Better leaving UCAS to the last second or two?

You get equal consideration if you submit your UCAS before the deadline (15th(?) of January for most courses, earlier for medicine/dentistry/vet sci/oxbridge, march time for art degrees). After that they can easily reject you and give someone else an offer who may have had a weaker application than you, as you are considered as no longer being a candidate of equal consideration (awfully put).

I would imagine earlier the better. If a uni has handed out less offers, they have more places. At some level that has to enter the application staff's minds.

What I am saying though, surely at this point, which is well before the deadline for students to make their replies, won't most universities have pretty much no places from sending out a bunch of offers to students who do not intend on going there?

Does it not work like this:

University X has 50 places on a course.

The recieve 200 applications. They shortlist give out 100 offers and reject the other half. Obviously they know that they only have 50 places, but say out of that 100 only 50 will actually firm and 25 will Insure. Cutting it down to 75. Only 5 of the 15 don't make their firm making it a total of 55. Of the firmers in the 55 only 30 make their offers and the rest are unsuccessful applicants. So on results day they are 15 places short...

At the present moment, they have given their 100 offers and can't exceed that. So surely I'd be better waiting until that 100 offers has dropped to 75 including the insurance offer holders?

What I am saying though, surely at this point, which is well before the deadline for students to make their replies, won't most universities have pretty much no places from sending out a bunch of offers to students who do not intend on going there?

Does it not work like this:

University X has 50 places on a course.

The recieve 200 applications. They shortlist give out 100 offers and reject the other half. Obviously they know that they only have 50 places, but say out of that 100 only 50 will actually firm and 25 will Insure. Cutting it down to 75. Only 5 of the 15 don't make their firm making it a total of 55. Of the firmers in the 55 only 30 make their offers and the rest are unsuccessful applicants. So on results day they are 15 places short...

At the present moment, they have given their 100 offers and can't exceed that. So surely I'd be better waiting until that 100 offers has dropped to 75 including the insurance offer holders?

They don't give out offers like that. It doesn't matter to unis whether they give out 100 or 101. If you're good enough you'll get an offer.

Sent from my GT-S5363

lets be honest if 1000 AAAA grade students, who all took gap years and applied with the results achieved, had great PSs and relevant work experience, high class references etc but decided they wanted to go to a university that asked for 120 UCAS points. They are certainly not going to give out 1000 offers are they?

What if an unusually high number of people make it their firm or insurance choice this year, and the course is already in danger of being slightly over-subscribed?

You're trying to second-guess the system here and it's not going to work Right now you're competing against other late applicants and people applying through Extra, you don't have anything to gain by waiting, but the uni may be giving out offers to other applicants instead.

1000 students wouldn't apply for that course. Don't be ridiculous.

lets be honest if 1000 AAAA grade students, who all took gap years and applied with the results achieved, had great PSs and relevant work experience, high class references etc but decided they wanted to go to a university that asked for 120 UCAS points. They are certainly not going to give out 1000 offers are they?

by leaving it to the last minute I can see which universities have still got places though. Even if I ring tomorrow (are they open tomorrow?) and they say they are, the number of late applicants is going to be higher at this point than it will be in June and the number of offers they have to give out will likely be much less?

They should be open tomorrow.

The longer you wait, the more places will have stopped taking applications. You have nothing to gain by waiting.

1000 students wouldn't apply for that course. Don't be ridiculous.

ok, well to update the one university I really wanted to get into is closed. They said they gave out all their offers already. Would there be a chance of getting an offer in the summer after some of these offers have been declined? Really should have asked this over the phone...




Seems they do have limits to the amount of offers they give out.

ok, well to update the one university I really wanted to get into is closed. They said they gave out all their offers already. Would there be a chance of getting an offer in the summer after some of these offers have been declined? Really should have asked this over the phone...

They know approximately how many offers they have to give out in order to get the right number of students there and they're good at getting this right, so it's very unlikely that they'll open the course up to more applications before Clearing.

so I'd be better just applying elsewhere now and reject and enter clearing if they accept me when clearing opens in July?