Reading Uni introduces flexible offers

In other words the manipulation has worked on you. They've avoided being put as insurance and were one of the choices you considered as firm. A decline is preferable to an insurance choice from a university point of view - insurance numbers are volatile and unpredictable - too many insurance applicants and you risk a substantial over or undershoot in students with almost no time to put remedial measures in place.

Similarly the legal status of "flexible " offers works in favour of the university - if they do overshoot they can reject or force a gap year on applicants who missed their offer conditions. Their firm applicants will struggle to meet the criteria for adjustment.

This tactic is solely for the benefit of the university concerned. If a university was confident that they're offering courses and a study environment that will win applicants on their merits then they would make lower offers officially.

Most restricted offer of all time?

What offer did Kent University give you out of interest?

Reading has a very high number of applications per year, 10 times the national average or something (last year) so there is no desperation on their part.

I would be interested in seeing those figures.



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7:1
http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/reading


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But not '10 times the national average', as claimed.

Well you're a barrel of laughs aren't you...

Agreed, they are simply recognising that people have bad days (especially taking into account how hard A-levels are nowdays).


Without being biased as I attend Reading

Apologies, I misquoted from here:

http://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/13406297.University_of_Reading_applications_up_20_per_cent_on_last_year/

The point about the high number of applications still stands, however.

True, though much of the reason for the big jump in 2015 was that it came in comparison with 2014, when there was a big fall. The ratios for applications to acceptances in 2015 was 7.3:1, in 2014 it was 6.4:1, in both 2013 and 2012 it was 7.6:1.

https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/hep_level_report_2015-dr4_001_02.pdf
https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/hep_level_report_2015-dr4_001_03.pdf

PRSOM

I've been googling for that data for about 30 minutes...

So here's a chart showing overall Applicants per Place
(All UCAS universities, etc):



And, just for fun, I've now done a quick analysis of all UCAS "providers" (universities or colleges listed by UCAS) to rank them by their Applicant : Acceptances ratio.
If we limit ourselves to those with >1,000 acceptances and using 2015 data only:

#1 LSE 10.67
#2 Edinburgh 10.16
#3 London South Bank 10.09
#4 City Uni London 10.06
#5 St Andrews 10
#6 Brunel 9.82
#7 Surrey 9.36
#8 QMUL 9.20
#9 London Met 9.07
#10 Keele 8.77

Selected others
#40 Reading 7.30
#51 Imperial 6.94
#54 Durham 6.82
#77 Oxford 5.89
#104 Cambridge 4.83

... so it's not exactly a useful measure anyway....

A more useful measure is Applicant : Offers (not Places)

8/207 courses where an applicant has a less than 50:50 chance of an offer.

Excluding Oxbridge surely?

oh that's just looking at Reading's courses.

I'm still not clear what exactly is meant by "miss their target by one A-level grade" - it sounds like they're prepared to accept people who drop a grade in all three A levels, not just one, as some of you seem to be suggesting. To me this just looks like a way of lowering the bar whilst trying to retain their image of a selective university.

AB in Economics and Maths in any order, and B in French.

They completely missed out Russian and English Language. So much for spreading the risk...

Because for some reason universities seem so short termist and foolish that "tricking " applicants into making poor decisions is a better conversion tactic than attracting applicants on the actual merits of their provision.

There is nothing equivalent to a hotel or restaurant review guide which actually gives an opinion regarding a university and its courses rather than merely regurgitating data provided by the university.