Admissions Working Group Report for EPC Committee January 2009

The Admissions WG met on 28 January. 

Transition Issues

We have had a very good response from the membership to our request to survey new students experiencing the transition from school to University and have had back over 28 batches totalling well over 1,000 questionnaires from over 15 institutions.  Analysis of these is on-going. 

Admission Tutors’ Seminar

Sadly, we decided not to run this event planned for November as we received insufficient expressions of interest.  We plan to ask our representatives for expressions of interest and preference for either a May or a November event.

The EEA and Longitudinal Study

Fred Maillardet will be able to report on latest developments.

The London Engineering Project

As reported in a previous report, the national role-out of the four pilot initiatives (engineering, chemistry, physics and mathematics) is to be merged into a single STEM-wide initiative.  The University of Birmingham has now been appointed by HEFCE as the lead site for the new initiative.

Latest UCAS Statistics

Final figures for acceptances through UCAS were released in their press release on 15 January.  Based on these figures, the percentage changes from 2002 are shown on the following page.  The do not differ significantly from the provisional figures released in October.  Most engineering subjects have done well with the exception of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Manufacturing and Production Engineering.  The official application (as opposed to acceptance) data and the Home/Overseas and gender breakdowns have not yet been published.  These will be available when the full 2008 annual dataset is released.  On the international front, the number of accepted applicants for all subjects has shown some interesting changes.  The big movers are: China +21.0%; Cyprus -11.1 %, Nigeria -12.1%, Poland -22.9%, Singapore +32.2%, Bulgaria +109.4 and Romania 140.5%.

Dik Morling
31 January 2009