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Student at University of Edinburgh
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The "I've applied to Edinburgh for 2012 entry" chat thread

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Reply 2900
Original post by Rolina
I did today, but I think the offer is ridiculously high. 37 points with 666 at HL for archaeology? That's the highest of my offers and I've received offers from UCL, Durham, Glasgow & Aberdeen as well.


I don't want to sound arrogant but 37 points on the Ib seems a quite reasonable offer. They clearly state that their offer range is between 34 and 42 points. Unless you don't have any contextual factor you should have expected that kind of offer.
Student at University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
Reply 2901
Original post by Nicck
I don't want to sound arrogant but 37 points on the Ib seems a quite reasonable offer. They clearly state that their offer range is between 34 and 42 points. Unless you don't have any contextual factor you should have expected that kind of offer.


Sure, but considering how Edinburgh ranks in archaeology compared to for example UCL or Durham or even Glasgow, I find it curious that they would give me the highest offer out of all. I just really wanted to have Edinburgh as my insurance but now it wouldn't make any sense since UCL, my first choice, wants less points than Edinburgh. :frown: But oh well, I suppose they have their reasons.
Reply 2902
Original post by annabelisme
Has anyone who got that email about hearing back by the 10th April heard back yet?


still nothing, still PENDING! :frown:
Original post by Rolina
Sure, but considering how Edinburgh ranks in archaeology compared to for example UCL or Durham or even Glasgow, I find it curious that they would give me the highest offer out of all. I just really wanted to have Edinburgh as my insurance but now it wouldn't make any sense since UCL, my first choice, wants less points than Edinburgh. :frown: But oh well, I suppose they have their reasons.


Boohoo. World class institution makes conditional offer that requires applicant to meet reasonably high conditions.

Your mistake was to assume that 'quality' of university/course correlates in anyway with offers made.
Reply 2904
Original post by nearlyheadlessian
Boohoo. World class institution makes conditional offer that requires applicant to meet reasonably high conditions.

Your mistake was to assume that 'quality' of university/course correlates in anyway with offers made.


I think it is only logical to think that they do correlate. You could assume that people want to attend qualified unversities, and thus those universities could then also give out offers with higher conditions.

Btw, I know Edinburgh is a world class university, but just not so much in the field of archaeology. Furthermore, taking into account that archaeology is a rather unpopular course, I was just amazed at their requirements. Could be that they have fewer places for the course than other universities, go and figure.
I was not tearing my hair out in vain after all!
Just got a conditional offer for English Literature and Classics (AAA)
SO HAPPY I COULD PUKE RAINBOWS.
/but that'd be a tad messy.

(and I was one of the people who got the email about hearing by the 10th April - good luck
to all still waiting!)
Original post by Rolina
I think it is only logical to think that they do correlate. You could assume that people want to attend qualified unversities, and thus those universities could then also give out offers with higher conditions.


What makes you think it's got anything to do with the applicants? The university wants highly qualified students... If you think that high conditional offers denote a good university then you have a warped perspective on the system!

Original post by Rolina
Btw, I know Edinburgh is a world class university, but just not so much in the field of archaeology. Furthermore, taking into account that archaeology is a rather unpopular course, I was just amazed at their requirements. Could be that they have fewer places for the course than other universities, go and figure.


Archaeology certainly isn't Edinburgh's strongest department, but it's definitely a good department. As for being unpopular... 167 applied for 2011/12 entry, 91 offers were made, and 27 accepted. That makes it a middle ranking subject. It's not English Literature or History. But it's definitely not unpopular.
Reply 2907
Original post by nearlyheadlessian
What makes you think it's got anything to do with the applicants? The university wants highly qualified students... If you think that high conditional offers denote a good university then you have a warped perspective on the system!


No, I think it is the other way around, being good enabling (at least to some extent) the giving out of high conditional offers - thus, Edinburgh not being so strong in archaeology, it would be natural to assume that their requirements would correspond to the quality of the department. It would be logical in the sense that good universities/courses (assumedly) have more applicants, and thus these universities could ask for higher conditions as they would have more applicants to choose from. Also, strong applicants with good grades would (again assumedly) want to attend a better university/course instead of a mediocre one, and so if a mediocre university/course would ask for high grades the university might end up in the situation where many of the so-called strong applicants would not choose it but go to a university/course of better reputation instead as their grades would allow this. This is how I have reasoned the matter, and if I turn out to be so utterly wrong as you claim, then it is also questionable why poor universities don't give out offers with high requirements.

