Postgraduate 'Insurance' choice

You can't accept multiple offers.

When you are given an offer (most likely you will have to achieve certain grades) therefor if you accept an offer that asks you to get a A* in the course you are on you have to get a A* for them to fully accept you.

They have already basically half accepted you, you just need to get the grades.

I hope this helps, if you do need more help/advice just quote this post , so I get a notification.

This doesn't apply to postgrad. People can and do accept multiple offers. Part of the reason is that funding often determines whether or not someone can actually attend, and funding decisions can come months afterr the actual offer. When the applicant has decided which uni to attend, they subsequently decline the other offers (or if they get no funding and cannot self-fund they may have to decline all of them). Another reason that the OP alludes to but doesn't actually apply to his case is that some offers are more lenient than others. Top unis typically make twice as many offers as they expect people to actually take them up at postgrad, for these reasons - they know a significant portion of those who accept will not end up actually accepting.

OP, the Bath system seems somewhat confusing to me. Usually what unis do to discourage being an 'insurance' is to require a non-refundable deposit on acceptance of the offer, though this is still quite rare.

OP, yes sometimes unis will still take you if you miss your offer, but it depends on a nunber of things including how far your miss is, the strength of the rest of the cohort, etc.

I still find it confusing. What is the "contract" and are its terms specified anywhere? Can they actually do anything if you accept and cancel after 14 days?

OP - I would just ask Bath. That's what I did when I was in your position, and my choices were very good at explaining clearly whether there were any consequences or not.

Posted from TSR Mobile

OP - I would just ask Bath. That's what I did when I was in your position, and my choices were very good at explaining clearly whether there were any consequences or not.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Yeah, almost sounds like it's designed to make you think there are consequences so...call their bluff I'm sure they don't have a leg to stand on if they require you to accept a contract before giving you info on what its terms might be.
The only real consequence is if they require you to pay a deposit.

If you do accept and then end up not taking the offer, of course the right thing is to let them know as soon as you have decided in case they have someone else waitlisted.

For the ones that did have consequences, can you elaborate on what these were and how the uni would implement them?

None of the ones I asked did - I was only interested in accepting two universities, and fortunately neither entailed a financial commitment.

However, at least one of the masters courses that I declined required a not insignificant nonrefundable deposit in order to accept, and I declined in large part because of this.

No idea on other academic institutions in general. I know that for a graduate professional training course that I have accepted at a university (so not postgraduate academic study), if I do not withdraw by a specific deadline (before the course starts), I will not only lose my deposit but also become liable for a percentage of the tuition fees. I imagine that would be implemented as breach of contract. That may be somehow totally inapplicable to academic courses, but the fine print in that experience has made me particularly wary and thus I prefer to seek clarification before I commit.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Thanks - that's pretty much what I thoight - absent a deposit there's not much they can do.
Re the % of tuition fees - never heard that for an academic course - but that would be unenforceable without signing a contract clearly stating those terms.