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do unis give out more offers than places?
hi guys,
jus wondered if this actually happens and if so how does it work? surely, if a uni gives out x number of offers, which is more than the number of places available for the course, and x number manage to meet the grade requirements, then aren't they are pretty screwed??
one of my friends said that unis such as Oxbridge have a formulae to work out how many offers to make in order obtain the right number of places for their course. but surely, a formulae can't predict how well or how badly the national A Level results are going to be? more and more people are getting high grades now than ever before, through re-sits etc. could it not cost the unis millions in compensation if they had to reject a perfectly suitable candidate who was offered a place, because they messed up their calculation?
jus wondered if this actually happens and if so how does it work? surely, if a uni gives out x number of offers, which is more than the number of places available for the course, and x number manage to meet the grade requirements, then aren't they are pretty screwed??
one of my friends said that unis such as Oxbridge have a formulae to work out how many offers to make in order obtain the right number of places for their course. but surely, a formulae can't predict how well or how badly the national A Level results are going to be? more and more people are getting high grades now than ever before, through re-sits etc. could it not cost the unis millions in compensation if they had to reject a perfectly suitable candidate who was offered a place, because they messed up their calculation?
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Most courses give out considerably more offers than places, since people will have applied to (and maybe got offers from) up to five other places and hence not all the offers they give will result in being chosen as a firm choice. They work out how many offers to give based on the ratio of offers:chosen as firm choice in previous years: obviously this results in places such as Oxbridge, who can be fairly confidant most offers they give will result in being put as a firm choice, giving far fewer offers for the number of actual places available.
They will give out as many offers as they want. Later on, they will select the people who met there requirements.
joesharp
I think Bristol had a problem and became oversubscribed a few years ago having given out too many offers, but it's rarely a problem.
Yes, Bristol had a major problem last year as well and gave out too many offers for its medicine programme.
The amount of offers a university makes is carefully worked out using statistical techniques which take into account how many people took their offers up in previous years and other external factors relevant to the year they're making the offers.
Oxford and Cambridge give out far fewer offers than most of the rest, because they know that if they make someone an offer, it's unlikely they're going to reject it in favour of another university. Of course, they also have to take into account how many people they think will make the grades.
For instance, if a course has 200 students, and 250 students met the condition. What will happen? Do they accept all 250?
timeofyourlife
The university will probably write to all of them ask offer them the chance to take a gap year. If this fails, yes, they take all 250.
Is it rare for that situation to happen?
lou p
dundee's med school is oversubscribed at the moment... so the first year medics have bene told their exams might be a bit harder so more of them fail (whether this is true or scare-mongering i don't know)
lou xxx
lou xxx
Ours is the same because of some silly offers gaffe last year. And yes, it's scare-mongering; if they failed a large proportion compared to previous years without evidence of them not having sufficient knowledge to pass on to the next stage of the programme, there would be outcries from everyone, not least from the parents of the students failed.
The consequences (i.e. bad press) of such a move would be enough alone to deter med schools from doing this.
timeofyourlife
Ours is the same because of some silly offers gaffe last year. And yes, it's scare-mongering; if they failed a large proportion compared to previous years without evidence of them not having sufficient knowledge to pass on to the next stage of the programme, there would be outcries from everyone, not least from the parents of the students failed.
The consequences (i.e. bad press) of such a move would be enough alone to deter med schools from doing this.
The consequences (i.e. bad press) of such a move would be enough alone to deter med schools from doing this.
it shouldn't happen so easily up here because so many offers are unconditional because a lot of people do enough highers in 5th year (out of 6) to meet the requirements...
lou xxx
lou p
it shouldn't happen so easily up here because so many offers are unconditional because a lot of people do enough highers in 5th year (out of 6) to meet the requirements...
lou xxx
lou xxx
And that's why we need a revamp of the A level higher-education assessment. Universities have to use guess work, or even worse, rely on teacher predictions.
Just wondering do most uni's have quotas on how many students to accept?
Quotas set by the course/department.
trev
Quotas set by the course/department.
Well of course there's going to be a target quota set by the department according to facilities, space, funding arrangments etc.
Also each year universities have to meet overall targets for HEU student numbers or face significant financial penalties in funding from HEFCE.
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