I had a thought of how easy it could be for students to provide evidence of being care experienced to get lower uni offers (a girl in my college lived in her home country til she was 13 and she made a letter from a fake care authority from her home country that she was under their care to get lower UCAS offers)
and at first i thought she would get caught but turns out it was accepted........
i think these are so stupid areas when unis assess extenuating circumstances like if most students have faced challenges whether its health or family or financial then that deserves to be noticed not just certain areas like care leavers or refugees since it often does lead to problems like this...........and I think contexual offers are so specific like they don't take everything into consideration
From my experience I did an access programme at Manchester University but was unfortunately removed in October which happened to a lot of students. and whilst there were extenuating circumstances of why i could not finish the programme the university did not take it into consideration despite medical proof and multiple teachers and family reaching out. whilst this was my own personal bad luck, I certainly do think that Manchester and other unis need to broaden their horizons when assessing contexual offers. I could not get it as I moved homes this year
ultimately i think its a morally acceptable thing to not tie specific factors into 'special consideration' like if you see manchesters eligibility checker for contexual you could literally had been in a low performing school AND college but your postcode could be 'not poor enough' and I think this is so problematic as myself I have long term mental and health conditions, these schemes aren't the best assess on giving out lower offers or whatever
I understand how competitive these universities are but I certainly do think they all should do a better job at checking contexuals and extra consideration to students who clearly need it