English Literature - late dumping by Manchester University

aah

Hi there

My daughter applied to do english lit at Manchester Uni among others.

She has offers from 2 other russell group unis but could not accept them because she was waitin on Manchester.

This has been going on since last year and the unis had to make a decision by 31 March. Daughter could not accept the others because Manchester had not made a decision.

Finally, at around 23.oo yesterday, Manchester University decided to reject her.

We had hoped of course that such an eleventh hour decision would be a positive one, but no, a 17 year old was kept hanging on until the last moment by this venerable institution. And then dumped.

Fortunately she has got better places to go thank goodness. ATM ANYWHERE would be better. Just thought other prosepective students might want to learn of this behaviour. Completely within UCAS regulations of course, but probably not within the spirit of them

Voyager2002

Never mind.

If she gets really good grades this summer they might let her in through clearing. Or she could defer for a year and apply again.

Of all university cities, Manchester has the wildest night-life and the hottest curries. So it makes sense to decline all other offers and keep on applying, until in the end they let her in.

Rosie75

This kind of thing does occasionally happen with courses that are popular and attract high calibre candidates, unfortunately - and English would be one of those courses. Exactly the same thing happened to me years ago when I applied to do English - it wasn't Manchester in that case but another Russell Group university. It probably doesn't have anything to do with institutional incompetence / meanness, but most likely means that she was on a reserve list and Manchester was waiting to get an idea of how many acceptances they were getting from those they had made offers to before offering / rejecting reserve list candidates. The whole process of making offers is a very complicated one, and universities need to be particularly careful this year since the government has told them that departments will be financially penalised this autumn if intakes are higher than projected.
If your daughter has two other offers from Russell Group universities, that is pretty good going for an application for an English course, so I don't think there is too much reason to be upset about this.

MrsManda

Completely off topic but what's is the deal with Russell Group universities?
Never actually heard it until I read this thread though I see through Googling, my university is one of them Do people apply to them because they are Russell Group?

On topic, I'd like to second Rosie's comments. It's a shame and drove me up the wall when I applied to university the first time. Again that was Manchester University, and they did eventually give me a place but I'd decided where I wanted to go in February and there was no room for an insurance place as the offer from that university was really low. Yet I had to wait until late April before I could officially accept. But that's something I guess students have to get used to when applying to high caliber places. Hope your daughter finds somewhere she will be happy.

QuirkyChemistry

MrsManda wrote: »

Completely off topic but what's is the deal with Russell Group universities?
Never actually heard it until I read this thread though I see through Googling, my university is one of them Do people apply to them because they are Russell Group?

The Russell Group unis are the older ones and tend to be well respected so people do apply to them because of that. Often the universities make a thing out of it in their prospectuses too.


Good luck with the English degree. Shame about Manchester but I'm sure she will love university wherever she ends up. My top choice university decided to get rid of its course just as I was about to put it down as first choice. I ended up choosing a completely different university through UCAS Extra and have never looked back.

Rosie75

I'm not sure why people get hung up on Russell Group universities since there are a number of high-ranking institutions which are not RG members, eg York, Durham, St Andrews, Sussex, not to mention the smaller, specialist institutes such as SOAS or the Courtauld Institute. The Russell Group is simply a group of universities which work together to try to wrangle the best possible funding from the government for their institutions.

oystercatcher

Manchester insisted on interviewing my son in mid March for his civil engineering place, he'd had offers from everywhere else ages ago.
However he was given a good offer at the interview and has made them his first choice.
Apparently last year they were heavily oversubscribed and ended up with a lot more people on the course than they had expected and wanted to avoid this this year so are being very cautious with their offers.

Good luck to OP's daughter. Best to take up offers in hand than wait for clearing.

I'd never heard of Russel Group until I looked it up just now.

Oystercatcher

juno

The March deadline is only an advisory deadline. Unis don't actually have to reply yet. So, your daughter is actually lucky in having heard from all of her choices now. Many people haven't!

Rosetta_2

Just a word of warning about the whole "Russell group university " whilst the universities are longer established and leading research and teaching institutions. Please be aware that some departments within excellent rated universities are not rated excellent themselves. I studied at a Russell group uni and have now worked in two for many years, my partner works in a newer university ( est 1960's). His subject is rated far higher in many surveys (times higher ed etc) than the institution that I work in.

So I am saying well done, it is harder to get in to Russell group unis for certain subjects , but don't write off other newer universities. Some russell group unis are prone to resting on their laurels..they shouldn't!

aah

thanks for your replies everyone. wish i hadnt mentioned russell group as replies centred on that rather than the late dumping by manchester.
fortunately M wasnt her first or second choice - she just couldnt accept thos until mcr had made up its mind.

So she now needs to get her head down and get the work done for a place to study eng lit at GLASGOW or LANCASTER yayy

melancholly

some unis/departments (things will change within one uni with different depts) use different ways of offering places - some will make offers to those who apply early whereas others will wait until all the applications are in before processing any.... given how many students apply, it's a very difficult art to offer the right number of places so that the correct number of students accept the place and get the right grades so that a yeargroup isn't too big or too small.... i have no idea how this works out in most depts each year!

i guess it's annoying but not uncommon - the whole UCAS application system is very stressful for students (and i imagine also for admissions tutors too!). i know it's not always the 'done thing' to say so, but most unis will suit most students -they are large places with diverse opportunities and in most places people will find a niche. i'm sure your daughter will be happy with either glasgow or lancaster (my pick would be glasgow but only because i went there for a wedding and really liked the city!!).