2015 Yr 12 support thread

Marni - we might see you there, better wear the MN scarf! DD doing a science class though.

Congrats to everyone who's finished and commiserations to anyone still going. At least DD's were short and sharp and over quickly.

We're off to Cambridge on Saturday where DD has a Masterclass and I'm going with with her to make sure she finds her way to the venue for the ride. I can think of worse places to while away a few hours.

DD is currently trying to decide whether to do an EPQ. She's carrying on with all 4 subjects next year and is wary of overloading herself. She's come in the top 3 of one essay competition and is intending to enter another one with an end of July deadline and is wondering if they will demonstrate the reading outside of the syllabus/research that an EPQ would show. Any thoughts?

Yup. S2 Monday. And bloody school neither doing proper lessons nor letting their mathematicians revise. Going to revolt.

Thanks for the good wishes everyone. DS said that C4 went better than expected. Mind you, he expected it to be an utter catastrophe, so who knows where on the scale it actually was!

I hardly care to be honest as that's us done! It seems to have gone on for ever. Is anyone else still waiting? I had a feeling someone went on even longer than we did. ancientbuchanan was it you?

DS is at a sixth form college so there isn't the end of termy feel as it seems as though he's hardly started. Pity really as he's loving it and before we know it he'll be finished!

Dunlurking It sure is different second time around. I haven't bothered with any of those talks, DS2 reckons I know more about UCAS than most of the staff because I learn so much from MN .

Needmoresleep it feels strange, doesn't it. Sat in a Yr12 parents presentation about student finance last week and looked round thinking how much we had been through with our fellow parents in the last 6 years - meeting at parents' evenings, discussing options, exams, school gossip. I can't believe this time next year all that will be over. Thankfully one or 2 have a dc in dd's year as well, but the journey with the older dc feels more eventful - facing landmarks choices and events for the first time.

Good luck to your ds for C4 morvah. What an endurance test this exam period must have been for him.

Morvah, good luck for today..v impressive him doing c4 in yr 12.

DS thinking of bath after we had a really interesting journey in a cab where the driver told us about his son there. But conflicts with Warwick or UCL so we will prob wander down one weekend. Interesting economics course with a year off in the city or industry.

Oops, I should have posted that last paragraph on the open day thread - ignore this part and I'll post it over there!

Well, we've got C4 tomorrow, the last exam. DS is alternating between 'it's going to be a disaster so what's the point in revising' and 'it's going to be a disaster, I'll never be able to show myself at college if I fail.' To be honest he's just so tired with all this revising over so many weeks, and knowing that this result won't have to go on his UKAS form, that I think he's almost given up. And I can't say I blame him!

We're off to Bath on Thursday. We're intending to drive and I can't decide whether to try and park on campus, or whether it's likely to be jammed solid and therefore better to use the park and ride. Anyone have any idea?

MayPolist I did wonder how you could have worked out such a precise and low mark as 11% for AB's DS
Re: C3 - the few people I have mentioned this to were surprised at C3 being taken this for a non- FM student, but DS's school seem, like others on here, to do that. I am not too dismayed that he gets a realisation that hard work is necessary, rather than being in a false state of confidence, as did extremely well in his GCSes, and this is clearly a very different scenario.

yup, resits is what we are expecting now.

I hate the effect on him at the moment and it is going to be shit until and then after August 13.

OTOH, better to learn coping strategies now and to have the courage to pick yourself up and go on than have to learn them later.

Thanks everyone for the words of comfort! They can resit next year and yes, I do think that C3 is usually taken next year. Only the maths and further maths lot at DS's college take it a year early, but I gather from DS that loads retake it next year. I don't quite see the point of taking it this year then. Why not just wait another year when your confidence is less likely to be eroded quite so dramatically? Hmmph.

Apparently DS's mate, who is a maths whizz and hoping to do maths at Oxbridge, said he thought it was a horrendous paper. QED.

Hope injection lumps go down, DoE expeditions are successful with or without aardvarks, and that all exhausted DCs get a good night's sleep!

No, no, to be fair, he knows he couldn't do two questions at all. Really couldn't. Whereas his mates could.

He knows it isn't the end of the world but equally he knows that it's pretty pointless applying to top RG which is what he wanted.

I've done the usual well, you tried your best, but his unanswerable response is yes, but it isn't good enough. And he usually know how he has done. So I believe him.

100% UMS not 11%!!

Oh FGS ancientbuchanan your Ds is as bad!! He said 'his life was over' because of One adding up mistake!! If that's all he did wrong he has probably still got 11% UMS

DS arrived back - I asked him if it had been unbelievably horrific, he said no, it was believably horrific - he is expecting to re-take.

DS said "unbelievably horrific" about C3 and knows he has also made at least one silly adding up mistake. He is so depressed. We have agreed resits and a gap year.

He was also furious that at one point he appeared to have to countermand the exam board's explicit instructions to work a proof.

One friend thought likewise but many didn't find it too bad. So he accepts it was him, not the paper. Even so, he had been doing quite well in the practice papers.

Shit shit shit.

They are listed on websites. It's not entirely cleear if they may change before the autumn but probably not.

AIUI you don't get very much notice at all about audition dates. It's a complete nightmare (my job involves international travel, we live in a stupid place with useless transport links and we have 2 younger kids (one much younger) so DH can't just leave them to take DD1 gadding around the country if an audition is when I'm away. And I'm definitely going to be away A LOT in the autumn. :(

How far ahead do you get the audition pieces lists then Narvinectralonum? How many things is she having to learn, and how much notice will you get for her audition dates? Must be a nightmare planning it all.

Dunlurking - one audition for each place but there may be second audition on the day at some places. Some places also have written exams. Some places also interview as well as auditions/written tests. And it is different at each place - no consistency. The written tests may differ from place to place (obviously the written test itself but also what it is). Some places have set pieces, others don't (but I've heard advice at open days saying 'don't do something off the audition list from somewhere else - from tutors not from students or parents), there is little or no cross over between the various lists of set pieces at least for DD1's instrument(s).

Good Luck with the tame aardvark for tomorrow MrsU Hope he had a better exam than Morvah and Atia's dcs.

Dd2 is a huge pessimist - she's now gone through the unofficial answers on TSR and thinks she's got around 63, which is unlikely to be quite the 90 ums she wanted, but she's finding it hard to care because now she's finished!

So she'll either be happy with what she gets in August, or she can retake next year, or she can just say, sod it, no more maths - she's got the AS now, and is doing three other A2s. Plenty of time to think about that

Hope it wasn't as awful as your ds first said, Morvah - does he have anything else before C4?