What A level results would you have needed for a "top" UK university back in the day?
Posted by LanguageFit8227@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 67 comments
"Back in the day" meaning the 1990s and before, because I'm only in my 20s, and from what older people have told me, A* grades didn't exist yet, and A-levels were much harder, with very few people getting As.
Nowadays, courses at places like Oxford or Cambridge require at least an A* and two As, with some courses asking for even higher grades, so what was it like before then?
throwawayra202407@reddit
When Cambridge still had its own entrance exams, if you passed those you could be given an incredibly low offer. I think my dad's offer in the early 1980s for Economics was two Es at A Level.
martinbaines@reddit
See my reply. It was a basic matriculation standard offer. Essentially if you did the exam they offered you a place and that was what all you needed but you had to show minimum matriculation standards.
You only got conditional offers back when I did it back in the late 70s if the school said they did not have facilities to do the CCE exams in November, in which case it would be AAA typically (it was before A* existed).
Silver_Emu4704@reddit
Most of my friends had EE offers from Oxford or Cambridge. 2 Es. As I understood it that meant they decided they wanted you regardless of your grades.
angelmicah@reddit
My mum did law at Oxford with CDE in her A levels. The way she tells it, she focused so hard on her entrance exams she didn't have time to study for her A levels. This was late 80s.
Janjannaj@reddit
In 1989 the Oxford entrance exams were in October or November, 6 months before the A levels.
angelmicah@reddit
Correct. But that's how she tells it.
Standard_Jello4168@reddit
But surely if you can pass entrance exams you'd find it fairly trivial to at least pass A levels?
Different_Bridge_983@reddit
It’s basically: “You’re in, don’t stress the last few weeks of A Levels”. Most folks who got those offers were clearly the top of the top even among Oxbridge applicants and got straight As anyway though.
SameOldSong4Ever@reddit
The two Es was actually the minimum requirement for the government to pay your tuition fees, so no university could make an offer of less than that.
Annual-Corgi-4513@reddit
Not pre 1990s but someone from our school got a DDE offer from Cambridge as he was in the England U18 rugby team.
Apparently he came top of his class at Cambridge so had the brains to back it up.
SuperHansDunYourMum@reddit
Apparently if you got shit grades, they would decide that you didn't put in enough effort and not let you in lol.
Thandoscovia@reddit
Yep, matriculation offers - historically very common
bopeepsheep@reddit
Based on having passed the entrance exam generally.
Adventurous_Way_2660@reddit
Absolute bollocks that A levels were harder back then. I'm old enough to have seat A levels back then and seen my children's A level papers.
Royal_Community_9626@reddit
Harder as there was much less resources to pass with.
roobydoo76@reddit
1994 Warwick physics was BCC as the offer, which I just made. It was very selective and similar offers were at my other potential universities (Manchester, Bath etc.).
It's all grade inflation, getting A's and B's at A level meant you were right at the top, so the universities were still selecting the same portion of the population.
Both A levels and degrees have since had massive grade inflation, so you can't read grades across at all.
Looking at the degree syllabus content, they have clearly got easier too, courses have moved back from the second year to the third/fourth and simplified whilst increasing the proportion of firsts.
Few_House_5201@reddit
I started in ‘98. I had offers of BBC from all the universities that I applied for and they were mostly Russell group unis to do PPE. That offer included general studies as well which no one takes anymore but was basically an extra, easy a-level.
If you wanted to go to Oxbridge you usually needed AAA and to pass an interview.
MrsKToBe@reddit
I applied to uni in 1999 but my offers were all from very low ranking unis- Missed them all anyway
Jayatthemoment@reddit
Early 90s. I got three As and a B. My offers were St Andrews, BBB, Glasgow BBC, Durham and Edinburgh, no offer. Can’t remember where else I applied but I got another offer from an English uni.
Immediate_Web_5385@reddit
BCC for BSc Chemistry at Newcastle / Birmingham in 2002
Foxtrot7888@reddit
I want to university in the mid 90s. It was AAB for Oxford, Cambridge or for medicine any where. Red brick universities it was typically BBC or something not too dissimilar.
