GCSE exams

Awful weather for this time of year.......

lljkk I think we may be veering a long way from the original post. It's not about grammars, university grants or numbers attending uni, it's about GCSEs and whether the linear exams are too stressful. I myself think they're absolutely fine, OP doesn't. You implied students needn't worry about GCSEs because you can get into a uni with a handful of grade Cs. I said I'd rather my kids did worry a bit, because they do without doubt determine entry to some of the most competitive courses and unis. If you find that attitude 'elitist', I might well counter that I find your attitude to education and uni defeatist. At the very least it doesn't suggest that you're a proponent of 'aim high', rather the opposite, presumably because you see that as 'fairer'?

Being pedantic... I disapprove of UKIP's education policy. Who said that I disapprove of them in general or only mention UKIP to cast an insult?

I find UKIP's education policy abhorrent. Very clearly some MNers don't.

I agree everyone should aim as high as they feel capable of & more. Also worthwhile to be realistic about what is truly required and not hand-wring over unachieved ambitions.

Also I don't happen to vote UKIP, far from it, but your attempts to denigrate another poster by suggesting they might vote for a political party of which you disapprove is incredibly illiberal and not in the least open minded.

I think the point I made initially was purely in response to your saying that 5 GCSEs at any old grade will do. Clearly it won't for the top unis. That was all.

However, if a student is clever and motivated enough to go to Oxford or UCL, where is the merit in advising him to aim for the minimum grades in order to get into the easiest-to-get-into uni and then very likely be miserable with an unchallenging course and student peers with whom he may well have very little in common intellectually? Aiming for the bottom isn't not elistist, it's daft.

I don't believe that 400,000 are wasting their money, Titchy. I hate it when it's implied on MN that only "top tier" is good enough. That is UKIP's attitude, too. I hate elitism. My mother used to rant against it. Makes me shudder.

creamteas then clearly the way your admissions process works is different from that of a significant number of the 'hard hitters'. I'm assuming that either your uni isn't a hard hitter or possibly your course is a softish hit within a hard hitter. Nevertheless, you will have to square up to using something other than ASs as a benchmark if those disappear. Relying solely on A2 predictions won't work, for obvious reasons.

Why do you think 400,000 undergrads are wasting their time and money? This is the figure you have come up with of students on degree courses that you think might not be interested in GCSE results. However the majority of those 400,000 will have more than 5 C grade GCSEs, so there isn't a correlation where you think there is.

And don't forget the current year 10s probably won't be doing AS levels, so the only results they'll have on their UCAS forms will be their GCSEs.

It might not matter as Creamteas says. But it might......

Oh and it isn't just Oxford, Cambridge and UCL that are hard hitters llkjj - you need to add in Manchester, Kings, LSE and Imperial at least.

From my perspective as admissions tutor, I would say that the university courses that use GCSEs for admissions purposes are a tiny minority.

Where I work we currently use AS and A2 predictions and ignore GCSEs, and I am pretty certain so do most of our competitors.

So in my experience for the vast majority of places, as long as you have English Language, Maths and 3 others at Grade c or above will be just fine.

(Don't want to out myself, but I work at an old university with mostly AAA-ABB entry)

For example, look at the umber of courses with 'forensic Science in the title. One low ranked university has five of these courses. Then look at this extract from the website of the Chartered institute of Forensic Scientists:

'This has led to a vast number of forensic themed courses on offer to the budding forensic student. A large majority of these courses have minimal and in some situations, inappropriate levels of forensic science content e.g. a failing pure-based course that has had a few law and crime scene modules thrown in with the label of “forensic - ?” put on top of it. To an uninformed parent or student this can be extremely misleading and give false hope in finding jobs at the other end of a course.'

And there are worse instances than this to be found where course structure, teaching and financial management are poor.

Lljkk, it isnt that people have to go top tier or do traditional academic subjects. It is that some institutions are simply badly run; some subjects in some institutions are badly taught; some subjects in institutions from top to bottom tier are teaching courses that might be popular, but which will not lead to the jobs students hope for because of enormous oversupply compared to jobs available, or misleading marketing of courses.

It isn't about academic snobbery, it is about the best path for individual students and about giving them full information which seems lacking.

DD is sitting her 3rd history paper today. She says she has science, german and various other papers coming up. She's in Y10, and has just spent the last 2 weeks on work experience, so not much opportunity to revise for this paper today or the other two she took last week. Who organised that? I am confused by the whole GCSE thing tbh. Some subjects are 2quals, some are half, it all seems to be very confused.

