…just got caught up on the fall out from today’s A-Level results. There are a lot of unhappy people.
Yeah, inevitable that there will be winners and losers when results have to be based on hunches rather than actual work done.
There is nothing any human can do, there will be some deeply unhappy with the outcomes.
Note that it is the predictions that were downgraded, percentage of those with top grades for this year compared to last year actually rose.
This will suggest aggregate predictions are usually well above aggregate actual obtained grades because it is the same teachers that conducted the previous year’s predictions, hence this year’s predictions should have been downgraded. But I doubt the UK liberal-monopoly press will highlight this because it prevents them from jumping on a victim-narrative.
*Only a negligible proportion of applicants given offers at the top 15 or so universities will not make the offer.
*
Not true - loads miss Oxbridge offers.
Well, it is factored into their offer rates/approach and not high enough to push them into clearing and adjustment.
True.
Just doing a follow-up check after 2 days of clearing & adjustments and:
- Surprisingly, all Exeter's clearing & adjustment places have been snapped up.
- All of Edinburgh's places are taken except Divinity (unpopular course) and 3 "Graduate Entry" courses (limited pool courses)
- As expected, Warwick has no more places on any of its engineering programme. That was like finding Mercedes being sold at the price of a Toyota; I expected it go fast. They still have a number of clearing places though, including in Physics & Chemistry; but mostly languages.
- Bristol, Manchester & Glasgow all still have a lot of places on offer across the board.
Also heard that Oxford is honoring all of it’s ‘contextual’ offers, regardless of outcomes
Good.
Can only be fair as those will be the underprivileged students who are likely to be from schools with history of poor grades, hence leading to downgrading of their predictions.
Just saw this 2 year old Guardian article about UK elite universities going private to improve their funding. In it, it states Oxford and Cambridge’s leading figures perception of elite universities they need to join them, if they are to be successful.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/17/oxford-cambridge-universities-private-raise-fees
It’s a completely speculative article with no basis in fact.
Yes, the idea of going private might be speculative but the interviewing of key figures, which my point is based on, is real.
[Oops! Posted on the wrong thread and can’t delete it]
Another year of applications to get offers from UK universities.
If one repeats my last year’s crude and simple on TSR of the universities people are chatting and buzzing to get offers from (see post#15), by counting number of pages of discussion threads on the respective 2021 applicants’ pages, the table for the Top 20 with the most discussion pages will look like this at the same stage this year:
- Oxford 864
- Cambridge 811
- Durham 256
- UCL 251
- LSE 238
- Imperial 230
- KCL 207
- Warwick 154
- Edinburgh 103
- St Andrews 101
- Bristol 100
- Manchester 76
- Leeds 50
- Birmingham 49
- Nottingham 45
- Glasgow 44
- Exeter 43
- Bath 40
- QMUL 32
- York 26
This is an indirect and rough indicator of how elite applicants regard these universities and their prestige.
This year again, only Durham broke the dominance of the Golden Triangle being the universities top students are excited, having anxiety or having trepidations about going to and getting offers from.
As I stated earlier in my points, Durham does have strong local prestige amongst students.
One still needs to look at other key local stakeholders like the UK government, academics, employers etc. to complete the local view of rankings of prestigious universities; before one will consider the international view of the universities’ prestige, which all Golden Triangle universities will still dominate, but Durham will be be much weaker at.
LSE and Imperial might be underrated by this metric as neither offers the full range of subjects.
Also, I don’t think TSR posts are necessarily elite…
Yes, I agree with that.
Furthermore, the universities with lower offer rates and delayed offer cycles still have some chats/buzz still stored to come. The London 4, St Andrews and Edinburgh are examples.
They are yet to start giving out sufficient amounts of offers, unlike the universities like Durham, Warwick etc. with much higher offer rates and who dish out offers earlier. When they delayed ones start doing so is when their buzz re-kicks off.
I know last year that UCL eventually overtook Durham in this metric after I had posted the table at #15 here; and I expect it and LSE (and just maybe Imperial) to do the same again this year by June considering how close they are now to Durham.
The Oxford and Cambridge threads have come to a virtual halt now because they have given off all their offers.
I would agree TSR posts are not elite.
My point is that the students/applicants (i) who tend to engage in this applicants threads, (ii) who are so keen about university prestige and (iii) who have extensive access to internet facilities tend to be overwhelming elite by ability and/or financial resources.
This is why despite many City Mets/Ex-Polys (e.g. Manchester Met or Sheffield Hallam), despite having equal or more student intakes than many of the universities on the table, have dead threads. Their student bodies are not the type to engage in such activities. They are just proud to be going to any university at all and many are the first in the family to do such. Also they might not be able to afford much internet time.
The latter student bodies that do and can are from more affluent families and/or are elite students.
My prediction in post #76 did not take up to June to materialise. It took just a few days for LSE and UCL to overtake Durham as expected.
- LSE 312
- UCL 297
- Durham 278
- Imperial 276
- KCL 231
Imperial is also (surprisingly) close to overtaking Durham. It would be a surprise if Imperial achieves and retains the overtake.
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Very unscientific but interesting - particularly as most of the posts on the 200+ pages seem to be enquiries as to whether any offers have been received!
Yeah, I agree.
As I stated above, it is an indirect and rough analysis/metric.
It empirically shows where students want to get, and are excited getting, offers from.
Quite a strong indicator of prestige perception amongst prospective undergrad students (and probably their parents; most of whom one assumes would have given their kids some guidance on universities to go to or aim for).