UCL student - ask me anything

Hi, how did the university handle professor strikes? Has lesson disruption been minimised now and are lessons back to face to face?

What is your weekly schedule like?

I study Spanish and French btw so anything uni-wide or related to the SELCS department.

What were your GCSE grades like? How many A*'s? As?

What did you achieve in A-Level French and/or A-Level Spanish? Did you do History or Maths too?

What was your offer?

If you live in the Zone 1 to 4 zones in London, you won't be eligible for UCL accommodation as an undergraduate student?

my gcses were mostly 9s with a couple 8s, my offer was AAB, and I'm pretty sure all home undergraduates are eligible for accom

Which A-Level subjects did you do and what grades did you achieve in the end?

What extracurriculurs did you do to get accepted?

What is the accommodation like?

My daughter will apply for the French and Spanish course at UCL this year. She's currently with a high school following the US curriculum, so the entry requirement for her is a score of 5 in three AP subjects with French and Spanish. If she meets this requirement, how likely is she to get accepted? How competitive is this course? Is there anything else she needs to focus on to increase the change?

Is course economics with one year abrioad 4 years or 3 years. I ask because of tuitio fees Thank you

My daughter will apply for the French and Spanish course at UCL this year. She's currently with a high school following the US curriculum, so the entry requirement for her is a score of 5 in three AP subjects with French and Spanish. If she meets this requirement, how likely is she to get accepted? How competitive is this course? Is there anything else she needs to focus on to increase the change?

UCL is generally a competitive uni but equally modern languages tends to be undersubscribed as a degree programme across the UK.

Note UK unis usually give a "conditional offer" rather than an outright acceptance, and the acceptance will be subject to meeting the terms of the offer (usually something like in this case 5 in 3 APs with French and Spanish). If she achieves that after getting the offer they have to accept her. I imagine she has a good chance of getting an offer in the first place too if she has some good APs already +/- good SAT/ACT score if she's taken it (even if not a great score it looks like she can get an offer with just 3 APs for it so not a big deal!).

So probably a decent chance

They have some fairly detailed info here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/international/united-states-america

Since languages degrees are generally somewhat unpopular in the UK fewer people apply to them so it's relatively "easier" to get into those courses, even at quite good universities. While nothing is guaranteed I think meeting the requirements (or being predicted to meet them) while applying to an undersubscribed course like that gives a very good chance of getting a conditional offer. Of course, one needs to actually meet those requirements by the end of the school year to be able to matriculate

And yes the UK system is very different to the US system. Since students in the UK don't have a "rolling" GPA from their classes in school (their results are determined by external public exams like A-levels, GCSEs etc), and since the exams form which their grades do derive aren't held until after applying, unis in the UK do normally make those conditional offers on the basis of predicted grades.

Since there's a fair amount of uncertainty as a result most universities outside of Oxford and Cambridge realistically need to make more offers than they would anticipate having "places" for (although there are no formal restrictions on how many students unis can take outside of medicine and dentistry). Unisy know out of the number of offers they make, some will not accept choose to make it their "firm" or "insurance" offer at all (and thus decline it - you can only ultimately have 2 offers accepted in UCAS), they may make them their "insurance" choice and not their "firm" choice and if they achieve their grades will go to the other uni, some will not do as well in their exams and miss the offer and the uni may or may not feel they can accept them, some might meet their offer for the firm choice but decide not to matriculate/enrol in the end, etc. There are a lot of potential attrition points.

So really for modern languages I think usually meeting or being predicted to meet the standard entry requirements and writing a not-terrible personal statement (not necessarily outstanding) is probably going to be sufficient to be a serious contender if not get an offer.

In any event there's nothing to lose really! I suppose there's the ~£25 UCAS fee but since you have to pay that to apply through UCAS at all (regardless of which 5 unis you apply to) and it's very unlikely one would get 0/5 offers unless they completely didn't meet or couldn't meet the requirements, there's very little risk here in applying.

Thank you so much for this detailed explanation!! UCL is her first choice. Otherwise, she would choose US universities. For admission to US universities, GPA and extra-curricular activities are considered more important than AP scores or other standardized test scores. Can I assume that GPA and extra-curricular activities are irrelevant to admission to UK universities unless they are part of the entry requirement? (For her, the entry requirement is a score of 5 in three AP subjects including French and Spanish.)