The Alternative Economics League Table (TAELT) 2009

Ok, so eg. Bath. Median is 440, so that's (based on purely A-Levels); AAA at A2, A at AS and a bit. Which is quite scary. I'm sure I'm interpreting it wrong, but isn't that quite high for an AAB offer university?

ah. I always thought it was regular for 4ASs to become 3A2s. (guess it's because what my school did)

First of all I thank you very very very much for preparing the table... It's sooo great and helped me sooooo much!

But I found a little problem here: The UCAS Tariff points are awarded such that IB results are greatly overstated. For example, AAAA in A-levels translates into 480 tariff points, while 38 in IB, which is LSE's typical offer, gives 605 tariff points - even a bit higher than 5A's (600) in A-levels.

I fear, this would cause the figures you quoted in the table be skewed upwards. The actual average of results of A-level students might be lower than the figure suggests....

TAELT is not primarily about how good each econ department is. It is primarily about how difficult it is to get econ offers from each uni. (e.g. in terms of Typical Offers and the tariff's of successful students). So TAELT is princibly about feasibility and not how attractive a course is (that quality would vary dramaticlaly betweeen.applicants e.g. in terms of uni location and city/campus preferences).

However, we would, in general, expect course competiveness to be linked to course atractivness (avaeraged over all students). But that attraction would consider all factors: i.e. not just the academic qualities of the course but also for example general uni qualities e.g. uni geography. So TAELT is non-judegemental about the value judgemenets made by students: i.e. it include the utility students get whilst at uni.

And for comparison purposes, the spreadsheet version includes the newspaper league positions (columns P,Q,R of the A-level work sheet). (See the econ uni guide for a discussion of what I called the Big City Bias).

was just wondering is this a table of just entry requirements and not performance of the unis?

Yes it is primarily about how hard it is to get into different unis. But that is a reflection of how attractive different unis are, which is a function of uni performance.

Paulwhy, you mentioned that 90 % of economics students at UCL, LSE and warwick have studied economics at A-level. What percentage of cambridge economics students have done the same?

Here is the IB version.

AAA
Cambridge AAA M** E**p Acceptable on its own & combined with other qualifications 528 ** **preferred
Oxford # AAA M**p 38-40 These give an indication of the range of offers likely to be made to successful candidates. Achievement of these grades does not guarantee a place as admissions for all courses are competitive. 512 ** preferred
LSE AAA M** 38 7 6 6 required. Grade 7 in Mathematics required. 510 **A.
Durham AAA M* 38 462 *b
UCL AAAe M**A 38 Grades 6,6,6 at Higher level required including Mathematics. 459 **A.

have a question with IB offers at UCL



Well. it's a little different from what they actually say.
If you see this pdf file, http://www.econ.ucl.ac.uk/degrees/faq.pdf
, it clearly states "39 points overall with grades of 776 in the Highers, including Mathematics"
were there any changes?

iwas confused about this too since they also upped the requirements for straight economics, its AAA now..from AAB-ABB last year. =(