Should DD re-take A levels or take up Uni place?

[yesbutnobut]

I'd be grateful for thoughts/advice. DD's A level results today (A*, B, C) are below her predicted grades but she's been lucky enough to be accepted onto her insurance university course.

Question I have is how important it is to have good A levels on your CV? So, should she re-take her A levels to hopefully improve her grades (obviously not guaranteed) or just move on and go to university? I'm thinking that for some jobs or careers it's important to have A levels above a certain grade - if she wanted to, say, apply to one of the Big 4 accountancy firms. Or, do people think that once you get your degree, that is more important than your A levels?

if she wanted to, say, apply to one of the Big 4 accountancy firms

They care about Maths A level / GCSE and performance on Maths aptitude test along with degree subject and classification. Ime these are more important than Institution.

So long as she passed her A levels at C or above they don't matter if she gets a degree. As a recent graduate I can guarantee nobody has asked me about my A levels since my first year of uni.

The only requirements have been above a C in English and maths at GCSE, a C in A levels and a 2:1 or above at uni.

Don't make her waste a year for no good reason.

Warwick has a great reputation and is a Russell Group University. A science degree there will open up lots of options in which her A level results probably won't matter at all. Another year of A level type study would need to be planned carefully and she'd need to know how her chances of what she wants would be improved. If she's happy to try the different path of the Warwick course then it's great that she has that option too.

Warwick is better than Durham anyway!

I stopped putting A levels on my CV as soon as I had a degree and I got AAB. I’ve never been asked what I got.

Warwick is an excellent university. I definitely wouldn't advise anyone to spend a year on resits to swap warwick for Durham, they are universities of equal prestige and the improved grades on retakes won't matter to employers.

What she does need to do is resolve now that she is going to work extra hard at uni. When she applies for jobs the narrative needs to be "I didn't get A-levels as high as I wanted and if I'm honest I didn't work as hard as I could have. I really learned my lesson from that and buckled down and in my first year I got a mix of First Class and 2:1 grades in my first year exams and I am on track to get a good 2:1 degree or maybe even a 1st"

Employers are very happy to employ youngsters who have tripped up once and learned their lesson from that. The ones who have never tripped up may be overconfident and have their crash ahead of them.

Thanks all!!

So DD is really disappointed that she let herself down in chemistry (she got C, was predicted - and needed - A). However she is delighted that Warwick have accepted her and is determined to make the most of it now and learn from the experience.

inquiquotio your advice is spot on - she needs to resolve to work extra hard at uni and not allow herself to get distracted as she did in Year 13.

We're feeling a lot happier this evening.

At least one Big 4 firm is now results blind in their application process. Although they all still have a lot of straight A* students, they are not always best placed to pass accountancy exams anyway. I've taught 3 global prize winners in the last couple of years - one of those was from the Big 4 and her A level results were not good enough to get her a place at uni.

I didn’t get what I needed (19 years ago!). I need BCC and got BCE. There were factors such as me having glandular fever and having undiagnosed dyslexia through my second year but regardless, I didn’t get the grades and didn’t get my first, second choice or anything through clearing. I was focused on what I wanted to do so I resat the Biology to get a better grade.

My days, was that year tough! Putting a brave face on it but seeing all my mates either going off to uni or having gap years while I was resitting was miserable. I was in a resit group so at least it wasn’t being put down a year so to speak. I did well in that I got the grade I needed in the resit and actually got onto a better course when applying the second time around. Some places were weird about not doing all A-levels in ‘one sitting’ which is something to bear in mind - I knew I couldn’t do any better in the other subjects I’d done so didn’t want to resit them. imagine somewhere like Durham might not accept someone with A-levels sat in different years.

I think your daughter is making the right choice. Warwick is a great uni with a long-established science department. Birmingham is indeed a great night out and not far by train! All I’d suggest is maybe paying for a recount of her paper with feedback to see why she went wrong? I found this helpful with one of my exams.

Thanks for sharing your story faith and you're right, I'm sure, about places like Durham looking to see if your exams were taken in the same sitting. Glad it all worked out for you and I'm sure it will for DD too. We're thinking about getting a couple of papers remarked but, though she was quite close to the grade boundaries, it was more than just 1 or 2 marks so I'm not sure if it's worth it.