Well, my d22 definitely is not interested in a high stress Oxbridge type experience even if she had the scores for it so she has been looking at universities that fall more in the middle. She’s not interested in St As either. On her short list the ones I have made notes on in autumn 2020 that listed that they required 2 APs were Strathclyde, Goldsmiths, Kent, Aberystwyth, Stirling, but those are just some of the ones we looked at. I only took notes on 10. That could be out of date info, but there may be more out there too.
Add University of Glasgow
Wow they’ve cut their requirements! It used to be 3 and 5 preferred.
Glasgow still require 3 APs at 4+ but you can enter with 2 APs as long as you have an SAT score over 1280.
I know a lot of UK lower ranked universities (lower than Glasgow maybe) offer guaranteed scholarships to US (well… all internationals) students now as well. Scholarships not based on merit but purely based on origins - essentially a discount of a few thousand pounds to entice internationals. As far as I know these ‘scholarships’ are offered to all internationals regardless of needs or any merit concerns. Would be interesting to see how many more higher ranked universities below the Golden Triangle tier start doing the same.
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Probably nearly all. Though which “higher ranked unis” are below the Golden Triangle tier?
Bristol, Glasgow, Aberdeen and the Red Bricks?
Warwick, Edinburgh, and St. A’s probably won’t need to. Likely Durham as well.
Well, all UK universities are highly ranked in some sense. I mean all research-based universities that are not Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, LSE and Kings (add Edinburgh maybe) who comprise the most ‘elite’ institutions in the country and hold a certain exploitable, international brand which insulates them (how successfully or not we shall see) from the effects of factors like Brexit and COVID. By this I mean well-established universities in the UK who are traditionally seen as very good, excellent even, but are arguably not perceived - internationally at the least - at the very top. Examples: Bath, Manchester, Bristol, Warwick, UEA, Leeds, Glasgow, Reading, Exeter, Newcastle, Liverpool, Lancaster, QMUL etc. All excellent universities which have a sizeable international student base but not as large of a brand pull as say Oxford and so may resort to scholarships of this sort to attract students. We already know much lower ranked universities than these use these scholarships, my point is that it will be interesting to see which of these, if any, will start offering them too.
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Warwick has a strong international brand in quantitative subjects/econ/business, but for the rest, outside of a few niche subjects (QMUL law, etc.), that may be true.
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The financial hit most of not all the UK schools have taken during the pandemic may affect their scholarships as well.
Again this compounds the issue, nearly every university in the UK is public, or quasi-public at the least. Universities like Oxbridge, Edinburgh, Imperial, UCL and LSE (who has a comparably tiny endowment yet receives a staggering amount of money from donors and alumni) enjoy a hefty endowment and are immensely wealthy (yet extremely poor when compared to top US schools). This is less true for most other UK universities and in fact many universities will likely financially collapse as a result of Brexit and the pandemic. This, as you say, may impact a lot of school’s ability to be able to offer these scholarships. Alternatively, it may increase their ability to offer them if it turns out to be a prudent business move which draws in more internationals. Time will only tell, I suspect this will depend on a case by case basis. For the time being UK schools are being rather flexible so this year, in particular, may be a good time for international students to consider them.
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Think of “scholarships” as “discount pricing” and you wouldn’t have to worry about where the money comes from. Say a uni had 5K Europeans paying £9K/year. If you replace them with 5K Internationals charged £18K/year but with half-tuition scholarships, your revenues stay the same.
True, though I think the discounts, if there are any, will not be more than a few thousand. Again this all speculation but your suggestion seems sensible. But some more prestigious universities will definitely attempt to leverage their brand name and reputation and enjoy as much of those higher fees as they can. I’m looking at the Oxford, LSE and Imperial type universities as well as lesser known universities but renown in specific subjects (like Warwick, QMUL, Bristol, Reading, Loughborough etc).
Whether any of this happens, I don’t know. UK universities are only recently starting to be run like businesses and so far their track-record of business sense has been lacklustre.
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I’m not worried. My D attends St. Andrews. They’ve been lamenting about their big budget shortfall due to loss of revenue from conferences, room and board and summer rentals and sessionals. They also freeze tuition for 4 years at the first year rate. Maybe that will be the next casualty, who knows. I’m not aware of any “discounts” offered to US students but we didn’t ask for any aid so there very well could be ones awarded.
The only “discount” we got from Oxford was when the pound was trading at 1.15-1.20!
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Glasgow still require 3 APs at 4+ but you can enter with 2 APs as long as you have an SAT score over 1280.
But that’s not “requiring 3 APs” if they say you can get in with 2 APs and an SAT of 1280 — which is not a very high SAT score. (It’s a good score in my book, but you know most of the kids here on CC would be disappointed in not getting better than that.) Glasgow also say they are doing test optional for September 2021 entry and you need a 3.5 GPA (again, good, but not very high in the CC world) and “advanced coursework in required subjects”. So they definitely do not require 3 APs.
Plenty of other UK universities don’t require 3 or more APs either. I haven’t looked them all up, but Exeter says this: "These options can be ‘mixed and matched’ to meet our 3 x UK ‘A level’ requirements e.g: 1 x Advanced Placement test, 1 x high school honours class and 1 x college level class. " So you could conceivably get in there with just 1 AP test!
I would be very nervous as a US student going to the UK with that level of preparation. You are already at a big disadvantage because APs are much easier and cover far less ground than A levels. And the critical importance of final exams to your degree result means that unless you are very comfortable with high stakes tests and do well on them, you are highly likely to either get a poor degree or worse still fail out before the end of your course.
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There is that.
How challenging tests may be would depend on both the subject and uni, though.
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We are both correct, surely. They still require 3 APs ordinarily unless you have an alternative set of qualifications (ie 2 APs and 1280) that meets their requirements (it is just 1 route of 3 routes). Also, I assume most students on CC are the more academically engaged kind so a 1280 (well above average mind) is still a high score and a difficult requirement for many students. I also imagine most CC kids would be disappointed with not getting a university ‘better’ than Glasgow - not that it isn’t a great institution. So you’re right that for some students the 2 APs and the SAT score may be easy but for many more statistically it is not. Anyway, it speaks to the general themes we’ve talked about already in this thread of UK schools enticing US students.
This should be on repeat every time someone asks about UK universities. The academic calendar and the style of learning/teaching/assessment means that by the time a kid realizes that he or she is in academic trouble it’s likely too late. This isn’t a bug in the system- it’s a feature. The US system where there are multiple tests, quizzes, exams, writing assignments, and lots of junctures along the way where a student realizes “hey, I might not be getting this in the way I need to”- a lot of Americans assume that they’ll be doing that in the UK, along with professors who want to give “extra credit” and ways to dig a bad grade out of the drain.
Nope. So the strength of academic prep, ability to test well, ability to have an entire grade hang on an end of semester assessment- these are much more important than American students realize.
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And often not even end of semester but end of the entire year. You might not know how badly you are doing until June of your first year, by which time it may be too late to transfer back to the US for the following year.
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I agree with the comments regarding pace and the high stakes exams. My son’s experience has been a little different perhaps reading Math - he normally has a fair number of problem sheets due each term for each class, so if you’re struggling with those on a weekly basis, that’s not a good sign and you can see that early on. The two rounds of collections at Oxford also give you a good marker for prelims/finals.