Applying for University After Receiving Grades Could Lead to Rushed Decisions, Warns Perspective

LONDON, December 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Despite proposals for a university admissions system where students apply after they have their results offering multiple benefits to potential students, it does present a risk that those students who perform better, or worse, than expected could be forced into making rushed and uninformed decisions, warns Perspective, a leading UK provider of real-time student monitoring software.

Currently, students apply to universities based on predicted grades, a process that has been left unchanged since 1961 and which UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, argues is far too complex.

Paul Davis, managing director of Perspective, commented: "There's no doubt that by and large the changes would offer more good points than bad, but consideration does have to be given to those students who perform better, or worse, than expected.

"For example, a student will naturally research universities based on their predicted grades whether these changes are enforced or not but, if they actually perform a lot better than predicted, it opens up myriad options but leaves them with only limited time to research and apply. This could potentially lead to rushed and informed decisions which could result in higher drop-out rates further down the line."

Despite huge advances in education tracking software, predicting a student's grades based upon mock exams and coursework has never been a reliable process. Furthermore, given that recent research has revealed that fewer than 10 per cent of students are applying to university with three accurate grade predictions, taking situations like this into consideration and incorporating appropriate processes to assist these students needs to be of high importance.

Paul continued: "The new process, if agreed, won't be incorporated until 2016 at the earliest so there is definitely time to get this right. It just needs to be able to treat every student fairly and equally to give them the best shot at success."

For more information about Perspective and its Learner management software, please visit http://www.perspective-uk.com.

Contact details:
Ben Leuty
Ben.leuty@punchcomms.com
+44(0)1858-411600