Ok-Employee9618@reddit
Oxford had a separate exam (a bit like a general studies exam) -> there WAS an exam like that you _could_ take, but you also HAD to take a subject exam if you went the exam route.
Ok-Employee9618@reddit
1995/96: Still EE matriculation offer from Oxford if you'd passed the exam, which was optional to take. Top universities generally gave out AAB type offers as standard (I had that from Warwick say), though it depended on subject demand to a degree (I got BBB from UCL for maths but they were AAB for most subjects). They definitely had some discretion at some places, I got a CCC offer from Imperial, though their 'standard' offer was AAB, after having to stick around after the interview to wait for a train and getting talking to some of the academics in the department.
If you had a AAB offer and got an ABB you'd generally still end up going to your top choice.
Rinthrah@reddit
It would depend a little bit on your school/background, but AAB was pretty typical for Oxbridge. It was AAA for me in the early noughties, but my A-levels were quite soft.
rainbow84uk@reddit
Same for me in 2002. My offer from Cambridge was AAA and I actually got AAAB, but the B was in one of the subjects I wanted to study so it wasn't enough to get me in.
Chicken_shish@reddit
I was offered BBC for Chemical Engineering at Imperial. Currently 4 x A*.
Flaky-Philosophy7618@reddit
What did cause this? It’s more than just the A* right? I needed AAB just to get into Newcastle and that was 2014!
Chicken_shish@reddit
I can only assume it was zero international students. I don't recall any on the course. So they had 100 seats to fill, and they didn't have China's smartest clamouring to get in.
OccidentalTouriste@reddit
Many people being offered BBC would turn it down.
NerdyNerdanel@reddit
My offer for Oxford languages in 2003 was AAB, I think that was pretty standard back then for a lot of courses. In practice I think most people got straight As but the offers allowed a bit of leeway.
bars_and_plates@reddit
2010ish, I believe my Oxford offer was AAA although I honestly don't remember.
My understanding is that it's actually gone backwards in recent times because of misguided attempts at "access" (I was in one of the 'underprivileged' groups and to me it just feels a bit patronising to assume we can't do well). Like the Oxford Union guy who had ABB.
ArmouredWankball@reddit
I got an offer of AAC from UCL in 1978 for astronomy. I ended up at Nottingham doing physics on BBC.
Sure-Recognition-262@reddit
In 1997, I had offers (in SCE Highers, rather than A level) of BBBB from St Andrews and ABBC from Edinburgh (it's possible I've misremembered and it was the other way round), which at the time were the two top-rated universities in Scotland for Maths.
Translating that to A-level results using the UCAS points system introduced in 2002 (I don't know if there's an earlier one I could use instead) suggests it's approximately equivalent to CCD.
172116@reddit
Were they really basing on highers then? I applied 10 years later and all the top Scottish unis needed advanced highers! I got rejected from Edinburgh with Higher AAABB and predicted ABB at Advanced Higher.
Sure-Recognition-262@reddit
Yup.
I went for an informal chat with both as I wanted to leave school after Highers. Edinburgh were very clear indeed that they'd strongly recommend doing CSYS (the 90s equivalent of Advanced Highers) first but that they'd likely make me an offer for just Highers, and indeed they did. St Andrews were perfectly happy to take applicants with just Highers.
172116@reddit
I was sitting here trying to figure out why it would have changed, and finally clocked that it was the roll out of home fee status to EU students in the 1999 academic year, and then a few years later the changes to fee funding for home students.
95VR6@reddit
I got A, D and E and went on to study physics at Kings College London.
EdgyMathWhiz@reddit
I did maths at Cambridge in the late 80s; offer was AAA1 (the 1 in S-level maths or FM. S-levels were "harder than A-level" papers, a bit like the AEA exams that you might have heard of).
I honestly hardly knew anyone (who'd gone through the A-level system) who didn't have at least AAA. In the science/maths subjects the median grade at my college was probably AAAA11.
