Research highlights “huge complexity” in use of contextual admissions amongst @RussellGroup universities.
Current college college students are possibly to vastly over-estimate the share of pupil intakes from personal schools.
The evaluation comes in advance of this year’s A-level effects the place the race for locations at quite selective universities is set to intensify, making it even extra tough to recruit college students from poorer backgrounds.
Lee Elliot Major, Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter, said:
“Universities want to up their sport in speaking that they are welcome locations for college students from all backgrounds, debunking unhelpful myths, and making their admissions procedures as clear and easy as possible.
“Much greater work is wanted to demystify these establishments for candidates who can also be put off making use of due to the fact they assume they may additionally now not suit in, or are now not conscious of the contextualised admissions they may additionally advantage from. In the post-pandemic technology of admissions, universities will have to work even tougher to entice intelligence from all backgrounds.”
The findings come from analysis, produced with the aid of Kieran Tompkins, a 2021 Business and Management graduate at the University of Exeter and overseen via Professor Elliot Major.
The evaluation finds that the 24 universities in the Russell Group use 18 one-of-a-kind elements in their use of contextual admissions. No two universities used the equal aggregate of statistics about candidates to make decisions. Admissions officers regularly used records about the person and their families, about the region they stay in, and about their school.
Contextualised affords manifest when a college considers an applicant’s private situations by way of lowering the A-Level grades a pupil requires from a deprived area.
The authors propose universities may want to gain from larger use of individual-indicators, in precise eligibility for free college meals. Universities are presently having to count on ‘proxy’ postcode measures that are now not as high-quality at figuring out low-income students.
Professor Elliot Major said:
“It ought to be baffling for outdoor candidates who can also qualify for these schemes. Greater consistency and transparency are wished throughout universities so that college students are clear on what is on offer.”
The lookup additionally observed sizeable misperceptions amongst Russell Group college students that non-public faculty college students make up the majority of students. In truth this is no longer the case at any university.
The evaluation covered a survey of 118 modern-day college college students at Russell Group universities. The college students have been requested to gauge the common share of kingdom and non-public faculty college students at Russell Group universities.
The common response estimated that country college college students make up 46 per cent of intakes at Russell Group universities. This is a vast underestimate of the proper percentage which is 77.4 per cent of intakes. A complete of seventy eight per cent of the survey respondents attended kingdom schools.
Professor Elliot Major stated : “Inflated A-level grades this yr will produce unheard of numbers of scholars with the grades required for even the most worrying diploma courses. This evaluation suggests we want to do a great deal extra to make elite universities surely obvious and inclusive institutions.
