University admissions – true stories

This week’s ‘anonymous academic’ in the Guardian tells us that, at her/his ‘leading’ university, in some borderline circumstances, bonus points are given to applicants for qualifications in dance, music or drama, and makes the perfectly reasonable point that this will favour students who have had the opportunity to study such ‘extras’ alongside their A-level subjects.

Ah, admissions… perhaps now is the time to say more about the admissions processes for UK universities. Are they ever fair? One of the positives of working for The Open University was that we didn’t run open days, we didn’t read UCAS forms, and we didn’t have to devote hours every week to giving campus tours to potential students. That’s because, at undergraduate level, the university is ‘open’. At MA level and at PhD level, prior qualifications matter, but at undergraduate level they don’t.

Everywhere else, though, there are indicative entry grades, tours, open days, virtual open days, and possibly interviews. When I applied to university, I wrote my personal statement without assistance, was called for interview and was accepted. In the places I worked, during a period of ever-increasing participation rates (the percentage of people who go to university), I experienced a range of systems. All of them may have changed by now – this is ‘history’.

When I was involved in admissions at Cambridge, interestingly, the applicants were self-selected, because not everyone would even think of trying or would be encouraged by their school to do so. So this meant that the crude numbers weren’t enormous; but the process was still time-consuming. We did interviews and we had the ‘pool’ system at the end of the admissions season, in which colleges still looking for students would fish in the ‘pool’ for those who hadn’t been accepted by their chosen colleges. I was once on fishing duty when I found a student with good grades and a most unusually negative letter from her headteacher, who clearly didn’t think she was capable of success at Cambridge. I liked the look of this girl; she sounded like someone who would think outside the box. I called her in; we interviewed her; we accepted her; she settled in well and achieved good results. While she was at my college, the headteacher came in for purposes unrelated to this specific student, so I took some pleasure in saying that we currently had one of her former students and that she was doing very well with us. The headteacher made it clear that I must have no discernment at all to have given her a place … Thanks.

When I moved to the History Department at Liverpool Hope (then, Liverpool Institute of Higher Education), the numbers applying made interviews impossible. But the time commitment to the process was higher. Every Wednesday there’d be at least one campus tour which would need one of us to walk the students round and answer their questions. We prayed for fine weather; not just because we wouldn’t get soaked while walking around, but because applicants who came on a fine day were so much more likely to be impressed with the campus.

When I was in charge of History admissions there, I’d spend hours each week in a little room in the attic with a pile of applications, mainly looking at predicted or actual A-level grades, but with an eye out for anything ‘interesting’; that could be something that meant we should waive our normal requirements, or just something that kept me awake. There were plenty of non-standard applicants – no A levels – who would be asked to write a short piece to show what they could do. We then had to read these and make a decision. There were formulae telling us how many offers were needed to fill the year’s places, but I’m not sure they were helpful.

In Reading, I was immediately struck by one point: unless the applicant was non-standard, or unless they came in via ‘Clearing’, I would not see their UCAS form. Forms were read by people in an Admissions Office, not by departments. This meant that all those carefully-crafted ‘personal statements’ in which people waxed lyrical about what Classics meant to their lives were ignored. Only actual and predicted grades mattered. I gather from another recent Guardian piece that this is even more common now – that’s mass higher education for you. As a department, we ran two sorts of event: open days, when anyone could come and wander round and ask questions, and visit days, when those who were applying could come and find out even more. Over my time at Reading, these grew and grew, both in size and in the staff input required. Sample lectures were offered; students helpers were trained; talks for parents (who became increasingly pushy) were held alongside those for students; and interviews were offered to those who had already taken classical languages (rarer every year), to make such students feel more positive about considering a non-Oxbridge destination. For staff, the most interesting aspect was finding out what other open days/visit days the applicants had attended, and what their impressions of those were. Competition ruled.

And then there was Clearing. In recent years, what happens after the A-level results are out has changed. Until 2021, students with grades above those expected could also try to upscale, through something called Adjustment, as well as those who haven’t met the conditions of their chosen universities being able to enter a sort of giant Pool (Clearing) in which universities with spaces try to find suitable students, and students try to find a course which matches what they want. When I was at Reading, in my subject there was always some stigma attached to ‘being in Clearing’, because it suggested that not enough people wanted to go to you unless they had no other options, but when I was in charge of Admissions I always found interesting candidates to admit at this late stage. Clearing went on for several days and meant coming into the university early each morning to go through photocopied UCAS forms as they were processed (farewell, second half of August!). The atmosphere in the Clearing Room was one of collaboration. If their target had been reached, History tutors would pass to Classics tutors those UCAS forms where a student who was trying to get in for History was also clearly qualified for Ancient History, and vice versa. This meant we could be making a phone call to an applicant suggesting that, if they changed the subject for which they were applying, they had more chance of a place and, if they picked the right options for year 1, they could then switch if desired to the original choice at the end of that year…

So, no, university admissions have never been entirely fair. Applicants are helped to varying degrees with their personal statements; headteachers may take against a student; decisions are made without reading personal statements; subject choices aren’t necessarily binding. Somehow, most of us survive, and those who end up in a place they had not previously considered can be the most enthusiastic supporters of everything it offers.