With a third of A levels being at A or A star and presumably the proportion to increase how are universities going to select students for high status competitive coiurses?

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/aug/14/students-squeezed-out-university-courses-bumper-crop-top-a-level-grades?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwdGRjcATtEpdjbGNrBO0ShXBkb2YFZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEeF2JA4R42PnBId2QTWTFQ95frB8yvf0pY8AzajXUe5PVrefFR3aDd56drkKc_aem_LR9dNpZoutWCESSQrZoh5A#Echobox=1786725857

Oxbridge can use interview and additional tests in selection of students but where does this leave other universities? Will other universities such as Durham need to introduce their own interviews or tests to stop applications becoming a lottery?

I have looked at some of the Oxbridge rejection threads and there are many unlucky applicants with perfect grade profiles at GCSE and A level.so have we reached a point that the perfect 'grade A' student does not hold the prestige it once did and you are now just one of many.

I think we need to introduce an A star star grade as we have to accept grade inflation is a thing so we just need to accommodate to make university recruitment (and employment) make sense.

Yes

In the 70s, 10 per cent got an A. They were rationed.

You hear stories of students with a grade A, A level in a modern language, who can't hold a conversation in that language.

@6ate9 Lots of unis used to interview for popular courses. Even ones like Sussex for English. Dais turned down in 1982 and then got As in English, History and RE on results day. So who knows who Sussex thought they were!? No idea what % got A x 3 in 1982?

@Digerydont I would actually like to see the wider person considered. Yes, paid for activities are a slight issue but even poor dc play sport and can have leadership roles. Music costs a lot of money but singing in a choir is cheap. Dc should be judged more in the round.

Ridiculous! Are they fluent in reading the language?

Yes. Why do you think that forcing A Level grades to follow a Bell curve would be preferable? What would that achieve?

I was a teacher , biology not maths. A level biology does require some statistics and I was okay with teaching it particularly as most of my students would be taking A level maths so it was more of a refresh. One year I had a group several of whom were not taking maths. They were clearly struggling to get it and I decided to get some help from a maths teacher ( very experienced and well regarded). We chatted and one result of this was he told me the A level maths I took in late 1970,'s covered the same material as Maths and Further maths. I had no reason to doubt him. As for A biology we taught to the test in a way that never happened when I was at school. The idea of a text book for the exam board wasn't a thing. I reckon just by regurgitating the text book a student could achieve a C grade .

@Digerydont As a mum with a DD who has 2 A levels in MFLs at the highest grades, they can hold every day conversations but you would not expect detailed ones unless they had had the benefit of immersion in the language which they get at degree level. As MFL A level numbers have fallen off a cliff, it’s clearly a subject challenge most don’t relish. Cambridge rate these A levels though but why would an average student bother when they can do media studies or film, and get a high grade with significantly less effort?

My last sentence has made me think. What proportion of students get high grades in 2 of the core subjects listed by Cambridge? This is what Cambridge like to see for their courses and probably differentiates between academic dc and less academic dc. The hard subjects do tend to define who is the best. Others swerve them. For info the subjects are English (not lang). History, languages, Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and FM. A third subject can be relevant to the course and they have a long list of suitable subjects.

Oxford and Cambridge have had entrance exams since at least the early 70s.

Even though 1/3 of grades are A or A star there is still variation surely. Most pupils sit 3 subjects, they only need get one A or A star each for a third of grades awarded to be at that level.

Im not saying that there arent more As than before as clearly the article says there are, but the numbers getting straight As are smaller than 1/3

The Cambridge STEP exam was introduced in 1987. Did they use something before then?

They used to have an entrance exam sat in the autumn. If you did well enough in that they would invite you to interview and if you did well enough in that they made you an offer of a place so long as you got two Es. It was also possible to apply for a conditional offer but not many people did.

Thank you, I didn’t know that they used to make offers with such low grades.

Tbf I don't think anyone has ever claimed that doing a language a level as a non native speaker makes you fluent have they? My dd's speaking exam consisted of her discussing a book they'd studied I think.

I think it's generally accepted that degree language students only become fluent after their year abroad.

