What uni should I put as my insurance?

I'm struggling to decide which uni to put as my insurance. So far I have 4/5 offers, one of which from the one I'm going to put as my firm choice. My predicted grades are A*A*A* in History, Gov & Pol and Classical Civilisation.
I've applied to:
- Warwick: Classical Civilisation (with study in Europe) - offer is BBB since it's contextual
- Bristol: Ancient History - BBB (contextual too)
- Durham: Ancient History - AAA
- UCL: Ancient History - AAA
- KCL: Ancient History - I haven't yet received a reply

I'm fairly certain I want to go to Warwick for a number of reasons - I've visited the campus, it's outside of London without being super far away, its cheaper than London or Bristol, the course sounds amazing, and the opportunity to study in Europe is really cool.

What I'm stuck with is which to put for my insurance offer. It seems counterintuitive to put one with a higher offer than my firm, like KCL will likely give me if I am accepted, but out of the other 4 it's the only other one I can see myself studying at. There's also of course the factor that most of my friends are staying in London for uni, so having a London one as my insurance is partly just entertaining the idea of staying here.

Any advice on what to do would be much appreciated!

Reply 1

McGinger

You do not have to make this choice until JUNE.
Plenty of time to go to Offer Holder visit days, look around more critically, listen to detailed subject presentations, ask questions and think about the reality of being at that Uni / living in that place.

Making an earlier choice does not give you any advantages at all - and as you will see, TSR will become littered with posts from those who did make the choice too early, have now changed their minds, and have realised that they can't do anything about it, and are stuck with those choices. It recommended that you wait until at least Easter before entering any decision.

Reply 2

Walkablecities

You can't put an insurance choice that's higher than your firm because if you get the grades for your firm choice, you will be going to your firm choice. You can't turn around and say actually, I want to go to my insurance. It's absolutely fine to firm Warwick and not have an insurance as you don't have any unis with lower grades than Warwick, but as McGinger said, don't rush into choosing your firm and insurance (remember, you don't have to put down an insurance choice), there's no advantage in doing that and there's plenty of time to choose. Supposing you firm Warwick, you could make Bristol your insurance in the hopes that if you missed the grades, Bristol might take you as a near miss if Warwick doesn't (though that wouldn't really be much of an insurance)