How lenient are universities with their grades?

I've applied to do history at Edinburgh and Lancaster and both have given me a conditional offer of AAB (the only other offers I had were all AAA so it was an easy choice). My AS level grades were ABB.

I'm feeling secure in my history being an A and my English being a B, but the one grade I need to raise from the B to an A is classics and at the moment that is very very uncertain. Worst case scenario, it will be a B but I really want and need it to be an A.

So, will Edinburgh or Lancaster accept me if I just fall short and get ABB rather than AAB?

No-one can say for sure, not even the admissions staff until results day. But it's not uncommon to miss by a grade and still get accepted. However, Edinburgh tends to be fusier than some.

No-one can say for sure, not even the admissions staff until results day. But it's not uncommon to miss by a grade and still get accepted. However, Edinburgh tends to be fusier than some.

How fussy are UCL and Exeter? I'll be paying international fees.

Both are popular, oversubscribed universities (depending on course), especially UCL.

Have a look at previous threads discussing this. e.g.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2786463

Thank you! The thread is pretty long, I'll go through it when I have time.

My course is civil engineering at UCL and energy engineering at Exeter - both with high acceptance rates. I was hoping that being international would make a difference, since we bring in more than twice the amount of money locals do (especially so for UCL)

You can search the thread...

And yes money may talk
Edit to add: also you can have a look at Unistats for the course/uni and see if people with your likely UCAS points are getting accepted. It's by no means perfect but may give an idea.

Civil at UCL:
http://unistats.org/subjects/entry/10007784FT-UBNCIVSING14/ReturnTo/Search