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Been rejected from Durham? I'm SO ANGRY.

Well, my head of sixth form phoned up the admissions office today to get some feedback on why I was rejected (predicted three As at A-level, applied for history and politics).

She said that, my application had been in one of the first batch of applications which had been sent through to the politics department (as these things are done at Durham, each department looks at it before passing the 'ok'ed ones onto the next)

Well, the politics department rejected the whole bunch (good applications... mostly 'also applied to Oxbridge', I'd assume) and sent them back. Admissions assumed a mistake, returned them, just to have them rejected a second time.

The lady on the end of the phone, I'm told, was actually EMBARRASSED to admit the real reason why these were rejected. It's because Durham accepted too many applicants last year and got a financial slap on the wrist... so this year, in order to keep the numbers down, they have automatically rejected anyone who didn't get an A* in GCSE history. That's GCSE history. Seem a bit unfair to you? I'm INSANELY angry with this... you wouldn't even believe.

So, fair enough, my head of sixth form mentioned that she wouldn't bother letting anyone who didn't get an A* in their chosen subject at GCSE level apply next year, to which she was told "Oh, no, don't do that. It'll probably be different next year".

Fantastic. Anyone else been caught out by this IDIOTIC screening system? Does it just apply to history, or to any other subjects too?

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Reply 1

Lucy

Hmm, so Durham have been including some odd requirements in their selection process this year. Something similar for the Natural Scientists who applied there - apparently they instantly rejected all applicants without A2 (or maybe it was AS) mathematics due to oversubscription.

Reply 2

daumal

What got me was the fact that the person she talked to on the end of the phone actually said that it was an embarrassing thing to have to admit, so I can't be the only one who thinks this is laughable?

Reply 3

viviki

Thats the wonderful world of university recruitment for you, and why it would probably be better not to have recruitment until after everyone gets their grades.

Reply 4

Alaric

indeed if they aren't careful they'll get a financial slap on the wrists (which is actually fairly sizeable if the get it wrong by a lot) for admitting too few... or they'll be in clearing.

Such grading systems are silly... I wouldn't be in Cambridge if they paid any attention to that.

Alaric.

Reply 5

Claire393

Same thing happened to my friend at Leeds. She applied for Psychology being predicted AAB at A level (A in psych) and was rejected for not having a A*A* in science GCSE. She was gutted as she'd just re-sat her maths for them too to get it up a grade like they wanted.

Reply 6

emporium

Commiserations daumal, the clear message here is; don't apply to Durham, it's a wank place anyway, and now prospective students are treated poorly :biggrin:

Reply 7

daumal

So are ex-students.

My parents knew someone who didn't get a reply from a job he applied for in teaching, phonedup to ask why adn it was because Durham hadn't even bothered to write his reference, even though he'd asked them a number of times to do so.

Reply 8

pikaboo

Durham seems to be very strict with their offers this year. For my course (Anthropology) typical offers are BBC-ABB, yet I got an AAB offer when I'm predicted AAA...plus my Oxbridge applicant friends all got offers around AAA for courses not usually requiring such high grades. Maybe there's been a big increase in the number of applicants recently :\

Reply 9

B00kwOrm

Oh cr*p I applied there for history myself. Looks like I can forget about them. I don't have an A* in history at GCSE for the simple reason that I didn't do GCSEs.

Reply 10

jonnymcc2003

I got A* in History at GCSE, and A at As Level, but a place like Swansea haven't even contacted me yet.

Reply 11

viviki

Blimey their entrance requirements have dropped I was predicted AAB when I looked at applying for English and American studies 6 years ago at Swansea

Reply 12

daumal

jonny... no news is good news. They can take ages to come through, because they have to give all applications before the 15th an equal chance. Chances are, if you haven't heard anything than neither have anyone else...

B00kworm... I don't THINK they're doing it for straight history. Although History at Durham is an AAA offer, and History and Politics is an AAB offer, only History and Politics to my knowledge have done the A*-at-GCSE thing.

Reply 13

TommyP

Durham are also being slow in telling UCAS who they've given offers to. I got a letter in mid-December saying I'd got an offer (ABB for psychology) but it still isn't on the Ucas tracker yet!

Reply 14

xaviars

Check the tracker, my offer is on there today

Reply 15

B00kwOrm

B00kworm... I don't THINK they're doing it for straight history. Although History at Durham is an AAA offer, and History and Politics is an AAB offer, only History and Politics to my knowledge have done the A*-at-GCSE thing.

Oh, good. Cheers.

Reply 16

fishpaste

Sounds like some feeble attempt to increase the prestige of the university without improving the courses. So more people say "I got 10 A*s and went to Durham." That'll backfire when every single person they made an offer to gets a better offer and they get left behind.

Reply 17

katiyakat

Personally, I think it's much more likely that they were significantly oversubscribed this year, had to distinguish between applicants in some way and chose to do so in that way. Distinguishing between applicants on the basis of one GCSE grade really doesn't seem like a very good or fair way to do it, but I suppose they have to do it somehow.

One of my friends was initially rejected for NatSci at Durham because she doesn't have A-Level Maths, so they really are doing that this year. I think they're being extra careful because whatever formula they used to predict the numbers of acceptances failed semi-catostrohically last year - Greys got it so wrong that for the first time ever, some Freshers had to live out.