A contextual offer means the university looks at your grades alongside your circumstances rather than on their own. In practice it usually means being asked for two grades less than the published typical offer. For a lot of Scottish pupils that is the difference between applying and not bothering.

The schemes go by different names. Contextual admissions, adjusted offers, minimum entry offers, widening access. They do broadly the same job, but the eligibility lists and the guarantees differ from one university to the next, so check each one you are applying to.

What actually changes

Usually the grade profile, and only the grade profile. The subject conditions stay put.

Take Edinburgh Napier’s LLB (Hons) Law. Standard entry is Highers ABBB to include English or another literary subject at grade B. The minimum offer is BBCC, to include English or another literary subject at grade B. The profile dropped. The English at B did not move. Heriot-Watt does the same on BSc (Hons) Computer Science for 2027 entry: ABBB at standard, BBBC at minimum, both rows saying “Must include Maths achieved at B”.

So a contextual offer will not rescue you from a missing subject. It buys you room on the overall profile, nothing more. Our page on Higher entry requirements and how to read them goes through the two-tier structure in detail.

Heriot-Watt: three tiers, and one guarantee

Heriot-Watt runs the most explicit scheme of the three here, set out in its Fair Access Policy, in force since 1 September 2022. It operates three levels: standard, minimum entry, and adjusted entry.

Minimum entry is the strong one. The university guarantees to make a minimum entry offer to any Home or Rest of UK applicant who has achieved, or can achieve, the required grades in one of two categories:

• Priority postcode areas: Home applicants from SIMD20 postcodes, or RUK applicants from POLAR4 quintile 1 areas
• Care experience: Home or RUK applicants who have had experience of care, including adoption, kinship care, foster care and home supervision orders

That is a written guarantee of an offer, conditional on hitting the minimum grades. Most subjects sit at Highers BBBC in Heriot-Watt’s published minimum entry table.

Adjusted entry is the wider net and the softer promise. It asks for something slightly below the standard offer, and covers a much longer list: SIMD40 postcodes for Home applicants or POLAR4 quintile 2 for RUK, estranged students, student carers, LEAPS eligible applicants, pupils from a low progression school (typically one with progression to higher education below an average of 35 per cent), SWAP students, refugees and asylum seekers, applicants eligible for Free School Meals or Education Maintenance Allowance, and applicants who have overcome serious illness, disability or bereavement.

Heriot-Watt gives three shapes an adjusted offer can take, using AABB as its example:

• Reduce by up to two grades, so AABB could become BBBB, AACC or ABBC
• Ask for one fewer Higher, so AABB could become AAB or ABB
• Count one Advanced Higher taken in S6 in addition to the Higher taken in the same subject in S5, which the university notes is a departure from its standard practice of counting the subject only once

That third one is quietly valuable and almost nobody knows about it.

Stirling: a published formula and a care-experienced guarantee

Stirling’s Admissions Policy, which states that it is valid for admission to courses in academic year 2025/6, lists these categories as eligible for an offer at the minimum entry requirement:

• Priority postcode area (SIMD20)
• Care experienced students
• Young or adult carers
• Estranged students
• Adult learners and access students
• Refugee and asylum seeker students
• Armed forces personnel, veterans and armed forces families

Instead of printing a minimum on every course page, Stirling publishes the conversion and lets you apply it yourself:

Higher typical entry requirement	Higher minimum entry requirement
AAAB	ABBB
AABB	BBBB
ABBB	BBBC

The widening access page words this as “adjusted by up to two grades”; the Admissions Policy says “adjusted by two grades”. If the difference matters to your case, get it in writing for your course.

Stirling’s care-experienced clause is worth quoting properly. The policy says the university “will guarantee to make an offer of admission, or an offer of an interview to those with the potential to meet the minimum entry requirements for a course”. It adds that this will be for the specific course applied for wherever possible, but may not be where places are capped by the Scottish Government, naming Primary Education and Paramedic Science. In those cases it will try to offer an interview or a place on a related course.

