Universities inflating entry requirements!

I was just going through the thread about missing grades and still getting in and I have seen numerous people at Universities like Birmingham, Manchester, Exeter, Bristol, York and Sheffield getting into competitive courses like Law and geography with grades like ABC/BBB/ACC and even BCD.

This was also the case in 2013.

Universities use entry requirements simply to boost their reputation when in actual fact you can get in with very average/slightly above average grades.

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I was a bit surprised when a guy at my Manchester physics interview (supposedly A*A*A minimum) had predictions of ABC and got an offer...

Reply 3

H.N.I.C

Its not really to boost their reputation, more simply supply and demand.
At higher entry requirements of AAA less people apply than at an offer of BBB.

Reply 4

ShadabAhmed

Original post by alow

I was a bit surprised when a guy at my Manchester physics interview (supposedly A*A*A minimum) had predictions of ABC and got an offer...

Thats just ridic.

How is Cam?

Reply 5

alow

Original post by ShadabAhmed

Thats just ridic.

How is Cam?

Totes. It's good.

Nice username btw :wink:

Reply 6

ShadabAhmed

Original post by alow

Totes. It's good.

Nice username btw :wink:

cc oxford is skitch :d

/loljk

As a prospective CamApplicant is Cam all that it is made to be, and would you say it is a much better university instead of LSE/Oxford.

cc I am Shadab

and I was like, what you are doing and he was like looking me and things and I was like someone just texted me sec and he just looked and me and I was like that was totes ridic. And now im typing you that.

im a mouse durrrr

wat

Reply 7

455409

Original post by H.N.I.C

Its not really to boost their reputation, more simply supply and demand.
At higher entry requirements of AAA less people apply than at an offer of BBB.

Having worked in university finance i can tell you it absolutely is about boosting their percieved reputation...

Reply 8

pleasedtobeatyou

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvvF7-5SIJ8

Someone posted this on here a while ago and it is very informative. It's the Uni of Nottingham's physics admissions tutor talking about universities setting higher grade boundaries with other intentions...

Reply 9

username1042689

It's so inconsistent. I know people who've dropped by four grades or more and still gotten into their uni, whereas my boyfriend got ABB for his AAA course and didn't get in (which is fair enough) but I know people with ABB and ABC who got into that same course...

Reply 10

Black Cat

Have you taken into account other factors such as course intake, extenuating circumstances.

Reply 11

SmaugTheTerrible

Original post by Black Cat

Have you taken into account other factors such as course intake, extenuating circumstances.

Yup. A lot of people got in simply because the University had places to fill. This seemed to be the case especially with Birmingham, York and Exeter.

Heck even Bristol was letting people in to law with BBB.

Reply 12

nulli tertius

Original post by SmaugTheTerrible

Wind the clock back 40 years or so and we had a situation where universities wouldn't release information about their standard offers and indeed wouldn't admit that they had standard offers. This silence was broken by a careers teacher who got other careers teachers to send him details of what offers were given by what universities for what subjects. Based on this, he published his own guide. That guide is still being published.

If increasingly universities lie about what grades they seek and what offers they make (which are not the same thing) what is likely to happen is that the guides will start collecting their own data again and stop trusting the information from universities.

Reply 13

kpwxx

Original post by SmaugTheTerrible

I wouldn't say they inflate it to boost their reputation. Obviously league tables are not the only source of reputation, but they use actual entry grades of students rather than offers, so they are what matter more.

I guess since grades have been going up over the past few years, unis have increased requirements since they only have room for a certain number of people on their course.

xxx

Reply 14

Juichiro