Also, I said that there is a correlation between quality and high offers, which does not mean that they have a direct cause-and-effect relationship, as the word "denote" you used suggests. In the end, it is up to the admissions personnel at universities (who, being professionals, still have to have some type of general guidelines as to how to give out offers). My purpose here was not exclaim that I have been treated unfairly, and am sorry if this is how it turned out - essentially, I was expressing my feelings of disappointment and surprise at the outcome of my own application.

Original post by nearlyheadlessian
Archaeology certainly isn't Edinburgh's strongest department, but it's definitely a good department. As for being unpopular... 167 applied for 2011/12 entry, 91 offers were made, and 27 accepted. That makes it a middle ranking subject. It's not English Literature or History. But it's definitely not unpopular.


I always had the idea that it's quite unpopular, but maybe it's just my home country.
Original post by Ic0
I haven't either.


Nope.
I got an offer today! So excited to meet you all when September comes around!
Reply 2910
Original post by Rolina
I did today, but I think the offer is ridiculously high. 37 points with 666 at HL for archaeology? That's the highest of my offers and I've received offers from UCL, Durham, Glasgow & Aberdeen as well.


Aw, that's pretty high :frown: Mine was their standard 34 with 555 at HL, and for English lit. too, so quite reasonable. I also applied to Durham, Glasgow, and Aberdeen! Got offers of 38, 34 and 30 respectively from them. I chose Edinburgh over Durham though, I've had my heart set on it from the start. Where are you planning to go, then? It's a shame you can't at least insure Edinburgh if UCL/ Durham are your first choices, but I'm assuming the offers from Glasgow and Aberdeen are significantly lower?

Don't feel too demotivated, though, some people here have got offers of 40! And if you got into UCL Durham AND Edin it means that you must be amazing! :biggrin:
Reply 2911
Original post by saachi
Aw, that's pretty high :frown: Mine was their standard 34 with 555 at HL, and for English lit. too, so quite reasonable. I also applied to Durham, Glasgow, and Aberdeen! Got offers of 38, 34 and 30 respectively from them. I chose Edinburgh over Durham though, I've had my heart set on it from the start. Where are you planning to go, then? It's a shame you can't at least insure Edinburgh if UCL/ Durham are your first choices, but I'm assuming the offers from Glasgow and Aberdeen are significantly lower?

Don't feel too demotivated, though, some people here have got offers of 40! And if you got into UCL Durham AND Edin it means that you must be amazing! :biggrin:


Thank you for your motivational post! (This is the time all of us could probably use the motivation for studying... :biggrin:)

I know I'm going to firm UCL, and am pretty sure that my insurance will be Glasgow, which is not a bad choice either. :smile: Surprisingly, they both want 34 points overall, but in addition UCL has requirements for HL-subjects and maths, so I suppose in a way it makes sense to put Glasgow as my insurance, especially since I am quite positive I can obtain the 34 points. Durham wanted 36 points, but I decided to go for UCL since it's slightly better for archaeology. Aberdeen gave an offer of 30.

Congrats on your offers, btw :smile: That's very good for English lit.! Edinburgh seems like such a wonderful city, you're probably gonna have a great time. Are you going to insurance Glasgow as well? Or Aberdeen?
Original post by oliviaheleneugenia
I got an offer today! So excited to meet you all when September comes around!


ooh congrats! What for? What conditions?
Original post by Rolina
Sure, but considering how Edinburgh ranks in archaeology compared to for example UCL or Durham or even Glasgow, I find it curious that they would give me the highest offer out of all. I just really wanted to have Edinburgh as my insurance but now it wouldn't make any sense since UCL, my first choice, wants less points than Edinburgh. :frown: But oh well, I suppose they have their reasons.


Well Edinburgh have absolutely no interest in being your insurance choice, they only want to be your firm. Their old policy of BBB offers meant they were often an insurance choice to AAA candidates (as you had to be predicted AAA to be in with a chance of getting an offer in the first place) whereas now they've levelled the playing field by making equally as high offers.

The offer a university gives you has no relation to how good they are - its a marketing tool as they know that applicants are naive enough to think "well this uni gave me an AAB offer so they must be better than one that gave me a BBB offer" so therefore a lot of them will give as high offers as they think they can get away with because they know that if they give a strong candidate an ABB offer then they'll likely end up as an insurance choice at best, which is definitely not a desirable thing. Universities know that applicants will generally be swayed into placing one of their highest offers as their firm (even if they prefer a lower offer) because people think this is what you have to do, so again, the higher their offer the more chance they have of being your firm.

