How lenient is SHU on entry grades

So I've applied for criminology which I'm aware is quite a competitive course, and the entry requirements are BBC. SHU is my first choice but my 2nd also wants the same grades so that doesn't matter.

From how I feel about my exams, it's looking like I'm going to get a BCD at best (the B would be in Crim, that's pretty much certain at this point).

Should I start looking at other options for next year or will that still be enough to potentially get me in? I'm not sure how effective clearing would be considering the course

Reply 1

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

Original post by Anonymous

No university, including Sheffield Hallam, is "lenient". They simply confirm the place of every candidate who's met the conditions of their offer and has made Sheffield Hallam their firm choice. Then they do the same for those who were not accepted by their firm choice buy made Sheffield Hallam their insurance choice. If that means that all places are filled, and you didn't meet your offer conditions, then you don't get a place.

However, if they still have some places left, they'll likely look at "near miss" candidates to see if they'd be happy to accept them. They might also open the course to Clearing, in the hope of getting some more applicants this way (rather than accepting firm candidates with grades which couldn't really be described as a "near miss"). It's all a number game at the end of the day, and no-one knows how many candidates will meet their offer conditions, so no-one knows how many (if any) "near miss" candidates might have their place confirmed too. You'll just have to wait and see, I'm afraid.

One thing which I would say looks promising for you is that although Sheffield Hallam might ask for BBC, that's not the grades their students typically get. The Uni Guide shows that, for students currently studying Criminology at Sheffield Hallam, the "Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)" are Psychology C, Sociology C and History C". (Source)

I should caveat that with the fact that sometimes The Uni Guide doesn't have enough data to show the statistics for an individual course, and so uses those for a similar course or a group of similar courses. They've done this with the National Student Survey results on that page (which are actually for Sociology). There is no indication they they've done that for the "Who studies this subject and how do they get on?" data, which they get from HESA (the Higher Education Statistics Agency), but they may have done.