Not getting the A level results they needed

[Devonmaid148]

Today is A level results day. Ever since my Son got his results I have found today a very stressful day. My son got his results 8 years ago and I still feel the pain of it. He was all set to go to Uni. Excited for the future. Had been working his socks off.
He didn’t get the grades he needed and it all but crushed him. I’d never ever seen him in the state he got himself into that night. I thought he would do something stupid. To see him like that was dreadful. I hope I never see anything like that again. School couldn’t care less. I felt as far as they were concerned he had his results and washed their hands of him. He had no plan B.
I managed to get him on a course through clearing, a good Uni too, but by then he had hit rock bottom. As far as he was concerned he had failed. Failed at life and was a failure. I spent the next year doing my best to support him every way I could. He then took a year out and lived in his room for a full year. Grew a beard. Did nothing but do on line gaming. Never went out.
mom the last day the he at he could say he was going back, signed back on. Spent the next 2 years surviving but not living. He passed with a 2:2.
He used his degree to get on a grad course in a completely different field than he started out in. He loved it. Lives in the City now. Successful, happy, healthy. This long tale is to say what ever happens today with your results it’s not the be all and end all. It’s the beginning. I just hope none of your kids hit the low mine did. It still traumatises me now. Good luck to you and know whatever happens it’s probably for a reason. I wish you the very best.

Thanks for posting this. I really needed to read this today. My DD has missed out on Oxbridge and is utterly crushed by it. I’m sitting in a corner of the garden quietly weeping, because I feel like I’ve failed her as a parent. She worked so hard and I feel like all it’s showed her is that hard work sometimes DOESN’T pay off. To top it off, her best friend has made her Oxbridge offer, and now she has to be happy for her, despite being so low herself.

This was us last year. My daughter missed her third A grade by literally 5 points and lost her Oxford offer. She was so disappointed. However second insurance choice of Cardiff University has been fabulous and I think, has actually worked out better. There’s always an MA or later studies to do at Oxbridge if it’s a life goal.♥️

Definitely don't sit around gently weeping? As a parent gently encourage them to look at other options. This day is a big one but it's not the be all and end all fo life - which was the point of the OP?

I really feel the pressure on young people is too much. It would be so much better if applications were made after results were available

Oh wow <hugs> this is so hard for you and her.

I guess the only thing to say is, it will be fine. And everyone knows that. It will not just be fine, it will be better. Just accept today will be hard but tomorrow can be better. (DS also didn’t make Oxbridge - he found out sooner though)

My DD is at Durham studying Sociology. Her big interest is education and how terrible the current exam system is - this thread case in point. She hopes one day to be able to be part of a body (government? Think tank?) that can change this to prevent the unnecessary stress currently experienced by so many.

It’s hard, but time to pull up the pants and show her that life moves on. Weeping and being sad is only going to show her that’s she’s ‘failed’. She’s done bloody well to get an offer. You’ve not failed her. She had a bad day in the office. We all
do. I assume her grades are still amazing and she’ll get into a great uni. We can’t all be brilliant all the time, and trust me as an Oxford graduate it’s tough there and you can’t always be the best.

Thanks for the sympathy. 🙄

Results day is tough, particularly when the focus is on the students who make their grades and the ones that don't often get completely ignored. My ds grades were determined by covid. He didn't 'fail' anything, yet he was made to feel rejected by York as school decided the algorithm gave him CCD rather than the predicted AAB. He was devastated. He had a scholarship to Aberystwyth (where he did actually sit exams for the scholarship) scoring 98% Unfortunately he crashed out in the first year due to appalling pastoral care. He left uni with my support and worked in a supermarket for a year whilst volunteering at his hobby. It meant that his mental health healed rather than crashing further. Eventually he's landed his dream job in the heritage sector. Please, if your children don't receive the grades they wanted, help them to investigate alternatives, life is far from over at 18. I didnt go to uni until I was 21, my A level results were appalling so I spent a few years working and then volunteering in schools. It meant when I did go to uni the A level grades weren't the be all and end all. For the pp who has said her daughter has missed Oxbridge, she will feel devastated but you both need to find a pathway she wants to follow instead, be that going elsewhere and then looking at a masters at Oxbridge or taking time out to think about what she wants to be doing.

Same here, missed oxbridge by one mark and had everything planned. They send them on so many induction days and send the coursework before so you almost feel like it’s a done deal then bam it’s taken away. The back up is an amazing uni that in itself is an achievement but all excitement has been stripped and it’s just depressing for everyone

Dniece missed out on her Oxbridge place two years ago. She was absolutely devastated .
I think she was more upset about disappointing her parents tbh
However, her mother ( my dsis) is one of those people who is an eternal optimist and believes that rejection is redirection .
Dniece got into the University of Bath and is extremely happy.

Thanks for posting this. Yesterday was a dreadful day for my ds and I as he did not get the grades he needed. He has found a course through clearing which may in the end be better for him but he’s still devastated and struggling to work out what went wrong. I feel terrible that I am so upset also. I feel like I have failed as a parent. School didn’t seem to care much either which has made it all worse.

My DS results day was last year. He got his offer but his results were a complete shock compared to his mocks. CDD when he was expecting BBB.

