How does equal consideration work?

The fact that people get offers before the deadline shows that equal consideration is false. Im not sure if it will be a good idea for me to apply early. Or just wait.

Reply 1

DataVenia

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

Original post by Rainyzack

The fact that people get offers before the deadline shows that equal consideration is false. Im not sure if it will be a good idea for me to apply early. Or just wait.

It does not show that. If a particular course has 100 places, and know from experience that they never get more than 50 applicants with A*A*A* grades, then they could (if they were only considering predicted grades) make every A*A*A* candidate an offer as soon as their application arrived, regardless of whether it arrived in October or January. Those applicants would be received equal consideration (i.e. not impacted why when the application arrived). They could also decide that they've never made an offer to any BBB candidates, so they could reject them as they arrived. Equal consideration. Anyone with grades in between could be left until the equal consideration deadline had passed, as which point they'd know how many applicants they had at what grades.

If you're applying to Oxford, Cambridge or most courses in medicine, dentistry, or veterinary medicine/science then you have no choice but to apply early (16 October 2023). For everyone else it will make no difference to whether you receive an offer or not when you apply, as long as it's by 31 January 2024.

Some people like to apply early, in the hope they get offers early. That would be the case for the A*A*A* candidates in my made-up scenario too. For many candidates, however, it won't even impact when they get an offer, because some universities / courses won't start making offers until after 31 January 2024 anyway.

Reply 2

Admit-One

Universities Forum Helper

Everyone who submits ahead by the deadline is assessed by the same criteria. Early offers don’t disprove that. Those candidates are so strong that the uni knows from experience that they’ll be amongst the best candidates and there’s no point waiting for a full gathered field to make offers.