UR TV CAST

Do they know what the course is all about? Do they know that we are a campus university and not in the city centre?”She adds: “We take time to chat to them and make sure they make an informed decision. We don’t want people who come and find that they’ve made a mistake and perhaps drop out.”Stan Farrow, Assistant Director of Admissions at St Andrews, highlights the need for students to tell the university when they phone of any disabilities or special needs. “We don’t want to put someone with a hearing difficulty into a hall of residence without a flashing fire alarm.” Some fear that admitting a disability will prejudice their application. But, he says: “If a student with special needs applies to us, we make an offer on academic grounds and then discuss whether or not we can meet their needs.”What does not impress Mr Farrow are “the people who almost try to blackmail their way into university.

For example `my father was an alumnus and has given you pounds X thousand, or I’ve spoken to professor so and so’ You get quite nasty conversations with some people They get told `this isn’t going to work’.”. Lynne Perry found that disappointing results in her Highers opened a new and unexpectedly bright future She originally hoped to study sports and leisure. “I’d always enjoyed it at school and was always `sporty’ outside school.” She first applied for places on three courses. However, her three Cs in Biology, Maths and Physical Education, and a D in English, were not good enough to secure any offer, so she took part in the UCAS clearing process. “I picked universities near home – Stirling, Glasgow, and other places round here I phoned them and told them what grades I had.

They said they’d find courses suitable for the grades I had and asked me what I was interested in. I told them, but they said `we don’t do that – but these are the nearest courses you could do’. I then got leaflets and other information sent to me on all the courses I could do.
“I ended up with a choice of four or five subject choices. Because I had done Biology, one suggestion was Biotechnology at Abertay University in Dundee. I’d never even heard of biotechnology before! However, I read the leaflets on it and thought `that sounds really good’ That was the course I chose – and it’s good fun. I think I now prefer it to having gone into sport, so it’s worked out well.”Biotechnology is an interdisciplinary subject which covers biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, chemical engineering and molecular biology.