Similarly, the actually offer a university gives has no relation to the actual academic standards students achieve when they enter the university. A good example here is Lancaster who have managed to turn their reputation and "typical" student around over the last 5/6 years by giving out ridiculously high offers, which tempts the high achievers, but then letting people in with much lower grades on results day. By giving AAA offers they marked themselves as a viable option to the likes of UCL, Warwick, Durham etc and offered huge bursaries to students getting AAB or higher who put them as their firm. This meant more high achievers considered them than in the past. As a result, they've now gone from accepting people with Cs and Ds for courses where they give AAA offers to actually having people with AAA on their course because due to offering higher grades it changed applicant perceptions of the university. Six years ago I was given an AAB offer for Lancaster and the offer of £3000 a year if I put them as my firm. When I went to the open day they were very open with the fact that if you missed your offer they would probably have a place because they went into clearing every single year. Most of the current students at the open day had achieved around CCC or even lower in their A levels but were still accepted onto a course that had given them an AAB offer. Last year, however, Lancaster were not in clearing and were rejecting people who had narrowly missed AAA offers on results day.

Admissions and offer making is simply marketing as they have to be seen as desirable so you will put them as your firm. A lot of universities are desperate for the insurance choice to be removed as its such a big hassle for them to deal with administratively when they know that its likely that the applicant will meet their firm offer and all of the money spent on the applicant (sending things in the post, paying for them to come to open days, assessing their application etc) doesn't actually result in a bum on a seat in September so its a waste of time.

If applicants, their parents, their schools and the media weren't naive enough to think that "a high offer = an amazing university" then we'd see a lot lower offers. Six years ago when I applied to university the only institutions who gave AAA offers were Oxford and Cambridge. Everyone else (Durham etc) offered AAB or lower. I had a BBB offer that included general studies from UCL for a course which now gives out AAA offers and they wouldn't ever consider general studies. As soon as one university decides to raise their currency from AAB to AAA then everyone else has to follow so now we get everyone under the sun making AAA offers because they need to compete to get the strongest candidates.
Original post by oxymoronic
Universities know that applicants will generally be swayed into placing one of their highest offers as their firm (even if they prefer a lower offer) because people think this is what you have to do, so again, the higher their offer the more chance they have of being your firm.
[...]
A lot of universities are desperate for the insurance choice to be removed as its such a big hassle for them to deal with administratively


All true. It's sad, but the truth is that the vast majority of applicants don't really understand the system they're using. Most people don't understand how the insurance option works either. I remain one of the few people I know who did not make an insurance choice. I did not want to legally agree to have to turn up to some university I wasn't expecting to go to, if I missed my grades. Furthermore, if I missed my grades then something would have been wrong and I would have been considering my options in terms of resitting a year of school.
Original post by nearlyheadlessian
All true. It's sad, but the truth is that the vast majority of applicants don't really understand the system they're using. Most people don't understand how the insurance option works either. I remain one of the few people I know who did not make an insurance choice. I did not want to legally agree to have to turn up to some university I wasn't expecting to go to, if I missed my grades. Furthermore, if I missed my grades then something would have been wrong and I would have been considering my options in terms of resitting a year of school.


I've been doing a lot of work with UCAS recently relating to the admission system (they've had a consultation for advisers from schools/colleges and also admissions teams) and the insurance choice is really interesting. On the whole universities strongly dislike it; other than the very elite (Oxbridge) who pointed out that if there wasn't an insurance choice then widening access students without good support might be scared of putting it as their firm as then they'd end up with nothing if they missed the offer whereas at the moment there is a safety blanket. However schools, advisers and applicants want to keep it because it is a comfort blanket.

No university at all wants to be your insurance choice. They'd much rather you rejected their offer if its not going to be your firm.

I had my firm and insurance choice requiring the same grades as they were my two favourite choices and they happened to be my lowest offers along with my UCL one for BBB. As I said my highest was Lancaster for AAB and then Manchester and St Andrews wanted ABB. My firm was Glasgow and they wanted BBB the same as Edinburgh but there was no way I wasn't putting Edinburgh as my firm purely because it had lower grades. Luckily my parents/school didn't try to talk me into firming anywhere else, but I find it really sad on TSR when we see applicants who are guided by the actual offer grades rather than their actual favourite. But ah well - that's why I'm here! Keeps me in a job :smile:
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 2916
Original post by oxymoronic
If applicants, their parents, their schools and the media weren't naive enough to think that "a high offer = an amazing university" then we'd see a lot lower offers. Six years ago when I applied to university the only institutions who gave AAA offers were Oxford and Cambridge. Everyone else (Durham etc) offered AAB or lower. I had a BBB offer that included general studies from UCL for a course which now gives out AAA offers and they wouldn't ever consider general studies. As soon as one university decides to raise their currency from AAB to AAA then everyone else has to follow so now we get everyone under the sun making AAA offers because they need to compete to get the strongest candidates.


