Have your say: Wolverhampton says students with low A-level grades ‘do very well’

Well, first, majority of Students at Wolf are likely to be on the lower end of 'A' level grading spectrum, and that kind of distorts their point of view. Little bit like taking data on cancer from an Oncologists - most of people he meets got cancer, therefore most of people in general got cancer, right?

Second. "A' Levels give you very little, it's just very trivial and simplistic approach to a topic of some sort, so basing your overall capacity on that is bit silly. Just because you sucked at math when you were 17 does not mean that you will be a crappy Engineer and with more practical approach you are likely to do very well, just because you don't understand some fancy edge case math that no one uses anyway...
Especially if you go after a junk humanities degree, your grades does not matter at all, everyone who turns up enough times gets a diploma of some sort. If you are clever enough to find the department of humanities you are good enough to graduate...

Not sure what I think about these universities, I mean if I give an example based on Unistats for Business Management and Computer Science from this university it does not look great.

Business:
https://unistats.ac.uk/subjects/employment/10007166FT-BU028H01/ReturnTo/
The average graduate salary is £5000 below the UK average (small sample size of 10)
However the average from 140 students after 3 years post-graduation is a salary of £18,500... which is not the best.
Like all things in life their will always be ones who succeed and are seriously driven in which case employers will reward them as most employers are not too concerned with where you have come from but what you have done with your life during university and before.

So a degree from Wolverhampton will allow social mobility through hard work so I can sort of agree that they give opportunities to 'low' performing A-Level students. However for many it's probably not worth the paper it's printed on.

Computer Science:
https://unistats.ac.uk/subjects/employment/10007166FT-CS001H01/ReturnTo/
Average is £3000 below the UK average.
After 3 years the average based on 155 students is £21,500.


The unemployment rate for both courses is relatively low but many go on to further study. So it's unclear what they get up to afterwards.

Depends on the degree... two universities that are worlds apart, yet with very similar outcomes:

https://unistats.ac.uk/subjects/employment/10006840FT-K0026/ReturnTo/Search

https://unistats.ac.uk/subjects/employment/10007166FT-CV001H01/ReturnTo/Search

It's not as bad as people make it out to be, much more mature students than your typical uni though.

Another important thing to note is even if the career prospects aren't great when compared to more prestigious unis it's still got said individual a job which they may or may not have got otherwise.

^ Very important it depends on the individual and what they want in life. University prestige is just a bonus which most employers don't care about unless you go into investment banking or magic circle law firms. As some employers just want someone with a degree and someone from Wolverhampton can get the job as a result of the degree.

What's amusing is that people place so much importance on Uni rankings yet for 99% people it carries no weight. Ego is a funny thing and many people are in for a rude awakening when they enter the real world...

It really will, interview + soft skills, work experience and the use of your time during university > university prestige unless for the exceptions I noted.

I was in an interview with someone from UCL and I was like wow UCL! His reply was interesting noting that people can sometimes place higher expectations on him based on UCL's reputation as a top flight university and he sometimes thinks the expectations placed on him are so high the reputation of his university is a double edged sword. He did make me think as I never thought about university reputation from that perspective before, so me coming from a lower tier university leads to lower expectations so it's easier for me to make a better impression? Who knows.

There's far too many factors to list as to why people end up in the positions they do, but of all the people that I know that have graduated within the last few years there's been no correlation between uni prestige and career. The highest flyer I know went to Worcester which is one of the lower ranked unis.

Well, math is what separate high end (high salary) engineers with low paid ones, this can be supported by looking at the entry requirements (the higher it is, the more likely they require A* in Math if not FM) for engineering courses and comparing that to graduate salary, there is a strong corrolation. In addition, there are differences between Oxford history graduates and Cardiff History graduates, of course grade matters, it determines which uni you go to, the people you are surronded by, their work ethic, the environment of the uni, the networking....

There are no differences between Cardiff or Oxford history graduates, both got pretty much zero skills and can be replaced with a search engine prompt but one from Oxford is likely to be from a very well connected family and spent 3-4 years around kids that are also very well connected, this is the only difference.

