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University Offers

Do universities give the same number of offers as they have places for on a course or do they give more offers than they have places for and presume some students won't make the offer?

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Reply 1

Xarren

More offers. Many much more.

Reply 2

River85

More offers than places as a large number of students who receive an offer chose a different university, withdraw from UCAS altogether, or fail to meet the offer.

Reply 3

0404343m

Original post by Charlotte_19

Always more offers than places, but it depends on the university. Oxford and Cambridge have a good idea that most people that they give offers to will accept them, so it's more down to who does and does not make the grade. Even still, it's relatively close the number of places. Universities in the midlands or Yorkshire with lots of competitors around them that might also be used to insure against Oxford or Cambridge (like Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Nottingham etc) get a numerically huge number of applications- sometimes three times more than Oxford or Cambridge, but tend to have to make lots of offers given that it'd be understandable to have personal preferences and pick one of their seven or eight near-ish rivals.

To give one example that is available online, Edinburgh make offers to 36.4% of their applicants, which is approximately three offers for every place (it has been as high as a 45% chance in the last few years- so four offers per place). This is because they have a lot of applications from England who will on balance choose somewhere else at least as often as they choose Edinburgh, or not make the grade.

http://www.ed.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.78617!/fileManager/UoE%20Admissions%20Statistics%202011-12.pdf.pdf

This is broadly similar for most universities, although in some cases (like, say, Aberdeen that gets lots of applications from the local area that it knows will have Aberdeen as their first choice), the chances of getting an offer can be lower despite far fewer applications per place.