[throwaway318]

Back in my day you got predicted grades, went to an interview, got an offer (or didn't get, but that was rare, the interview would however sometimes result in a lower than standard offer) then got the grades, or didn't, but holding a cascade of offers down actual grades was common/recommended.

Was that system worse?

[UK]

[kaashif]

The UK and US have very different systems. In the UK, all students have already specialised into A levels (only studying four subjects) before applying to university.

In the US, I think it works differently: some students may have done some AP classes, but these aren't universal and don't represent the same degree of specialisation as A levels.

[guitarsteve]

Interesting!

I’ve never heard of that system. Is there somewhere we can read about it, or maybe you can explain a bit more?

Is the offer of the form “we accept you, so long as your grades satisfy the following requirements…”?

Is the interview performance pass/fail or if you do poorly do they give you a less agreeable offer? (higher grades required?)

[kaashif]

My experience in the UK was as follows:

(1) In the final two years of secondary school (16/17 to 18) you choose a set of 3 or 4 subjects to study for A levels. This is usually done with a specific course at university in mind. For example, someone aiming for Chemistry might study Maths, Chemistry, and Physics. Some people also add Further Maths (if they're aiming for Maths at a top university, this adds things like group theory, differential equations) or a language (e.g. if you already know French, it's not all that difficult to do French A-level too).

(2) Before your final exams, you apply to universities and they have some process for giving you an offer. This process isn't standardised. Some universities have pre-interview exams (e.g. Oxford), some have extra exams you take alongside your A-level exams (e.g. to do Maths at Cambridge, you have to take STEP exams which are...super hard). My interview process for Maths at Oxford was pretty stressful, I had seven interviews, all very technical, at various colleges. Some I no doubt bombed, some I did okay in. I also had a phone interview with the college that ended up getting me.

(3) You get some offer, either conditional (get these grades and we'll let you in) or unconditional (you got in, grades don't matter). My offer was to just get all top grades so I really had to grind studying and was super stressed on results day.

(4) You pick two unis to go with. Usually one primary and one backup.

(5) You do your exams, then get results. If you met your offer, great! If not, you go into clearing where you can maybe go into a "leftover" place at some uni somewhere.

(6) You go to uni and study something. You got a place on a Maths course, you study Maths. I'm mentioning this because it works differently in the US.

There are pros and cons to this process. Specialising early means the baseline for a Maths course at uni is higher than in the US. But because you're asking 15 year olds to decide what they want to study for the next 5-6 years, lots of people probably pick the wrong thing. And if you're not good at Maths and don't study Maths at A-level, you're just locked out of anything STEM e.g. Chemistry, Physics, Maths, Computer Science, all require a Maths A-level. So you get a lot of kids making poor decisions they later regret and can't reverse.