MPs to probe unconditional offers from universities

What is it exactly you are disagreeing with? Unconditionals are still only a small % of offers. Unless you show me that its against students interests to accept an unconditional as they perform significantly less well then I cant say im fussed. I have no problem with it being a market and unis having to sell themselves to students. As pointed out a little more consumer education in choosing might help, but as we have a loans system then imo its only right unis compete for students and the weak ones will not thrive.

Birmingham is the worst offender - it's a clear marketing strategy by them, and not necessarily in the interests of the student. Birmingham is only interested in securing bums on seats ahead of their competitors.

There's an argument that you could manage a PQA system easily by shifting all universities to calendar years (starting in January) instead of academic years (starting in Autumn).

Ew no. Ideally, I would like no exams at all until the final year of high school (and replace A levels with something like the IB or Abitur). Although, I can see the argument for some kind of exam in Year 9 (but not SATs / national exams) so teachers can gauge pupils' strengths and weaknesses.

Have you heard about their "personalised videos"?

Not until now... http://www.connectingelement.co.uk/case-studies/personalised-video-production-university-of-birmingham/

/shudders.

I doubt the unis would buy into that. There's a lot more money to be made hosting conferences during the summer than there is hosting during December.

Not an expert on this... but I think Sweden (for example) has entrance exams for their equivalent of sixth forms.

There's a large (and growing) international market for courses starting in January - a lot of UK universities are now offering that for postgrad and a handful offer it for undergrad too

There's always going to be a break of some sort in the summer - conferences only last a week max, summer schools 3-4 weeks max....it might just be a case of moving from a 3 month summer break to something more spread out.

Not that it'll get anywhere - tradition is more important than fair admissions

I dont know about that. It didnt make me less stressed from an exam perspective as i always wanted to get good grades so regardless i worked for that but it was nice to know i was definitely going somewhere as for someone with anxiety it made results day less anxious from a university offer perspective. Also i dont know about other courses but for arts courses uncondtionals make sense and people dont get a place unfairly from them. You have to make a portfolio and then attend an interview. This is a **** tonne of work especially when trying to balance 3 other a levels and everything else. If they **** up their a levels then yeh they didnt work as hard at the end as someone who did well in their a levels necessarily but they had worked hard prior to that point otherwise wouldnt have been given the unconditional in the first place (mine was based upon my portfolio, my AS grades, my predicted grades and my interview performance). Unis that just give out unconditional without an interview or without seeing the applicant is a different matter but that wasnt what i was referring to.

So glad to hear someone say this! I'm an Architecture applicant, went through the whole incredibly laborious and time-consuming process of putting together a portfolio and preparing for interviews. But now that I have most of my offers (waiting on the fifth) I'm genuinely concerned that I'm not going to get the grades I need, because having sacrificed so much time since the beginning of the year to prepare everything for my application, my A-levels ended up on the back burner. So I feel like an unconditional would be a deserved offer, at least more so than unconditionals given out, as you said, for applicants who simply send off their UCAS without anything more to do.

I'd like to see schools/colleges boycotting universities that try to manipulate their students in this way (obviously unless that specific course/university was the applicants top choice regardless).

Firstly well done for getting 4 offers and yeh can understand that :/ UCAS can at times feel like a 4th A level anyway what with the work of the personal statement and stuff, when you add in portfolio it does get time consuming. I know some people used some of their A level art work etc and i did include that but i didnt want it to be the focus of the portfolio because i wanted to show i did extra curricular art/design stuff in my own time i.e i had a passion for it i wasnt just doing it for an a level, so that really did take up time although i did start it quite early (middle of year 12 i think if irc) which helped but still.
try not to worry, you still have time now to do revision etc for a levels and i hope it goes well for you
and yeh totally, can understand the argument that just throwing out unconditionals to people for submitting their PS is a bit fishy but i do genuinely think it is different for interview courses. and different again for the arts as you can see the skill to a certain extent as it is more a visual interview than a scenario based one as with medicine or something. It makes sense that if the tutors like what they literally see that they would want to nab those applicants