I am writing to give you an update on our student recruitment position.
As I mentioned last week, we started confirmation and clearing in a very strong position, having received over 45,000 applications from prospective undergraduates, which is an all-time high for Queen Mary, and 11% more than we received last year. Confirmation and clearing was the strongest it has ever been at Queen Mary. At time of writing, we have exceeded our overall University-level target by 327 students, including exceeding our target for international students by 84. We held our published entry grades (or in some cases dropped one grade, where the Faculty and School thought it prudent to do so). This is an incredible achievement and shows the progress we have all made over the last few years, and I would like to thank everyone involved.
Beneath these top-level statistics there is some complexity. Some areas have exceeded their targets quite significantly, and we will be focusing additional resource towards those areas in order to meet the needs of the large cohorts and to enable growth of the areas concerned. In other areas, for a limited number of programmes, we are still open to applications from prospective students to try and meet targets. Overall, however, this is a fantastic result for the University.
This position is a result of excellent work across the University. That work includes all the cross-University effort that has contributed to raising our international reputation, and in the way staff and students promote our University with pride, that has led to this strong position. The processing of our applications data, and the running of the clearing operation, is now a well-oiled machine: on A-level results day alone, we took approximately 7,000 phone calls and processed 1,700 online applications from prospective students. Many colleagues worked tremendously hard last week to get us to the strong position we are now in, and I’m extremely grateful to everyone involved.
Looking at applications to our postgraduate taught programmes, we are also in a very strong position. Applications for these programmes are still coming in, and deposits are still being paid. While the data are still moving it looks likely we will start the cycle with more than 500 students over target. Again, this is a result of hard work across the University. Congratulations to everyone involved.
From a financial perspective, purely from a student recruitment standpoint we are in a strong position against our targets. We do, however, have some financial pressures to meet. The impact of rising inflation, rising energy costs and the reduction of government funding to London universities to support their levelling-up agenda will be significant, as will the increased costs of pensions and salaries. As we head into the next academic year however, despite a fluctuating economic picture across the globe, we are in a good position as an institution to deliver our strategy and provide world-class research and education. This is a result of good long-term financial management, and the hard work of all of you across the University.
There is so much to look forward to as we move into the next academic year. Our research goes from strength to strength: keep an eye on our latest research from across the University highlighted on our website, and also have a look at the cross-disciplinary research highlighted on our Research Highways pages. I’ll be writing more about our research, and the huge impact it makes across the globe, in my next update.
Professor Colin Bailey, CBE, FREng, BEng, PhD, CEng, FICE, FIStructE, MIFireEPresident and Principal