Universities Officer’s Report

The end of the UCAS cycle has proven to be a difficult experience for many of our Diploma and Career-related Programme students and I would like to thank all those schools who responded to my request for feedback on delayed and unexpectedly high offers. This situation is a result of over-recruitment in the previous two years by some universities which has impacted on their ability to offer places to students in this cycle. The delay in making offers has been compounded by the extension of the offer making and acceptance period to 19th May which has overlapped with the IB exam session and has resulted in some students receiving rejections whilst taking their exams causing extra stress to them.  

When I was alerted to the scale of the problem I contacted the Russell Group to make sure that their members understood the stress the delays were causing. However, universities are independent institutions and one university in particular chose not to send out rejections before the 19th May deadline and simply let the applicants be rejected by default as the deadline rolled over. I am sorry to say that next year this same deadline will be May 18th and so we might be in the same situation. However, given the impact the late deadline has on IB candidates we will be lobbying universities to treat IB students fairly given that their exams start well before the A levels.

At the March conference we discussed the setting up of a university counsellors community and we will be starting that in September; more details will follow at the start of the next academic year.

Peter Fidczuk

Universities Officer, IBSCA