The Alternative Economics League Table (TAELT) 2009

OP

spyder

i have applied for economics at edinburgh, my predicted grades are abb! and i am doing economics and maths at a-level. my gcse grades are not the best at all....
A* 7B C. what do you think my chances are of getting an offer from edinburgh! i have offers from newcastle, manchester and royal holloway! and have been rejected from soas! which i saw coming as they have set the requirement higher this year!

From the ecn uni guide:

Why is the Edinburgh offer so low?
Edinburgh makes BBB offers. But its tariff distribution is comparable to York’s:

So in terms of how hard it is to get offers think of it as an AAB uni not a BBB uni. Further their student selection basis is holistic and the following factors will all count in your favour:
i) Attend a school from which few pupils progress to higher education.
ii) Attend a school which is local (e.g. Edinburgh) or from a nearby region (e.g. Scotland and the English counties which border Scotland).
iii) Parents did not attend uni
IV) Serious Disruption to schooling (e.g. Health, disability or family reasons).
See this post for further background on Edinburgh:
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14102262&postcount=12

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?p=15901142#post15901142

So unless you satisfy one of i)-iv) you have virtually no chance with Edinburgh

Reply 265

spyder

the only one which applies to me is that my parents did not attend university! so i guess i shall be expecting a rejection from edinburgh then????????

Reply 266

OP

spyder

the only one which applies to me is that my parents did not attend university! so i guess i shall be expecting a rejection from edinburgh then????????

yes I think your chances are low.

Reply 267

Lancaster Economics degrees are now BSc instead of BA. "Over the last couple of decades, the nature of economics has gradually changed. There has been a shift in emphasis towards work that is mostly analytical. This is reflected in the content of our degree, and students who graduate from Lancaster are able not only to understand economics, but also to do economics." Is the official line from the department on the change.

Reply 268

OP

otu1987

Lancaster Economics degrees are now BSc instead of BA. "Over the last couple of decades, the nature of economics has gradually changed. There has been a shift in emphasis towards work that is mostly analytical. This is reflected in the content of our degree, and students who graduate from Lancaster are able not only to understand economics, but also to do economics." Is the official line from the department on the change.

Where did you get that from?
e.g. both UCAS Course Search and the website say it is Ba: http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/departments/Economics/undergraduate/

Reply 269

An e-mail from my head of department about a month ago. I'm a third year undergrad there atm.

Reply 270

OP

otu1987

An e-mail from my head of department about a month ago. I'm a third year undergrad there atm.

That is really interesting. Any idea when they will make the change official?
And do you think that Bsc is a fair description of the course?

Reply 271

Not sure when, presumabely no later than the publishing of 2010 entry's prospectus.

I think they've changed it to a BSc due to the nature of the modules we do now. Particularly in third year our course is now as analytical as anything offered by other (often more prestigious) universities. (I've been able to compare lecture note materials, and course contents with friends doing econ at other unis).

In terms of course content it is very much comparable to other BSc courses at other universities (such as Nottingham's for example). Examples at intermediate micro level include being expected to not only understand all the equations, etc that we use, but to be able to derive them as well, for example inverse elasticity rules, cobb-douglas marginal rate of subsition, elasticities, etc,

I think the change to a BSc also reflects some of the changes to the third year module offerings. Note that it says that the BSc option is only for single majors, i.e. those of us who have taken a significant proportion of the third year department modules. For example, this term I've done, Advanced Macroeconomic Theory, which has covered topics such as Rational Expectation Solutions (including Wold Decompositions which we're expected to be able to do fully now), Econometrics, which is possibly the toughest module, with matrix applications of the GLM, Maximum Likelihood, AR, MA, ARMA time series modelling, etc.

Even before this year to describe our degree as a BA was always a bit of a joke.

http://www.lusi.lancs.ac.uk/OnlineCoursesHandbook/ModuleCatalogue/Module.aspx?Course=001821&Year=000108
http://www.lusi.lancs.ac.uk/OnlineCoursesHandbook/ModuleCatalogue/Module.aspx?Course=011103&Year=000108
http://www.lusi.lancs.ac.uk/OnlineCoursesHandbook/ModuleCatalogue/Module.aspx?Course=011085&Year=000108
http://www.lusi.lancs.ac.uk/OnlineCoursesHandbook/ModuleCatalogue/Module.aspx?Course=011086&Year=000108

Might be useful for judging the standard of the main second year modules.

