GCSEs Unacceptable for Russell Group?

[Woollypullover]

Genuinely a friend asking me to ask!

Her DD would like to go to a Russell Group university. My friend thinks that she won't be able to get in because her GCSE results are
8 (English literature)
7, 7, 7 (English language, history, music)
6, 6, 6 (RS, a science and art)
5, 5, 5 (maths, a science and Spanish)

She's going into Year 13 and is predicted 3 As in a levels. She's doing an EPQ too.

Her DDs teacher said she'll be fine and the universities haven't told her that it's a problem, but she asked me to ask anyone's opinion.

She's done really well, they're a very good set of GCSE results. I'd have thought they'd be pretty normal results for the vast majority of courses at the vast majority of RUssell group universities. For a lot of courses and unis they don't look at GCSE results at all, so long as you've passed maths and English. The only uni's/courses where they might be an issue are Oxbridge and possibly the super competitive courses like medicine, dentistry and vet medicine.

If your friend or her daughter goes onto a uni website and drills down to invidual courses and their entry requirements it should hopefully set her mind at ease, in general its the predicted A level grades which are the most important and sometimes the actual A levels you're doing.

My DD’s GCSEs were lower than that and she starts her Russell Group degree course in September.

It’s the A-levels that matter, beyond a respectable grade in maths and English.

She would be better off asking the unis themselves….quite often it’s documented on the websites

Absolutely not an issue - great results and clearly a dedicated student, which is what all universities want.

RG meaningless anyway so there's no need to worry. St Andrew's is number 1 in all the lists but is not part of the Russell Group. Bath is ranked 7 and Loughborough is 10th - neither are RG.

Overall I think the grades would be fine for RG. The only thing that you might check is the maths grade. Some courses, depending on what they are, might want higher than a 5 in maths. My DS is doing a STEM course but they wanted a 6 in English for it.

There isn't one set of entry requirements common to all Russell Group universities, and she'll need to look at specific subjects. They'll be set partly on how popular the course is.

And there are plenty of excellent universities not part of the Russell Group.

Outside of Oxford and Cambridge, I don’t think the RG holds the same kind of status as they once did.

DS didnt get higher than 7 in GCSEs and is now at a RG Uni.

Depends on the course and the university.

There's a world of difference between trying to get into study medicine at Newcastle versus studying civil engineering or geography at QUB (no disrespect to those courses or QUB - great courses, great uni, just not eye-wateringly competitive).

So I'd strongly advise asking.

However, those GCSE grades seem good to me and most likely wouldn't be any sort of barrier so long as the A-level (or equivalent) results were up to snuff.

It will depend very much on subject. It will also depend a bit on the school and demographic background from which those results have been achieved.

Those are indeed excellent GCSE results and she's clearly bright and able.

There are some courses which are so popular that the number of available places could be entirely filled twice or three times over by applicants who are predicted 3As or better at A-Level. In those cases the admissions process does look for ither evidence. That doesn't mean just selecting those who got a clean sweep of 8s and 9s at GCSE though - a load of grade 6s from a comprehensive with a challenging intake in an area with historically low levels of participation in tertiary education and more typical results of a handful of 4s would indicate someone with huge potential who just needs to be given a chance. The same results from a high-performing school in a privileged area might affect her chances more negatively.

The grade 5 in maths could be a problem for degrees that require some level of numeracy for statistics etc eg Geography or Economics.

But if she's going to be applying for courses in the subjects she got 7s or 8s in she's got a decent chance.

Russell Group universities aren't necessarily absolutely the best. The member universities of that group decide the entry criteria for themselves and it's mostly based on the levels of research that go on there. In some subjects the levels of research going on at the university doesn't have a huge effect on quality of undergraduate course so it's better to look at the university rankings by course. In general yes the top 10 will probably be Russell Group institutions but the universities in positions 11-20 will be a mix of RG and non-RG universities with the non-RG ones having an excellent undergraduate course.

She should be perfectly fine to apoly to RG unless she wants to do a degree in any of the subjects she got a 5 in. The next few cohorts of students are smaller than earlier years and so the competition isn’t between students over places so much as Unis are competing over getting enough students to keep the lights on and the staff paid.

I studied law at an RG university and the only GCSE requirements were C's in maths and English (this was 2010). They were much more concerned with achieving 3 A's at A Level.

What does she hope to study? The maths may be an issue if her chosen subject has stats elements but otherwise there may be additional modules offered to support it.m

She'll be fine so long as she gets the required A levels