Why does strathclyde have such a high average ucas point score?

So I'm picking my final 5 choices for biomedical engineering and I was looking at all the stats on discoveruni.gov.uk I'm finding it hard to believe however that Strathclyde students have the highest average ucas points in the UK by far, even more than imperial??

Everything I've read online says that imperial and kings have the best courses in the UK for BME, so why would students with such high grades go Strathclyde? Just wondering because I need to make my choices and there could be variables that I don't know about.

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 1

ajj2000

Worth checking Strathclyde - it has a huge and rising reputation in engineering fields. Anyway, few ideas which may help to answer your question:

- a large proportion of Strathclyde students will be Scottish and have sit Scottish Highers etc. There are suggestions that these lead to somewhat higher UCAS scores than A levels
- maybe the best Scottish students want to go to Strathclyde? Why be flat broke in London running up student debt when you could stay in Scotland?
- the sample size on the discoveruni stats for UCAS points are very low - 20 students.

Reply 2

Smack

Volunteer Team

Original post by Mabey

Many top achieving students in Scotland, with AAAAA at higher, go to Strathclyde to study engineering (and possibly other subjects too).

Reply 3

harrysbar

Original post by Mabey

As above, Scottish applicants will have 5 subjects at Higher whereas English applicants will generally only have 3 or less commonly 4 A levels - this affects their UCAS points but does not mean that Strathclyde is "bettter" for Biomedical engineering than Imperial.

Scottish applicants will often pick Scottish unis because they don't have to pay any tuition fees to go there, thus saving themselves a lot of money

https://news.gov.scot/news/record-number-of-scots-going-to-scottish-universities

Reply 4

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

I would note, Strathclyde is pretty heavily targeted by engineering firm recruiters as I understand, and they have very good graduate placement records from what I've heard. They're definitely in the upper echelon of engineering universities, "despite" not being Russell Group/Ancient unis.

As above though, Scottish qualifications attract more UCAS tariff points than English ones. One potential reason most universites don't actually use the UCAS tariff, and why it's a bad metric for league table rankings etc. However between Strathclyde being a very strong uni for engineering generally, and for Scottish students being free, it's quite an attractive option to both Scottish and English students for engineering.

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 5

Clearing and Applications Advisor

To add to the reasons around qualification differences: Scottish universities have scottish/eu student numbers significantly capped compared to English and Welsh universities. English universities can opt to take every applicant capable of succeeding on the course, Scottish universities have to be more selective than that (and historically used qualifications to select - the stats might start changing now that shefc are clamping down on the proportion of deprived students admitted).

Reply 6

swanseajack1

Original post by Mabey

Prior to the changes introduced by Gove most students in England took an AS level in addition to A level. This would increase the entry level by 20-28 points for English students who generally apply to English universities not Scottish ones. Scotland kept with their previous system of highers and the result of this change has led to Scottish universities having increased their positions in league tables.

This is highlighted in the current general table for entry standards for the complete university guide where Scottish Universities have 4 of the top 8 universities for entry standards whereas for 2016 before Gove produced his master change the top 5 universities for entry standards were all English universities. Subject league tables are particularly unreliable due to the small numbers involved. A couple of unhappy students can have a disproportionate effect on the student satisfaction rates in any year and hence the league position.