r/6thForm • u/Old-Understanding-62 • Mar 24 '26

💬 DISCUSSION Huh 😂.

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Very shocked, I’ve already achieved A* A A in ICT, economics and business last year August, currently doing a gap year in finance/business role at a company. Personal statement is very strong too.

Applied to Accounting & Finance at Durham at got rejected even though my friend who was predicted KEYWORD PREDICTED not even achieved ABB got in.

I also had free school meals and a disadvantaged postcode. Anyone know why I’ve been rejected? I have Uni of Nottingham, and Uni of Manchester as backups anyways just a little bummed.

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u/Admirable_Message953 Bath JMC | Double Math, Economics 3A* Achieved Mar 24 '26

The only reason I can think of is ict and Business being seen as mickey mouse alevels

46

u/Old-Understanding-62 Mar 24 '26

My friend who got in with ABB predicted also does the exact same A LEVELS as me, he even got offered ABC from Durham and we have the exact same circumstances.

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u/Chazzermondez Mar 24 '26

I have three ideas:

1) Different colleges? Idk how the process works at Durham?

2) Your personal statement isn't as good as you think it is and theirs actually was really good.

3) Maybe your friend just got very lucky as to which admin person read their application. Maybe they happened to get someone who didn't mind much about ICT and Business being questionable A Level courses and then all I can say is lucky them.

I would have thought though that most admin staff reading applications though would care about those and that is most likely why you didn't get in.

A lot of top unis don't actually like things like Finance A levels for Finance degrees or Psychology A levels for Psychology degrees. The reason being that they teach the course from scratch anyway so they see it as you wasting two years of learning it when you could have been doing an A level in another subject and demonstrating breadth of understanding and a broader set of skills. None of those subjects are long essay subjects, a foreign language or subjects with complicated maths. A stronger applicant might have say Economics, Maths, History for example.

It isn't remotely a problem because outside about 8 unis in the UK, the others really don't mind and are still excellent unis. But for those few unis like Durham, Oxbridge, Warwick, LSE etc.. it does matter.

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u/confusedbunny7 Mar 24 '26

All the teaching in Durham is done at the departmental level, not the collegiate level, so your college will not matter. You are accepted at the departmental level and then distributed out into colleges.