He went into a complete panic and decided he didn't want to go to Uni. He had originally hoped to get a degree or business apprenticeship to work in accounting and had come really close to securing one but failed his final interview so his disappointment with his a levels was more about the fact he would never secure a good apprenticeship with those grades. Uni had always been a plan b for him anyway.

He got a job in a supermarket to tide him over while he decided what to do.

Fast forward a year and he is working in his dream job having secured a paid internship

Great post, op. Thank you.

The pressure is extraordinary. Pointless.

We really need to re-evaluate how we evaluate our students.

I missed out on both my offers, my grades were dreadful. It all worked out in the end but was so upsetting (I can remember it so vividly 30 years later!)

I didn't get the grades for uni. All my friends did. It was awful and I still remember that feeling. All my friends went out to celebrate results while I had to sit on the phone calling unis to find a place through clearing (yeh I'm that old) because my parents insisted I had to go to uni, any uni, any old course. Not one person cared how I felt. My parents were embarrassed and disappointed. My college didn't care - even the teacher who ran the Christian Union which I attended at the time just shrugged and said "oh dear". It was all so so awful and I ended up at a shit uni on a course I hated.

My son didn't get his grades 2 years ago but thankfully got his uni place anyway. But I was so mindful of how he would be feeling if he didn't.

I still feel robbed of my maths A level (I worked so hard ☹️) and the maths degree I so desperately wanted to do that I never could - and I'm nearly 50 now!

Sorry pressed post too soon

He did a paid internship for 6 weeks and then did some professional exams while continuing to work part time in the supermarket ( the boss had allowed him to work his shifts around the internship)

He applied for loads of jobs and kept getting to final interview stage but kept on trying. He finally succeeded. He was told by his new boss that the final interview had been between him and a grad from an RG with a first.

A year ago we thought all was lost but he is so happy now.

So many of his friends ( from his grammar school) are turning against university. He is now getting loads of linked in requests from boys in the year below him at his school who want to work in his industry and are asking him how to do it without going to Uni.

I remember the bottom falling out of my world OP. I didn’t get the results I needed.
I interviewed well and got very low offers that I thought I would breeze through without doing much work.
More fool me. I remember so clearly the sheer horror of seeing my future plans snatched away.
I spent the morning on the phone in a panic, got into another university to do a completely different vocational course and have had years of working in a wonderful job.
It usually works out in the end but it’s tough at the time.

The funny thing is I did get the grades I wanted, I did go to the uni I wanted but had a meh time generally. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and fell into my career which has been good to me but it’s not very exciting at all. I sometimes feel that had a I not done as well I might have been forced out of the path I was on and maybe ended up doing something surprising and different. Hard to say. I definitely have the view for my children that life has a funny way of working out. You might not make Oxford but maybe your life will lead you to something more exciting or the love of your life. embracing the curveballs is what makes a person. I know it’s very hard to see in the moment though but as long as you have your health, it all works out in the end.

I stood outside DS’s school with him as they waited for the doors to open at 8am, and there was a big crowd of students who all found out on their phones at the same time whether or not they had got their uni offer. None of us were expecting results day to pan out like this as we thought that they’d all go and get their envelopes and find out uni offers individually.

what happened was a girl shrieked ‘I got Manchester’ and then lots of noise and hubbub, but I know from school that 10% didn’t get their first choice and so there would have been students in the crowd who were feeling punched in the gut while everyone around them was revelling in their future.

i felt for them. I really did. But having seen various young people struggle at uni, I’m more convinced that being signposted to a different choice or different path isn’t always a bad thing. Particularly the ones who find themselves earning earlier than their errs, or on a new path which turns out to have unanticipated highlights.

i hope people whose dc wake up this morning after bad news yesterday can see this as a setback or change in direction rather than a failure. In the end, it’s just a different path, which may be a better one in the long run.

I think the hardest thing for these young adults is it’s often their first experience of failure. I do genuinely believe that in life, things happen for a reason - even if it’s not entirely clear in the moment. It’s a lesson only age and experience has taught me.

My dd never got the grades for uni three years ago. She never chose a back up and decided to take a year out. She worked for a year and just de-stressed (she has Dyslexia and adhd) she applied through clearing the next year and got in to a better uni than her first initial choice and is just starting her third year in September. I was really chilled about it all to be honest.

For me uni isn't the be all and end all. I went to uni to a course pushed by my dad and dropped out after first year after hating every second of it. Done an Hnd in the course I wanted at college, got in to a career and worked my way up. Everything will work out in the end.

Thanks for this post - and to all who’ve commented. Lots of wisdom here! I went to bed last night exhausted from holding it together. It’s so painful when your child feels they have let you down - when they really haven’t. Sometimes we all learn more in the long run when things don’t quite go to plan. Today is a new day 🙂

However, her mother ( my dsis) is one of those people who is an eternal optimist and believes that rejection is redirection

What a brilliant way of looking at it.

It's crazy that we still have this system where (highly subjective) predicted grades are given, offers are made and then you have to wait on tenterhooks for your results. It's cruel and inefficient. In other countries you get your results and then apply.