What makes Engineers to ear lot more than other is not math, you never use it after you leave uni, there is no reason for it, this might have been a valid point in 1930' where there were no computers and decent simulators and physics engines. Engineers that earn a lot are those with lots of experience. They usually got at least some grey hair. Worked on large successful projects and are used to working 70h weeks

Myself and a friend that got poor A level results have out performed other friends with better. We both got BCC and went on to get high grades at undergrad and are now both on academic scholarships at prestigious universities. We are continuing to get high marks at these universities on our masters courses.

The friends who got As and Bs all got low 2:1s. The exception is the friend who got all A*s who is doing the best out of all of us, which is expected.

It is unfair to judge success on A levels and the university attended as you don't know the circumstances as to why someone is there. My friend and I were never 'stupider' than our other friends, sixth form was a toxic environment for us and we were both suffering from severe mental health problems which ruined our chances to succeed there. I am extremely proud of both of us for overcoming this and doing well.

The difference in their entry requirements would likely suggest they are of two different calibers, even if they do learn identical content and can be replaced by computers, the Oxford graduate would likely have been hard working and talented. Therefore, after graduation when they enter the labor market, the Oxford graduate is more employable due to the characteristics that got him/her there in the first place, e.g. if they both chose to become professors or teachers, private schools would pick the one went to Oxford over Cardiff e.g. see Eton teachers' educational background.

In regards to engineering, both of my parents are engineers, although I accept that certain complex algorithms are not needed when they enter the labor market, math is an essential tool to have e.g. basic linear algebra and some light calculus for that industry, e.g. there are a lot of programming stuff in engineering and there are numbers involved. Therefore, you might not need to have went to Cambridge for Math or Engineering to become an engineer, but you will be better equipped mathematically if you did.

If you do not accept these arguments, there are hard facts e.g. stats about the universities grduates graduated from and earning feedback from tax returns e.g. they are big data. One could search same course, same uni; more math based engineering degree and earning salary.

Of course you might say the salary are booseted not by actual degree content, but the university social circle (or connect/society), you have to get higher grades to enter there in the first place. There are plenty of students from state schools who have gotten into those unis such as Oxbridge LSE KCL Durham...

People that go for History of PPE to Oxford are not high caliber candidates but relatives of people who already have the identical degree from that exact college, or relatives of wealthy people, kids of major donors and so on. It's a 3 years long exercise in networking. Engineering degree at Oxford also isn't any good, does not even qualify for a Charter which is a really big deal for Engineers at least here in the UK.

When it comes to Engineering you should chose carefully, you should chose a program that charters you, no joint degree, with a sandwich year and at college that has a proven connection with a relevant company where you can spend summer or your sandwich year. This is how you get a qualification that is relevant to the real world companies.

I have done applied math as a degree, it was a mistake, most of what I learned is pretty much useless. I do quite a bit of ML and I work with robots, some prototyping but mostly troubleshooting failing/underperforming production lines etc. I use Solidworks, ROS, Gazebo and Python/Numpy/Matplotlib, etc...
You only "do math" when it comes to research. Most of companies do not build their tools ground up. You get to work with libraries that are already better than anything you could possibly put together anyway. Sure, you need to have some understanding of Calculus, stats and linear algebra. Usually just enough to have an idea what some graph might look like but that's about it. As you gain experience lot of it becomes about your intuition and general understating of the system you work with.

No point pushing for a degree that is difficult for the sake of being difficult...

Generally people doing PPE are incredibly intelligent and not everyone comes from private tuition such as Eton. Networking is the key to success to be honest, sounds like a good degree to me where they develop a lot of soft skills needed for success. For example, David Solomon (CEO of Goldman Sachs) said "I'll tell you one that we're finding less and less inside the firm that I think is an important skill set, but actually we find it from students that come from Hamilton or other liberal arts backgrounds, is an ability to write," At the end of the day knowing more people gives you a higher chance of reaching new opportunities. In cases like Oxford/Cambridge even if the qualification is not 'relevant' to real world companies they still respect them heavily.

When you mean a charter, you mean for meeting the educational requirements for becoming a chartered engineer? Engineering Science at Oxford is accredited by InstMC, IChemE, ICE, IET, IMechE and IStructE according to Unistats.