as yet) but I wonder if Admissions Tutors build up a sort of unwritten knowledge about schools which have provided good students in the past?
I mean that if a whole succession of students over the past ten years all came from "Blank School" would that give any new applicants from that school a boost? It's a bit like a racehorse being "out of a good stable" if you follow me.

Rez in a lot of unis, the post of Admissions Tutor is a rotating one, so someone new will be doing it every couple of years.

In any case, the module tutors won't have necessarily seen any UCAS applications and so won't know (or care) where they went to school, so is highly unlikely that there will be any implicit or explicit consideration of this for other admissions

Thank you - that's actually quite reassuring. he doesn't want to go to the local grammar for sixth form, but inevitably people do.