The grades were just so that you could ‘matriculate’ ie be admitted into the university - you just had to have at least 2 A level passes.
I heard that several times, in different contexts, but never saw it written down, so it may be a common myth. However if you did well enough in the entrance exam and interview to be offered a place it’s very likely you’d get reasonable A level grades.

DH took the Cambridge entrance exam in the early 70s. At that time students either took it in their fourth or seventh term of sixth form. Students who were accepted in their seventh term and who were successful then had a ‘gap’ two terms working, travelling the world or whatever.

It was reasonably common, at least it happened in both boys’ grammar schools I knew about, to have an ‘express’ stream. So, pupils did their O levels a year early, after four years at secondary school not five. Applying for university in the year after they’d taken their A levels meant they were 18 when they started at university, despite having had time out between school and college.

Digression:
Don’t forget, the Cambridge colleges were single-sex for undergraduates until the first men’s colleges started taking women in 1972. Until then there were only three colleges which took women and about 26 which took men. It might be justifiable to think it was a lot harder for women to get into Cambridge than it was for men.
In my seven years at the girls’ grammar one girl got into Oxford and nobody into Cambridge.

I’ve done quite a bit of grad recruitment. In one organisation, we ended up looking at GCSE’s as a differentiator. The pool closes quite a bit. Most of the successful applicants at interview had a masters- not because we necessarily asked for it but the dissertation gave them something more weighty to talk about. All the successful young people had a degree plus other experience whether that was leading a society or working in McDonald’s. Winning combo tended to be masters plus volunteering plus some work experience plus a society.

In larger organisations, they ran lots of tests and that is typical. You’re not going to get on a grad scheme unless you can jump through a lot of hoops, can hold your own in a group exercise and can pass a whole load of psychometric tests.

@Bunnycat101 Top universities use GCSEs too. Definitely Oxford and Bristol. I suspect others too. Masters makes no odds to lots of jobs because content is often not relevant but obviously is for sciences but if you did a masters in history, who really cares? My dd did a 4 year MFL degree so not sure what value a masters would be over her year abroad which demonstrated self reliance, two universities attended, dealing with the day to day oddities of other unis, and all in the target MFLs. No mum and dad to run home to.

Psychometric tests are an interesting tool but too much reliance on them is flawed unless they are very bespoke. Talking to people in the firm and group exercises let you see the candidate as a person, not a score.

Even in the late 90s, I know of a couple of people who got 2 E grade offers for Cambridge.

That's a slightly odd take on Masters degrees. Many form the basis of a professional qualification. My professional qualification is a Masters degree for example and the MSc my son is about to start is the first step towards professional accreditation for his chosen career.

I don't agree with this. Both of my children truanted their Further Maths lessons ( without the knowledge of me and DH!)
Despite no teacher input , they both passed at the highest level
Whilst my DS is clever enough that this might be reasonable, his sister isnt. There is no way they should have got the same grade, let alone both at top grade!
so this suggests to me that exams have got considerably easier and less discriminating

This proves that A levels are not as rigorous as in the twentieth century. Your description is the fluency expected of O level candidates, which is the level l achieved. My friends who took A level MFL were studying and analysing literature in the languages studied in the same way they studied great works of English literature at O level, so in French they studied Moliére and in German Goethe and Schiller.

In the 1980s, there were "special papers/S-levels", which were more challenging papers set on the same syllabus. That provided extra stretch for the strongest candidates, and Cambridge used them as part of offers. Then Cambridge introduced its own extra papers, demand for S-levels fell, and they stopped. Cambridge then dropped its extra papers, apart from maths.
Perhaps we should have a return to S-levels.

I’m not sure I believe the narrative that exams are easier now. I was pretty bright & did fairly well despite little revision. When I was helping dd with some GCSE work her standard was far higher than mine & her school expected a very high standard.

The problem with an increasing number of a level students getting A and A grades is that Universities will then have to take other factors such as personal statements or extra curricular activities or work experience into consideration when deciding between candidates with the same A to A grades.

The problem with this is that if you are from a better off background with educated professional parents then it's easier to have a more polished personal statement, it's easier to get relevant extra curricular activities and it's easier to get relevant work experience.

Grade inflation hurts the poorest and least well connected student candidates the worst.

Basically they took the view that if you had "passed" the exam and the interview the A levels were irrelevant. It was lovely for those of us who got the offers as the pressure was off.