The Student Room Group

Oxford open offers.

Got an open offer from Brasenose College, and I'm unsure as to what the odds of me ending up there are. Are all the open offer holders completely free agents, or do they aim to put you into the college who underwrites your offer?
Reply 1
A good deal was written on this thread a few years back.

Bottom line - the greatest single chance would be your own underwriting college as they have to take you first if they want to take any one else from the pool of those on open offers. After that* it seems St Hugh's, Somerville, LMH, St Hilda's, St Peter's, Pembroke and Teddy Hall were the most likely as they tended not to make Open Offers in History (the main subject on that particular thread). Looking at FOIs it looks they are still the next likely after your own underwriting college.

2017 entry Open Offer Holders

There were some helpful posts created by @BrasenoseAdm (Nose's Official Rep) who would presumably be bang on to answer you if they are still active.

*Please bear in mind I was mostly looking at History and History variants. With 23 open offers having been made this year (data courtesy of the Mansfield Subject Feedback report) there are fewer colleges able to dip immediately into the pool on / shortly before Results Day. In contrast looking at the FOIs on Maths (google Zhao Open Offers G100) showed 2 out of 7 offers ended up at their underwriting college in 2022. For this year Maths look to have made 13 open offers (data again courtesy of Mansfield's informative additions to the general reports published by most other colleges)/
Reply 2
It completely depends which college(s) have someone in your subject who misses their grades, so could be completely random. Your underwriting college has first dibs on you, so if they have a spare place they will almost certainly take you - but if they don’t and some other college does they would probably release you.
My son and two of his school friends ended up at their underwriting colleges. One lad ended up at a different college. Small sample (one school) I know but thought I’d follow up for the sake of those looking up the topic for next year.

This is as across several subjects,

Perhaps the increasing use of the open offer system by colleges has increased the likelihood of you getting the underwriting college. With more colleges opting in (and having to take their open offer candidates first if someone misses grades or elects not to take up their place after all) there are fewer colleges free to immediately take from the pool of open offers.

Just a thought.

Anyway he has now had a month or so to start really looking forward to Oxford with the focus of knowing which college he’s off to.

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