Unfamiliar with Oxford Uni system: What are conditional and unconditional offers?

Student Lounge International Students
1

<p>Hi,
I'm an international student, and I'm really not familiar with this application system at Oxford and Cambridge which is centered around this thing of "offers".</p>

<p>So when you apply with, say, your school grades and IGCSEs, Oxford uses this to decide whether to offer you a conditional offer?
And does the interview happens before or after you get an offer?</p>

<p>And what's an unconditional offer?</p>

<p>Also, I've seen the UCAS online application system, but I didn't see any section in it that asked for you grades? So how do you submit your school grades/transcript to Oxford/Cambridge? Do you submit them online or send hard copies?</p>

<p>Please explain this system to me,
Thanks</p>

2

<p>Basically, that is how it works: suppose you want to join the University of Oxford as an undergraduate student in October 2011. You have to apply for admission then roughly one year earlier (i.e. by ** October 2010 **). If you are a UK student who is still at school at that time, you will be starting your 13th school year by then and won’t have your final A-Level grades yet (which will be known only by ** August 2011 **). When you fill out (British English “fill in”) your UCAS application, you will use then your ** predicted ** final grades as opposed to your actual grades.</p>

<p>By November 2010, if required for your intended course of interest, you take additional aptitude tests (e.g. BMAT, LNAT, ELAT, HAT, Math/Physics aptitude tests, etc.) and/or submit a piece of written school work to the Oxford college(s) you are applying to. Based on your predicted A-Level grades, your past GCSE and AS-Level grades, your submitted work and/or aptitude test results, your personal statement, and the academic letter of reference in your UCAS applications, Oxford will then make a decision on whether to shortlist you for an interview or not. Approximately 2/3 (67 %) of the applicants are interviewed according to the latest admission statistics.</p>

<p>Interviews, for those applicants who are shortlisted, are held in the UK in December. Based on your performance in the interview (which is roughly like an oral exam) and based on all the other factors above (i.e. previous and predicted grades, aptitude tests, UCAS references, etc.), the colleges will inform you by January whether you get a conditional offer or not. A conditional offer means that you are guaranteed admission in your course of choice ** if *, by August, when your final A-Level results are out, you meet the conditions set out in the offer (e.g., just as an illustrative example, for engineering, A in mathematics, plus A in both physics and further maths). If you do no meet the conditions, your offer of admission is rescinded. Each year, according to the latest statistics, approximately 10 % of Oxford applicants who are offered a place ultimately fail to gain admission, either because they don’t meet their conditional offer terms or decline the offer. That figure is slightly higher for Cambridge (approximately 15 %). </p>

<p>If, on the other hand, by the time you are interviewed, you are already out of school and/or already know your final exam results, then Oxford may make an unconditional offer of admission, meaning an admission offer that does not depend on any future exam results. That happens for example in the case of many US applicants who have already attended one-year of college in America prior to applying to Oxford and/or are applying based on previously taken AP exams or IB diploma results.</p>

3

<p>Thnk you so much for this. Now I get it crystal clear!</p>

4

<p>Just to add - occasionally UK schools will make what are essentially unconditional offers to outstanding students who apply using predicted results. I know of at least two cases in Singapore where applicants to Cambridge and, IIRC,
Goldsmiths, were given offers of EE (pass two subjects at A-Level). This is also referred to as an unconditional offer, since it is typically the minimum score required for admission to any university in the UK. </p>

<p>I don’t know how common they are elsewhere, but I’ve definitely heard of unconditional offers being made to tippy, tippy, tippy top students in Singapore.</p>

5

<p>^That is extremely rare. I think the only Oxbridge college that does it is Christ’s, Cambridge. I’ve never heard of another university giving out EE offers.</p>

6

<p>Some other top schools such as Imperial College London also make EE offers. My maths tutor was given an EE offer for theoretical physics back when he had applied but he was one of them young prodigy types who took his exams 2 years early…</p>

7

<p>Zawanu, you also asked about grades/GPA. There is no space in the UCAS form as UK universities pay no attention to them. They are only interested in objectively certified exams like A-levels, APs, IB etc. There would be no way that they could assure themselves of the standard underpinning a GPA score.</p>

<p>You should also be aware of another of those pond differences in word usage in case someone asks you for your “grades” in a British context. Over here when we refer to grades we mean the scores (A, B, C etc) at the standardised exams like A-levels.</p>

8

<p>If you already have your A Leves, they would give you an unconditional offer, same applies to IB or whatever</p>