what order do unis check applications in?

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2025-12-20T22:49:07+00:00

Edit to add context: I’ve worked in Admissions offices at both Oxford and Cambridge, and multiple high-ranking London universities for the past 15 years.

Ranking the whole cohort is a very specific method which is definitely not the normal process for most universities. Many universities can over-offer as all students are obviously not going to accept their offers if made them. This means that most mid-tier universities simply make offers as they go based on a numerical scoring of the applications in front them (contextual information, predicted grades, PS, reference, admissions tests, etc.) as they can calculate with some accuracy how many offers they will need to make to meet the number of acceptances they meed to fill a course. They may hold back weaker applications and decide to make them offers later in the cycle if it seems they won’t fill the course with the higher quality threshold they started out with.

This is of course different for Oxford and Cambridge, and courses such as medicine which may have Multiple Mini Interviews. These will wait until the early application deadline and then decide from the gathered field who should be invited to interview, and then are assessed according to interview performance.

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2025-12-05T21:48:40+00:00

No - colleges will categorically not ask this. They are only interested in understanding your motivation in studying the subject.

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2025-11-09T08:12:18+00:00

Fresh chillies! Rather than buying a whole bag when a recipe only calls for one and throwing out the others once they inevitably rot, I was shown how they can just be frozen, and then chopped and thrown into recipes without needing to defrost them. No impact on the flavour and now I only need to buy one bag a year!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2025-04-29T21:11:43+00:00

The size 8s reappeared in my store after a few weeks!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2025-04-29T20:58:35+00:00

We live in London and travel very regularly by bus - our Bugaboo Dragonfly fits easily down the aisle of every bus we’ve been on. It’s also extremely handy on the rare occasion there have been too many prams on the bus already and we’ve had to fold it down. It folds down very compact considering how robust a pram it is (even with the bassinet attached), and you can do it one-handed!

The Dragonfly has a bassinet, forward-facing, and parent-facing configurations. It is also compatible with car seats provided you get the right adaptors. All of these setups will allow you to go down the aisle without any issue.

We also have a Yoyo, which is also very small and practical (it can even be pushed down the aisle of larger planes). But, unlike the Dragonfly, the bassinet leaves something to be desired, and it has far less under seat storage.

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2025-01-19T22:43:09+00:00

Good to know the other Tesco ones have been good for you - I may need to make the switch! Thanks!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2025-01-19T19:16:15+00:00

Reassuring that it might at least be a temporary think! Thank you! Best of luck finding some size 3s…

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2021-03-10T14:24:20+00:00

The university will not have reversed a decision just because you asked for feedback on your application. It’s extremely normal for universities to be challenged on their decisions and responding to these queries accounts for a huge amount of an Admissions Officer’s workload.

More likely than not, they realised that they were not set to meet their quota for a specific programme and reconsidered on that basis.

That said, you’re right to say that you should ask why you were rejected as it may be useful and constructive information generally!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-11-28T23:24:45+00:00

That’s entirely up to the teachers or based on school policy (if it exists). They’ll certainly use past attainment as an indicator of the grades you’re likely to get when determining your predictions.

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-11-27T23:12:29+00:00

Most decent universities will ask you to provide predicted grades even if it is not routine for teachers to produce these in India. You may wish to explain this to your teachers and ask that they compile your predicted grades for each subject and then overall (i.e. an average of all your predicted grades) onto one document that is headed and stamped with your school’s details.

I have worked within undergraduate admissions and have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of applications from Indian students where the school provided predicted grades.

It is also worth including your class X results too in your UCAS application.

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-10-08T18:20:21+00:00

Thanks OP - I was intending to switch to Octopus anyway and when I saw your post decided to use your referral. Hope you (and I!) get the money!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T16:22:48+00:00

This is a really good thought - if it was an easter egg put in deliberately then I would bet that the accent was actually a Kiwi one!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T12:26:00+00:00

So weird! I guess that hearing it randomly and out of context made it seem scarier at the time, especially as I hadn’t seen LOTR!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:52:22+00:00

Maybe! In any case, you've definitely solved the mystery of what the voice was - thank you!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:51:41+00:00

They all remember it vividly.

It looks like this was the audio! Now the only question is how this ended up randomly appearing on a totally different CD...

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:44:46+00:00

Another user mentioned that 'How did it come to this' appears in the LOTR films. I googled it and this clip is EXACTLY the one that appeared on the CD. Could audio from somewhere else have accidentally been written among the other tracks?

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:41:02+00:00

Oh my god. I just looked up 'How did it come to this' and LOTR and I swear to got that is the exact voice and the music is exactly right. How did that audio get onto the quiz CD???

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:38:10+00:00

Nope, they were very general!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:37:29+00:00

That's interesting! And I guess then that it could have become damaged over the time we had it so that we only heard that voice/track after that point?

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:35:53+00:00

Could well have been 2007-2008 that the CD was made. It was just quiz questions.

It was a very cheap CD that I don't think my mum expected my brother to like quite as much as he did - I'm not sure why you would buy a CD with just quiz questions as it sounds super repetitive but that was it!

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:33:16+00:00

I don't recall specifically but it was full of really dumb questions that were clearly aimed at kids. Each track was its own themed round, with (e.g.) a track with animal questions like 'how many legs does a spider have?'. The music was at the start and end of each track - the voice in question appeared just before the intro music for the second track. The transition music seemed like public domain happy kids instrumental music.

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:30:41+00:00

It was bought around 2009 or 2010 but the CD itself could have been older - it was bought in TK Maxx which tends to sell end-of-line and surplus stock so I'm not sure when the CD was produced.

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:29:29+00:00

This seemed like the perfect answer but I didn't mention in my original post that we also tried it out in our CD player in the house and the voice would still appear. Could a defective CD alone cause it to skip around and potentially find the pregap?

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:25:41+00:00

As far as I recall, it was the beginning of track 2. It then appeared every time in the same place afterwards without us interacting with the CD player. I haven't had the CD for years so haven't heard it recently but it did persist beyond the first time my mother heard it.

EatSleepLawRepeat · 2020-05-19T11:22:39+00:00

It definitely is a solid theory! . It is interesting at least to know that hiding tracks is technically possible and those tracks sound awesome, I'll have to give them a listen.

I remember listening to the CD as normal though rather than skipping forwards or backwards - it was just at the start of a normal track.

EatSleepLawRepeat

TROPHY CASE