Reply 272

Here's an example of some of our course outlines from 3rd year. I don't have access to all of them yet.

And the other 2 I have.

OP

otu1987

Not sure when, presumabely no later than the publishing of 2010 entry's prospectus.

I think they've changed it to a BSc due to the nature of the modules we do now. Particularly in third year our course is now as analytical as anything offered by other (often more prestigious) universities. (I've been able to compare lecture note materials, and course contents with friends doing econ at other unis).

In terms of course content it is very much comparable to other BSc courses at other universities (such as Nottingham's for example). Examples at intermediate micro level include being expected to not only understand all the equations, etc that we use, but to be able to derive them as well, for example inverse elasticity rules, cobb-douglas marginal rate of subsition, elasticities, etc,

I think the change to a BSc also reflects some of the changes to the third year module offerings. Note that it says that the BSc option is only for single majors, i.e. those of us who have taken a significant proportion of the third year department modules. For example, this term I've done, Advanced Macroeconomic Theory, which has covered topics such as Rational Expectation Solutions (including Wold Decompositions which we're expected to be able to do fully now), Econometrics, which is possibly the toughest module, with matrix applications of the GLM, Maximum Likelihood, AR, MA, ARMA time series modelling, etc.

Even before this year to describe our degree as a BA was always a bit of a joke.

http://www.lusi.lancs.ac.uk/OnlineCoursesHandbook/ModuleCatalogue/Module.aspx?Course=001821&Year=000108
http://www.lusi.lancs.ac.uk/OnlineCoursesHandbook/ModuleCatalogue/Module.aspx?Course=011103&Year=000108
http://www.lusi.lancs.ac.uk/OnlineCoursesHandbook/ModuleCatalogue/Module.aspx?Course=011085&Year=000108
http://www.lusi.lancs.ac.uk/OnlineCoursesHandbook/ModuleCatalogue/Module.aspx?Course=011086&Year=000108

Might be useful for judging the standard of the main second year modules.

Very Interesting and thanks for all your help.
Yes that content seems similar to the Warwick Bsc 2nd year.
I will have to decide how to reclassify Lancaster. The obvious thing is to make it AAB.2.1 like York, Southampton, and Manchester. But I will take a couple of days to think about it.
Again thanks for your help

Reply 275

OP

I have moved City upto BBB.1.
(The groups were originally done using 05/06 data but with 06/07 data City have a lot less sub 280 students and hence the new partition makes sense.

BBB.1 (300 Points) (Up to 14% of students have less than 280 points), Sheffield (6%), Liverpool (10%), Queen Mary (9%), Queens Belfast (0%),City (14%)
31) Sheffield Ba: BBB-BBbb (Bsc:ABB-BBbb) 369
32) Liverpool BBB 361
33) Queen Mary 300 M*b M**p 351
34) Queen's Belfast BBB-BBCb 347
35) City BBB 333

BBB.2 (300 Points) (Atleast 51% of students below 280 points) (Surrey (54%), Kent (54%), Swansea (51%)
36) Surrey BBB 286
37) Kent 300 (BB) 286
38) Swansea 300 278

Reply 276

Venom123

16

Alright Paul,

I'm considering applying for Economics at Essex, Reading, Queens Mary, Surrey and Hull

my predicted grades are B,B,C.

What do you think of my chances of obtaining a conditional offer from these uni's

Cheers

Reply 277

OP

Venom123

Alright Paul,

I'm considering applying for Economics at Essex, Reading, Queens Mary, Surrey and Hull

my predicted grades are B,B,C.

What do you think of my chances of obtaining a conditional offer from these uni's

Cheers

What GCSE grades did you get?
What AS subjects and grades do you have?
What A-level subjects are you doing?

Reply 278

Venom123

16

Paulwhy

What GCSE grades did you get?
What AS subjects and grades do you have?
What A-level subjects are you doing?

3A's 7B's 1C

AS subs: History, Maths, Media Studies and Biology
(History: D, Maths: D, Media Studies: B, Biology: D *The grades aren't a clear reflection of my ability but it was a reflection of my laziness last year* Retaking every module in Maths and Biology)

A question i have is should I put the modules in ucas as pending?

A levels: Maths, Media and Biology

Reply 279

OP