The guarantee shows up at course level too. Stirling’s BSc Nursing (Adult) page, which asks for Highers BBC or BBBB for the honours route, states that care-experienced applicants will be guaranteed an offer of a place if they meet the minimum entry requirements.

Edinburgh Napier: double counting, and a different eligibility list

Napier states that its minimum offers will, in most cases, be two grades below the standard requirements published. You are eligible if you:

• are a young carer
• are care-experienced
• are eligible via LEAPS, the Lothian Equal Access Programme for Schools
• are applying via a SWAP route
• attended a school in the Schools for Higher Education Programme (SHEP)
• live in an area of high deprivation (MD20)
• have government-recognised refugee or asylum status

Napier’s distinctive feature is double counting. For contextual applicants it counts Highers and Advanced Highers separately rather than counting a subject once. The limit: by the point of entry you must still hold the required grades in a minimum of three different subjects at Higher or equivalent.

Napier’s own worked example: a contextual applicant for Criminology holding BB at Higher from S5, taking two more Highers plus Advanced Higher English in S6, would typically be offered a conditional BC. That BC could come from a D or better in the Advanced Higher, through double counting, plus one further C at Higher. The conversion underneath is generous, with an Advanced Higher at D treated as a B pass at Higher and an Advanced Higher at C or above as an A pass.

On guaranteed offers for care-experienced applicants

Heriot-Watt and Stirling both publish a guarantee, in the terms set out above. On the Edinburgh Napier pages checked for this article, no equivalent guarantee was found. That is a statement about what is published, not proof that no such commitment exists. If you are care experienced and applying to Napier, or to any university whose pages are silent on this, email admissions and get the answer in writing.

Whatever the offer position, care-experienced and estranged students in Scotland have funding entitlements separate from admissions and more generous than most people realise. See the funding you are owed.

What a contextual offer does not do

• It does not remove competition. Napier states plainly that competition varies year to year and you are not guaranteed a place if you meet the minimum qualifications. Unless a guarantee is published for your category, an adjusted requirement is a chance, not a place.
• It does not waive subject requirements, or National 5 floors. Heriot-Watt’s requirement for National 5 English at grade C on all courses applies at every tier.
• It does not apply automatically everywhere. Being eligible at Stirling does not make you eligible at Napier.

What to do

1. Check your postcode against SIMD, and against POLAR4 if you are applying from outside Scotland.
2. Read the eligibility list for each university you are applying to, not a generic one.
3. Declare the circumstance on your UCAS application and make sure your referee mentions it. Universities cannot apply a scheme they do not know applies.
4. If a category is borderline, such as caring responsibilities or estrangement, email the widening access team before you apply.
5. Keep a range across your five choices.

Common questions

Do I have to apply for a contextual offer?

There is no separate form. It comes from what you declare on UCAS and what your referee writes.

I am from England. Can I get one at a Scottish university?

Sometimes. Heriot-Watt covers Rest of UK applicants using POLAR4 quintile 1 for its minimum entry guarantee and quintile 2 for adjusted entry, since SIMD only covers Scottish postcodes. Others vary. See studying in Scotland from England on fees and funding.

What if I still miss the adjusted grades?

The same routes are open to you as anyone else, and they are not consolation prizes. Read the first 48 hours after a missed offer, Clearing in Scotland, and college articulation.

Sources: Heriot-Watt University Fair Access Policy, in force from 1 September 2022, and its BSc (Hons) Computer Science page for 2027 entry; University of Stirling Admissions Policy, stated as valid for academic year 2025/6, sections 14.1 and 14.2, plus its widening access and Nursing (Adult) pages; Edinburgh Napier University minimum offers, entry requirements and LLB (Hons) Law pages. Criteria change between cycles. Confirm yours with the university’s widening access team. Last checked August 2026.