Rough-Sprinkles2343@reddit
Thank fuck your said that because I’m a 90s baby so not old yet
StormeeSkyes@reddit
AAB for maths at Warwick. 1996
InevitablyCyclic@reddit
Cambridge engineering early 90s.
My offer was 3 As. Most other on the course had the same, some had AAB or 3 Bs, one had 2Es, some had 3 As at A level and an S level.
Partly based on performance in interview and the test they gave at the interview. And I'm sure partly based on background, if you went to a fancy private school you're more likely to get a higher offer. They know the private school kids will do better in A levels than a state student of equal ability.
While the test they gave mattered the marks you got weren't the most important bit. They asked you about your reasoning for the ones you got wrong. Your ability to reason and explain your thoughts were more important than how much you had managed to memorise.
ZookeepergameThis617@reddit
I chatted with an old engineer colleague close to retirement. He was offered a place at medical school with CCC at A level. Not sure which uni though
VeryTrueThing@reddit
I went to Uni in '92 and had EE offers from Oxford (after doing the entrance exam) and Southampton (they just really liked me). Manchester and Kent were AAB or ABB I think.
No such thing as A* grades back in those days.
DameKumquat@reddit
I did A-levels in 1992.
Cambridge offers were minimum AAB, but usually AAA plus a 1 and 2 (Distinction and Merit) at STEP, which was taken just after A-levels. Oxford still offered the Fourth Term exam, and if you passed you only needed EE, or you could apply normally and offers were AAA.
The next tier - Manchester, Warwick, Bristol etc - gave me offers of BBC or BCC. And while they still did interviews then, they were a formality - one interviewed us in pairs for amusement value, one kicked off with 'we're giving you an offer, why do you want to come here?' and the other's only question was 'fancy a spliff?' and then told me about his research while rolling and then smoking a joint.
For unpopular subjects like Physics, you could get into a decent Russell Group type uni with CDE.
Retiredandrelaxed@reddit
1986 Oxbridge…at least 3 As
AdAffectionate2418@reddit
Two A's and a B were the stated standard for most top unis, with a lot offering unconditionals based on interviews etc.
In my school, circa 10-15% of students got As but no idea how that compares to the national average.
You could also take additional A-levels + stuff like further maths. I had 5 A levels all in, doing 4 subjects at a time and completing a-level maths in one year and further maths the following.
MegaMolehill@reddit
My offer from Imperial to do Computing in ‘99 was AAA and one of those As had to be in Maths.
MegaMolehill@reddit
Just had a look and for the year after I went there were 11.5 applicants for each place on the course with an average A level score of 29.6 - 10 points for an A.
THXORY@reddit
If you go way back to the 1930s etc (before A Levels existed) Oxford etc. used to allow people to buy their way in
silentv0ices@reddit
They still do.
DrHydeous@reddit
In 1992 I needed AAB in Maths, Further Maths, and Physics for Manufacturing Engineering at Brunel, which at least at the time was the university for engineering.
You're right, A* didn't exist. That's a modern innovation introduced because of grade inflation. The inflation had started before I took mine and can be seen at least in the late 80s. In 1992, 12.8% of exam results were grade A, 16.3% were B, and 17.4 were C. In 2025 the numbers were 28.3% (for A and A* combined, so A + A* is about the same as the old A + B), 26.9%, and 22.7%.
Taking grade inflation into account, the AAB that I required is roughly comparable to A* A* A in modern results, so it's about as difficult to get in as it was Back In The Day.
Breaking-Dad-@reddit
I went to Uni in 1989. I did an entrance exam for Oxford but didn’t get through the interview. I got A in General Studies but it don’t count for a lot of places, and BBC. It wasn’t enough for Durham but I could have done Manchester or Birmingham.
martinbaines@reddit
I went to Cambridge in the mid/late 70s. My offer was: 2 Es, and a thing called the "Use of English" Exam (not part of the GCE exams but a special one Cambridge wanted as they thought English O-Level was not good enough - actually I thought the Use of English was easier than the O-Level). If I had not already got French and German O-Levels I would have had to get one of those as at least one modern language was required.
