School leavers who receive their high school diplomas on Thursday will have an easier time gaining admission to their desired university than their predecessors in the past two years, experts predict.
This year, a record number of 18-year-olds are competing for university places, but experts say many universities are hoping to fill their accommodation and lecture halls with more British students amid fears of a falling number of lucrative overseas students.
This year’s school leavers, the first in five years to have completed both their GCSE and A-level exams, will also no longer have to contend with the pandemic-related distortion in university admissions numbers.
Leading institutions, which were forced to admit thousands more students than desired due to increased A-level grades in 2020, are no longer overly cautious in offering admissions as the additional students have worked their way through the system and grades are back to normal levels.
Mark Corver, former director of admissions service Ucas who runs DataHE, a consultancy that advises universities on admissions, said: “All the signs are that it will be a better admissions cycle for 18-year-olds with offers of admission than 2022 or 2023.”
According to Corver’s analysis of Ucas data, lower and mid-tariff universities had the highest offer rates for young people from the UK this year. The offer rate at the most selective high-tariff universities rose again to 69%, after falling to 61% in 2022.
Corver said the chance of getting confirmation of their first-choice university last year was at an all-time low for 18-year-olds in England, with 57 percent being accepted to their firm choice, down from 68 percent in 2021, when grades were unexpectedly good during the pandemic.
He argued that this had probably contributed to the decline in the proportion of 18-year-olds applying to university in England this year, because many of them may know someone who was disappointed with their place.
“It is quite a traumatic experience for a young person, given their limited experience, to not be accepted to their first choice university,” he said.
Corver said concerns about the number of overseas students, particularly the decline in postgraduate courses, was also prompting many universities to take on more British students. “This is a big problem in the (elite) Russell Group, whose income is extremely dependent on these overseas students,” he said. “Universities that are used to picking the best places are very concerned about the fluctuations.”
The number of international students applying for visas to study in the UK fell by 15% last year after the Conservative government changed rules on family members entering the country.
The Migration Observatory said country-specific factors such as Nigeria’s currency crisis could also be to blame. Thousands of Nigerians have studied in the UK in recent years.
Although high school students won’t receive their A-level results until Thursday, universities have been poring over them in secret since Friday evening. Admissions specialists said they were checking the files of candidates who narrowly missed their grade.
Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute thinktank, said: “If you’ve missed a grade, you might log onto Ucas and find that the university has offered you a place anyway. If not, it’s always worth calling.” Hillman said universities were prepared to lose up to half of their lucrative international students because of the family visa restrictions. He said many institutions now had unexpected space in accommodation and lecture theatres, as well as teaching capacity, which could be filled with British students.
He added that while demand for international places at the most competitive universities such as Oxford and Cambridge still exceeds supply, this may explain why three-quarters of Russell Group universities already offer some clearing courses.
He said: “Another reason is that the Covid weakness has now worked its way through the system. So you no longer have to recruit fewer freshmen to make up for it.”
Mike Nicholson, director of recruitment and admissions at the University of Cambridge, said there may be more school leavers on the Clearing programme this year who were reluctant to apply until they knew their results.
“We know that one of the consequences of the pandemic is that students feel a little less safe moving away from home and are hesitant to make decisions with uncertain outcomes,” he said.
Cambridge does not offer clearing courses and Nicholson expects all places to be filled “without any problems”. However, he predicted that many other universities would give priority to “near candidates” with offers rather than face the “uncertainty” of accepting new applicants at the last minute.
“If you have a relatively small number of vacancies, you might decide that it’s a better choice to accept someone who just missed their exam and really wants to come to your university,” he said.
