[.ACS.]

I was wondering. My guess is this is a pretty common occurrence on TSR, so I'm wondering what others do. Say you're predicted straight A's (so AAA, AAAA, or whatever), how would you choose your universities?

Basically what I'm getting at is would you have so many AAA, so many AAB and maybe one ABB? How do you do it?

[Yusuf.T]

lies lies lies lies

[SpiritedAway]

choose on what the uni has to offer. sport and recreational facilities, how far the town is from the uni, how often/reliant is the public transport, what do you get for your money in the student housing, how much would it be to privatly buy/rent around the uni, how much does a bottle of wkd blue cost

[francescarella]

wait i dont get it...is this thread serious lol? or is it all lies???? haha

[soph!e]

ok in answer to your question
Say your predicted 3A's. Best to go for say 2/3AAA uni's, 2/1 AAB and 1/2 ABB provided your confident of getting 3A's and there are no seriously poor bits of your application for instance perhaps GCSE's- if you have 1A* few A's mostly B's and some C's (unless there is a reason for poor performance etc....)

[Ani*]

I was predicted As and just decided to go for the universities that i liked the look of (didn't really take into account if they all had the same requirements). I ended up chosing one AAA, three AAB and one ABB.

But, when i received my offers, two were lower than i thought they were going to be, so you can't really tell what the offer is going to be by what it says in the prospectus...unless your're going for something like law etc, which is nearly always going to be AAA at a top uni.

what are you applying to study?

[Dan-IW]

Firstly, it's obvious but so many people do it, don't put down a university that you wouldn't be willing to go to, it's just a waste of time for everyone, think of the opportunity cost (you're economics right?)!

It largely depends on how confident you are. If you're predicted 3 As, and got good ASs (like +280 ums in each) and are confident about the A2s, it's a bit pointless putting down a ABB (unless you have a specifically like the uni). If this is the case, probably go with 3 AAAs and 2 AABs. If, however, you are less confident and did less well at AS, probably go for 2 AAAs, 2 AABs and a ABB.

Obviously you choose the universities on more than their grade requirements, but I think this is a good rough outline of what is ideal.

[Galatea]

It also depends a lot on the course; if you're applying for Medicine, obviously you wouldn't pick more than two AAA universities (though actually for Medicine they'll be very few that go lower than AAB), but for less subscribed courses, I think it would be safe to go for maybe three or four AAA unis, depending on other things, like your GCSEs etc.

edit: sorry just realised you're applying for economics; it's hard to say exactly, but this is generally a very popular and oversubscribed course, not quite as much as Medicine admittedly (what is), but it still gets a lot of very strong candidates; obviously it would be wise to select a least a couple of safety net choices, though as Dan-IW says, only ones you're willing to go to.

[prospectivEEconomist]

Depends what grades you have really. If you are confident of getting AAA, and have the grades in strong traditional subjects, I would apply to 4 AAA and an AAB. I would apply for 3 top 5 economic schools, and either Nottingham or Bristol, and a backup like Southampton?