I was shocked by this - I was reading an outdated university guide (from 2005/2007 I think), and my course at UCL used to be BBB and is now AAA!
Reply 2917
Original post by Rolina
Thank you for your motivational post! (This is the time all of us could probably use the motivation for studying... :biggrin:)

I know I'm going to firm UCL, and am pretty sure that my insurance will be Glasgow, which is not a bad choice either. :smile: Surprisingly, they both want 34 points overall, but in addition UCL has requirements for HL-subjects and maths, so I suppose in a way it makes sense to put Glasgow as my insurance, especially since I am quite positive I can obtain the 34 points. Durham wanted 36 points, but I decided to go for UCL since it's slightly better for archaeology. Aberdeen gave an offer of 30.

Congrats on your offers, btw :smile: That's very good for English lit.! Edinburgh seems like such a wonderful city, you're probably gonna have a great time. Are you going to insurance Glasgow as well? Or Aberdeen?


An offer of 34 from UCL is amazing, well done! Yeah, Glasgow's pretty good, at one point I was torn between there and Edinburgh.

My insurance is Aberdeen, same as your offer- 30 points. Nice and easy, and now I even have a 28 point offer from Waterloo in Canada with scholarship :tongue: So takes the pressure off. It's going to sound stupid, but what really put me off Glasgow was that they asked for an IELTS test score. I mean, seriously, an A in gcse lit and lang, a predicted 7 in English A1 HL, applying for English lit, and they need evidence of my English speaking abilities!

But yes, I cannot wait for Edinburgh. My biggest fear right now is not making the grades. I worry so much that I'm already thinking of what to say to them if I miss their offer by a point or two. Time that should be utilized in ensuring that doesn't happen by studying :redface:

It's strange how quickly I fell in love with Edinburgh despite never setting foot in Scotland. It sounds mad, but I think I would choose it even over Oxbridge. Hehe, London is just not for me, but I bet you'll have an awesome time at UCL as well! :smile:
Reply 2918
Original post by nearlyheadlessian

[...]

Archaeology certainly isn't Edinburgh's strongest department, but it's definitely a good department. As for being unpopular... 167 applied for 2011/12 entry, 91 offers were made, and 27 accepted. That makes it a middle ranking subject. It's not English Literature or History. But it's definitely not unpopular.



Hello!
these are some cool statistics... where did you get them from? I would like to look at my course in that respect.

Also, the conversatio you and oxymoronic just had here is very interesting!
I expected that my offer would strongely correlate with the high applicant numbers for Edinburgh and was surprised at my 35, 555 offer! (but I was too happy to see it as a bad sign or something:cool:)
Reply 2919
Original post by oxymoronic
I've been doing a lot of work with UCAS recently relating to the admission system (they've had a consultation for advisers from schools/colleges and also admissions teams) and the insurance choice is really interesting. On the whole universities strongly dislike it; other than the very elite (Oxbridge) who pointed out that if there wasn't an insurance choice then widening access students without good support might be scared of putting it as their firm as then they'd end up with nothing if they missed the offer whereas at the moment there is a safety blanket. However schools, advisers and applicants want to keep it because it is a comfort blanket.

No university at all wants to be your insurance choice. They'd much rather you rejected their offer if its not going to be your firm.

I had my firm and insurance choice requiring the same grades as they were my two favourite choices and they happened to be my lowest offers along with my UCL one for BBB. As I said my highest was Lancaster for AAB and then Manchester and St Andrews wanted ABB. My firm was Glasgow and they wanted BBB the same as Edinburgh but there was no way I wasn't putting Edinburgh as my firm purely because it had lower grades. Luckily my parents/school didn't try to talk me into firming anywhere else, but I find it really sad on TSR when we see applicants who are guided by the actual offer grades rather than their actual favourite. But ah well - that's why I'm here! Keeps me in a job :smile:


UCAS did send everyone some sort of survey where they suggested that people apply to university after they've already gotten their results- I think that's far, far better.

I was actually in the same position with Edinburgh and Durham. Edinburgh's offer was 34 and Durham's was 38 (IB), and EVERYONE was telling me to firm Durham because they thought it was bound to be better just because they asked for higher grades. My mom actually got angry at me for firming Edinburgh. According to my family and friends, firm= Durham, insurance= Edinburgh, and then I have two fantastic universities to go to. Even while I was considering firming Durham, I was secretly planning on missing the grades and aiming for 37, because I really wanted to go to Edinburgh. That's when I realized how stupid I was being by not firming my favorite.

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