Contidional Offers - what exactly do they represent

I know that a conditional offer means you must meet a certain "condition" in order for the offer to be open and valid, likewise an unconditional offer means you've already met the entry requirements, however I want to know what it means to all of the people who have them.

AFAIK, a conditional offer is given to a LOT of people - far more than the course itself can take in. For example, where there are 50 places on a course, there might be 150 applicants with conditional offers.
This means, in theory, that there could be potentially 150 applicants who want to go to that 1 university and study that one course.

How are people chosen for the course? Lets say out of the 150 who received an offer, 100 of them want to enrol onto the course, but only 50 will make it through. Surely there'll be 50 people who are pretty pissed off / depressed & saddened by this. Can a conditional offer become a "rejection"?.

Thanks.

Reply 1

ophqui

if u meet the conditions and u have accepted the offer as ur firm then they accept u, thats all there is to it. The extra people that they give the offers to are the ones who accept it as their insurance (and then dont go cos they got their firm) or dont meet the grades

Reply 2

HearTheThunder

You can't be rejected if you meet the conditions of a conditional offer.

Reply 3

mtbab

its pretty much a risk unis takes becuase they'll give out about 4-6 (with the exception of oxbridge who is about 1-1.5) times the amount of offers to the places they have, that said. the admissions officers have been through the process many times so have a good judgement of how many people will accept it etc etc.

BUt that said, if a course has 50places and a uni gives out 150 offers and all those put it as their firm and meet the conditions they'll are royally stuffed lol! and can even get fined by the uni and the government for having too bigger an intake. But if you meet the conditions of your firm they have to take you.

Reply 4

unknownFluency

So all in all it's not a bulletproof plan on the universities part.

What happens to the people who put a university as their firm, along with 74 other people who put the uni as their firm, and they all meet their conditions, where the course intake is 50?

Surely they can't just say "we're full, find another uni to go to".

Reply 5

Juncture

They in theory have to take on everyone, but most universities would ring up people and ask if they want to defer entry until they've got the course numbers down to an acceptable level, i remember reading on here someone saying a uni tried to pay people to defer cause they had too many people but i might be making that up

Reply 6

mtbab

diMo

yeh as Juncture said but the uni is under obligation to take then and no student is under any obv to defer so, if no student wants to defer they will have to have a huge group.

but usually their not that far over, and think about it unis know from May how many students have them as firm and insurance and so can prepare from then to Aug/Sep if they get a bigger intake if they need to.

Reply 7

kellywood_5

If you meet the conditions of your offer, the uni has to accept you, but because most people apply to 6 unis, not everyone will choose a uni as firm/insurance, those who choose it as firm might not get the grades and those who choose it as insurance might get into their firm. Unis know pretty much how many offers to make based on experience, and given the number of unis in Extra and Clearing every year, giving out too few offers/getting too few applicants seems a more common problem than giving out too many. I doubt a uni has ever screwed up too badly in terms of numbers, but if they did, they'd probably ask students if they wanted to defer for a year to try and get the numbers down, and if not enough did, they'd just have more students than normal.

Contidional Offers - what exactly do they represent

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you