If 400,000 of 700,000 each year's school leavers (well, of 500,000 who go to university at all) start university which aren't competitive/top tier etc., then actually that's pretty strong evidence it is precisely and exactly a minority view to think that it's a waste of money -- at least among those for whom the decision truly matters.

I guess I was naive to think that most MN posters would at least be open-minded about the value of going to university. I wish I had a mind reader & understood the huge biases that underpin most things most people say.

lljkk

tertiary education is a lucrative industry and many service providers offer a poor value service to the under qualified and under informed.

It's has become a way to part people who have no need of a degree and no aptitude for study from their cash.

And the poeple who are most being sucked into these establishments are from the least well off families. They're being ripped off IMVHO!

Well in theory I agree with all of those things. But I disagree strongly with almost everything else UKIP says and does, so my vote isn't going to go there, nor has it ever :)

It's UKIP policy, to bring back grammar schools, revive full university grants & dramatically reduce the number of university places. It's the kind of world they want.

Yes I think a great many undergraduates are probably wasting their money and I wouldn't want my DC to waste theirs. That certainly doesn't have to mean I vote UKIP, what a strange deduction to make! After all, it's not exactly a minority view.....

About 500,000 people start on FT undergrad courses each year.

I'd like to know, for how many of those people, they needed > 5 GCSE passes to get onto the course. Who has concrete evidence?

I'll wager it mattered in less than 10% of places (max. 50,000). On the basis of 7800 spaces in medical schools, ~12k undergrads in each yr at Oxbridge + UCL combined (including their med students), and then fudging those numbers to including some other desirable Unis.

Does anyone believe that at least 400,000 new undergraduates are every year wasting their money and you would advise them not to? What should they do instead? and do you vote UKIP because that is their attitude, too.

lljkk my version of top tier and second tier may not be identical to others, so it's probably of little value for me to 'list'. I don't really want to get into a quarrel about how fourth rate Oxford Cambridge, UCL, Imperial etc are either. Of course the course matters as well as the uni . My point was a) that GCSEs are a critical factor for many competitive courses at the most competitive unis (and as Word says, likely to be increasingly so) and b) uni is an expensive business, so three years accruing that debt may well not be worth it unless you get onto a course where the teaching and content means that the degree obtained is of some real value.

I think an applicant who has only 5 x C grade GCSEs and is applying to an RG or (former) 94 group institution and is predicted A and B grades in relevant subjects would need to address their GCSE grades in their personal statement. If the lack of quality and quantity GCSEs was as a result of long term illness, caring responsibilities, world travel, school moves every six months etc etc then that would give some context and might well be regarded as fine (as long as the A Level predictions were reasonable).

But a sixth former applying to Imperial for example, with 5 C grade GCSEs, having been at an average comprehensive with no external factors wouldn't get a look in as the evidence shows a lack of application to study, and possibly ability. In such a case the student would be far better off as PP says in applying once they have their A Level grades.

It is my understanding that many of the more competitive courses at some Russell Group Universities will be looking at GCSE grades. Medicine, veterinary science and dentistry were quoted, I am not sure about other courses though. I was also told that Oxbridge, Imperial and UCL look at GCSEs.

llijkk - league table of UK universities

I would also say, that with the demise of AS in their current guise, GCSEs may take on even more importance.

For a student with middling GCSEs but predicted good A levels, it's often worth applying post A levels...

lljkk I think a good rule of thumb is that the more selective a university/course, the more important the GCSE grades.

If a university doesn't have pressure on its places, then it will send out offers of whatever A levels it requires, regardless, and some applicants will get them, others won't. That's the selection process.

However, at establishments with high levels of competition for places, the process is stricter. It has to be as there are too many applicants who are likely to achieve the entry grades.

Looking at GCSEs is one way to assess how the 17 year old applicant has done so far and thus one measure. It's considered a reasonable reflection of ability/stamina/organisation yadd yadda. Si it's one of the filters.

Can you please list the Unis who are "top" tier & which are "second tier"? Is it only the Uni which matters or also the course? How many places are affected by these requirements?

Tbh lljkk the list is long, but broadly speaking a number of the unis in the top and second tier require a certain minimum number of A before an application is considered more fully, and some (Oxford for medicine for example) use a very specific formula which includes percentage of A at GCSE to determine who will be asked to interview. Obviously not all DC fancy that sort of university or career, but for those who do, GCSEs can be crucial. Meeting the stated minimum for a course is not in any way the same as gaining the offer of a place and university degrees vary hugely in their value in terms of employment later on, as well as in their intrinsic worth. I'm not at all sure I'd advise my DC to spend £27k on fees alone for a degree where entrants averaged 5 grade Cs at GCSE. There must be better ways to spend the money as well as the time.