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Hi so I have gotten an offer from Exeter uni for English and Drama BA however I have been predicted AAB but I highly doubt I am going to get that in the real thing, realistically speaking I will be lucky if I get BBB. I love the course at Exeter and it is giving me at lot of anxiety knowing I probably won’t achieve these grades. So how flexible is Exeter on results day and will I still get in?
Original post by Anonymous
Hi so I have gotten an offer from Exeter uni for English and Drama BA however I have been predicted AAB but I highly doubt I am going to get that in the real thing, realistically speaking I will be lucky if I get BBB. I love the course at Exeter and it is giving me at lot of anxiety knowing I probably won’t achieve these grades. So how flexible is Exeter on results day and will I still get in?

Hi anonymous,

Great to hear that you've received an offer from Exeter, congratulations!

Each year it is very hard to say whether any university will be more or less lenient on results day. This is because it depends on lots of things which are very hard to predict and changeable year on year, such as how popular each course has been with applicants and how well they have all done in achieving their offers. For English and Drama specifically, Exeter is very well ranked in these subjects, ranking 2nd in the UK for Drama and 11th for English in the Complete University Guide 2025, which tends to make them popular courses for applicants. Looking online the typical offer for this course can range from AAB-ABB, so there might be some room for flexibility if you miss by a grade in one of your subjects, but I'd still be cautious about relying on this come results day. It's also important to note the subject requirement of getting a B in English Literature, English Language or English Literature & Language. Generally these grade expectations in specific subjects are expected to remain firm, even if there is flexibility elsewhere in the offer.

However the good news is that your teachers will have predicted you AAB for a reason, as they'll believe that you are fully capable of achieving this, and therefore of getting a place for your chosen course at Exeter. You should take confidence from this, and there is still a lot of time between now and when your final exams take place. Personally I found getting receiving an offer from my favourite course a big extra motivation that helped me to focus and improve my grades for the final stretch of year 13 (for me it was a bit touch-and-go trying to get an A in my maths A-Level!). Hopefully this might have the same effect for you and give you a target to work towards. Perhaps discussing this with your teachers at sixth-form or college could help to determine if there's anything in particular you could work on to try and secure an A, e.g. by getting more help with certain topics or completing more practice essays.

As a final point, you will also have the option to pick a firm and insurance choice as part of your application through UCAS. If the anxiety of meeting the offer from Exeter is causing you worry, I suggest that you also think about what insurance choice you might pick that perhaps has a lower entry requirement as a sensible fall-back option. As mentioned above, I was worried about getting an A in my maths A-Level specifically and so when I firmed Exeter as my first choice, I made sure to choose an insurance choice at a different university that had a lower entry requirement, especially for that subject. I found this really helpful as it reassured me that if I did miss out on that grade I wouldn't miss out on going to university altogether and that I had a solid back-up option. This helped to reduce some of the anxiety I was feeling at the time.

In the end I did end up getting the grades I needed, and ended up going to my dream course at Exeter not just for my undergraduate degree, but also a Masters and am now partway through a PhD there. If it worked for me I'm wishing you the best of luck for a similarly successful story. I hope this answer helps and perhaps relieves some of the anxiety that you are currently experiencing. Please let me know if there is anything else I can help with.

Kingsley
University of Exeter Student Ambassador

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