The catch though was that to get that minimum offer, I had had to do what was called the Cambridge Colleges Exam (CCE) which was their own set of exams you sat in the November of the Upper Sixth. I got my offer of a place the day before Xmas Eve.
Most people from private schools already had A-Levels and sat the CCE after them and then if they got in had almost a year off, but those of use from regular schools (no-one had ever gone to Cambridge before) has special arrangements to sit it early and they took account of that when marking.
The offer was the minimum needed to matriculate.
For some course and colleges, they were starting to make conditional offers to help people from state schools: for those who got them it was more or less always AAA, very occasionally AAB for some subjects/colleges, or even AAAA (typical for people doing double maths). It was before A* grades existed.
Personally I preferred the way it worked for me: I knew whether or not I had got in, and all the pressure was off my A-level. It was amazing how many people did not believe me when I told them my offer from Cambridge was way lower than for any of the other places I applied.
clickyclicky456@reddit
In the early 90s my offer for Computer Science at Cambridge was AAB (with at least one of the As in Maths) and Grade 1 and 2 for STEP Maths and Physics (in either order).
Bear in mind this was before A* was a thing. STEP grades went S, 1, 2, 3, fail.
I actually got 5 As at A level so I was fine on that front, but a 1 and a 3 on STEP due to "cunningly" deciding on the Maths STEP paper that if I didn't show any working they would think I was really really clever... what a fucking idiot. I have no idea what came over me to this day 🤦🏻♀️ Thankfully they let me in anyway!
markusparkus75@reddit
The tariff at a Russell Group university for a heavily subscribed course (ie, English) was typically ABB.
dinkingdonut@reddit
Yes I got in to KCL with ABB.
rossburton@reddit
Same, really. Late 90s I got As and Bs and Imperial didn’t even give me an offer. A friend wanted to do Law at LSE and was doing a forth A level to get it.
Beginning-Cow-6682@reddit
Interesting, I got into Imperial with AAB in the late 90s. Different course, I guess. I was young (17) when I went but I can't imagine that helped or hindered.
TrackTeddy@reddit
It all depended on the course of course, but my offer to Oxford was AAB and Cambridge would have been similar.
Some courses required extra exam papers either national ones like, S levels and/or STEP? papers or sometimes specific university set papers.
This was in the late 90's.
GlumAd9856@reddit
I got A,A,B,B in my A Levels in 2000
I think in theory I could have applied for Oxford and Cambridge, but even back then you would need a very good application to get in, including a non-academic experience.
I went to a Top 10, Russel Group university that was asking for A,B,B.
NortonBurns@reddit
It would depend on how much they actually wanted you.
Though (for reasons far too complex to explain) I ended up not going, I was offered both Oxford & Cambridge for three C's (I was taking five A-Levels, so that would have allowed me two complete fails). People they wanted even more & would have taken E's, though there was no-one at my school with such a good offer.
If they wanted you less, it could be two A's.
1-05457@reddit
Even now, for Oxford or Cambridge your A-Level grades are a bare minimum. Aptitude tests and interview performance are what determine whether you're accepted.
TheDarkestStjarna@reddit
Straight As and a good personal statement, showing you to be a well rounded person. Someone at my school was predicted 4 As (possibly 5; it was an academic school) and was turned down from Cambridge.
ValeOfBlossom@reddit
A C C E got me into Birmingham Uni Mechanical Engineering 1986 (though their offer was B B B)
tritoon140@reddit
I went to Cambridge in the 90s from a state school. Had all A*s at my GCSEs and then four A’s at A-level. Honestly what swung me getting in was probably explaining in the interview that I was fairly certain I was going to get straight As from my existing coursework and early module results. They wanted to know the actual scores you had by the date of the interview.
Objective_Key_2616@reddit
Straight As or A*s
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