3 A Levels or 4?

hayita I'm wondering about the implications for the Further Maths A level of the increased difficulty of the standard Maths A level. Presumably it will also be much, much harder. Will we see a return to the days when almost no one sat it?

DH remembers that in his selective sixth form of 300+ only 10 or so children sat FM, and they were all off to Cambridge or Oxford to read Maths. Now, in my DC's highly selective sixth form it seems that almost everyone who does Maths - and there are a lot of them, itself a big change - also does FM.

I don't have experience of it but it does sound like the EPQ is a good thing if the DC is motivated. Not necessary but could be a good thing.

Regarding interviews and Physics, only one of the five DS applied to did not require an interview. And at least two he didn't apply to would also have required one.

Goodbye - sorry - I didn't mean to say it was just humanities - it is just that that is my only (vicarious) experience with my DS. That's what I was hoping to make clear in last post but one. I have no experience of a DC applying for a STEM subject.

I don't think there's any quarrel about the fact of STEM courses not being interviewed for in the main TP.

hayita if the advice is being given by Eton staff to Eton boys the vast majority of whom will in all likelihood go for interview or at least be hoping for an interview then I can't see that what other pupils elsewhere are told or do is in any way relevant to the staff dishing out that advice. It seems fairly grounded advice in any event.

Surely applicants for STEM subjects should be reading around their subjects too? That's not just a humanities thing.

FWIW DD got 5 offers in Stem subject with not a single interview / extra test / required extra exam

is alleged to have been a Wykehamist - who allegedly have similar Oxbridge % to Eton. But by the by.
I still think that there is merit - interviews or not, in straight humanities students leaving time for independent study if they are applying to competitive courses. And we no longer live in the time of Waugh where it's Oxbridge or nothing. (or indeed Oxford or nothing ). I think potential students know this nowadays.

Hayita, lots of DCs friends applied for Imperial. Most, if not all, seemed to have been interviewed. Engineering/NatSci at Cambridge seems hugely competitive. Imperial is picking up some very talented students.

The Beeb at its best. Although the fictional SIr Humphrey is alleged to have been a Wykehamist :)

Maybe they take this as gospel

You might be surprised boys.

Thanks for the clip though...

carl a pretty safe bet I would think. Although for whatever reason Eton seemingly do not disclose it www.etoncollege.com/userfiles/files/Destination%20of%20Etonians%202014.pdf

Maybe they take this as gospel

Hayita, I think by extension, though, you could say that concentrating on the 3 subjects rather than 4 (I'm talking from a humanities viewpoint here), gives time for extra research / reading around in the subject you love which can then be shown in the PS.

And breathe hay .

No one has said that the interview situation for Eton is a country wide state of affairs.

And while the majority of Eton students may well be applying for at least one course which interviews, this is not the case for pupils from most other schools.

Imperial don't interview in many subjects. In fact, generally STEM subjects don't interview that much. For maths, apart from Oxford and Cambridge, almost all other places don't interview. Ditto for physics, chemistry. Popular engineering courses interview but still not that many courses. I thought that there wasn't much interviewing done for MFL these days either, as it is so under-subscribed.

If also bet my bottom dollar that apart from Oxbridge, Eton boys will be interviewed at Imperial etc. then there will be the medics.

And it usually has a few trying for drama school.

The vast majority of university courses don't interview.

It is still sound advice, even if it is not applicable in 100% of cases.

goodbye yes, I had been wondering that too, I'm glad that someone much better informed than me has been able to answer the question .

goodbye couple of cycles back but the Eton Cambridge application success rate was around 50%. Slightly lower for Oxford although a lot more applied there a lack of aspiration I find quite surprising

Both Cambridge and Oxford publish application and offers / acceptances by individual school.

The Cambridge ones are here www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply/statistics - see the pdfs on the right of the page for apply centre - what most of the rest of us would call a "school"

Oxford one's were not quite so easily found. Someone posted a link to them a while back however can't find it at the moment.

But if 30% of Eton boys get an offer from Oxford or Cambridge then it's a fair bet that a lot more than that try hayita so it's fair that they gear their advice to the majority who intend to apply. Do you know what the application: offer ratio is Indrid? Just curious.

In terms of their advice re university entry it pretty much boils down to choose a subject you love and work hard at it, if you can impress the person who interviews you with your knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject then you will increase your chance of an offer.

The vast majority of university courses don't interview.

Modern linguists are in short supply Indrid so I'd worry even less, despite there being higher expectations because of his school.

Thanks grinkle, that's interesting. In fact we are a year ahead of you as DS started 4 last September, all languages. I think that 4 is still a hangover from the previous regime of start 4 and drop one after a year, because you would have the AS. I feel a bit twitchy about him dropping down to three, but feel it is probably better to get three better grades rather than risk four slightly less good ones.

FWIW, and as it has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread, my DS is at Eton, and they seem to be relaxed about only doing three subjects, and DS assures me that most of his friends will be dropping a subject as well (although this has yet to be confirmed by the school!). In terms of their advice re university entry it pretty much boils down to choose a subject you love and work hard at it, if you can impress the person who interviews you with your knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject then you will increase your chance of an offer. No froth, no arcane manoeuvrings and no EPQs, which I hadn't even heard of before.

Due to uncertainty about the new A levels many UK schools are switching away from A levels towards the IB.

2015: 472670 Home and EU students accepted university places through UCAS. Of those, 5640, 1.2%, were IB students. Suppose it doubled (and I don't believe for a second that it will) it would reach the heady heights of 2.4%. A lot of those will be, unsurprisingly, students from international schools, so its impact on UK university admission by UK students is very low. The has been a drop both in the number of schools and the numbers taking the IB in the UK since the early part of this decade, and the whole debate feels like a lost age.

... international A levels...Pre-U...

And? UK A Levels are well regarded internationally and, for example, the UK A Level is one of the few qualifications from outside the US which you can take as AP into US Universities. The Pre-U has little traction outside its originators: 4232 were sat in 2014, so that's, what, 1000 students? 0.25% of the UK undergraduate cohort (even assuming they were all applying to UK universities)? 1377 international A Levels were taken in the UK in 2014, so if they were being used as the sole qualification (I suspect that isn't the case) that would be less than 500 students. 0.1% of the cohort? Exciting stuff. A reasonably sized university with 10 000 home/EU undergraduates might have a couple of hundred students with either he IB or the Pre-U.

The idea that admission tutors in British universities come over all hormonal in the face of these minority qualifications and immediately reach for the "Accept" stamp, and the related idea that students who have these qualifications sweep all before them on arrival in a way that they wouldn't have done with standard A Levels, is a charming belief of people who are paying a lot of money to have their children at schools which offer them. But it has little basis in evidence, in large part because the numbers are so low: the typical programme will have less than 5 people with the IB, so the numbers will be suppressed in most HESA reports even if they were broken out separately, which they aren't.

These are perfectly respectable qualifications from good quality validating bodies, taught by good schools and accepted perfectly happily by universities. So are A Levels. The claim that they make the students ineffably better is mostly magically thinking.

Plenty mix sciences and arts grinkle.