Year 12 (4): The one where they're pondering what to do next

[Numbersaremything]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/further_education/3491933-year-12-3-open-days-and-predicted-grades-beckon

Let's try this

Found you all

(From P1) I imagine philosophy courses to be full of people who answer each other's questions with more questions!

Yup - pretty much what my dd1 does

Interesting to pick up quite mixed reviews about Exeter. It wasn't on dd2's list, but she came back from an UCAS fair wanting to go and visit it - they must have good marketing! All her other choices are in the North of England - trouble is, she liked all of them!

she seemed quite bright this evening so pushed the job and was met with a no

She cries about having no friends and having awful parents....

DH is horrified about the £8k/yr support DD would need off of us. :(
Part of his reaction is he is completely out of touch; his mom had no money & full grants were universal (anyway) when he went to Uni.
Any suggestions how I get him up to speed with 2019?

Full grants weren’t quite universal. I only got around a third of full grant and my DF wasn’t a particularly high earner. He could only afford to top up the £600 grant I got by £1400 to £2000 because his 25 year mortgage had just finished. There was a pinched middle, rich parents could afford to support their DC no problem and poorer ones got full grant. The ones that struggled were in the middle, just like now, I suppose, though it’s now a loan not a grant.

lljkk either send him to a student finance talk at an open day or break it down to suggest that you pay rent & bills whilst DD takes as large a maintenance loan as possible to live on. It seems more reasonable to say exactly what you are paying for.

Sandwiches forget the job, as it doesn't sound as though she is up to managing a routine & regular hours. Concentrate on trying to get a more reasonable daily routine at home, with a time to get up, get dressed, eat etc. Can you encourage her to start investigating college courses, apprenticeships etc in case she isn't allowed to continue her current path in September?

After some advice please...
We've now visited four open days and dd has a good idea now of what she likes.
All of the ones she has picked so far have entry requirements of either AAA or AAB. Her target grades are A's and she got 8s and 9s in those subjects at GCSE so we're unsure of how much lower to go for entry requirements for one of her 5 choices.
Should she try to find a course with much lower entry grades in case she gets no offers from those who want those higher grades? And if so, how much lower?

DS’s college advises Oxbridge (if appropriate), one lower insurance offer and the rest RG universities. I think this is pretty standard advice.

It might be worth checking to see what's in clearing for 2019 admissions. It doesnt guarantee they will be in clearing next year but it should give you an indication of whether an offer would be likely/how competitive places are.

If there are lots of clearing places then the only reason to look for a lower grade alternative is that you/she is worried about meeting her predictions. Also it's not unusual to be accepted on results day even if you have missed a grade.

DS2 is hoping for predicted grades of 4 x A*
His 'safety' choice has a typical offer of AAA / AABB.

I think it's reasonable to put one or two that are slightly below the grades they're likely to get, but don't be too cautious. It's still a low birth rate year, and most courses at most universities were undersubscribed this year.

numbers encouraging DD to look at other options, even took her to the local college open day... But no, she has decided to do an EPQ over the summer holidays along with revision instead....

Realise it is only day 1 of the summer holidays for DD, but she has spent most of day in bed and not done any revision...

She does not want any help from me......

Sandwiches as per the post earlier I do think the focus needs to be on just basic daily routine - going to bed at a set time and waking up at a set time, some Nourishing food, a little bit of fresh air outside the house even if it is the garden. Vitamin d deficiency can cause mental health issues too and if you can get a vita d spray (can get from amazon), you could add this to her drink. Also having a shower once a day and maybe spraying something that smells nice will make her feel good about herself. These are Simple things but can help.

I try sunburnt but she likes to be independent and mostly pushes me and DH away. She can go a couple of weeks without taking her vitamin d tablets which if course doesn't help but when I try to talk to her about it, I'm 'having a go'. In fairness though, she has been much better at taking the vitamins more regularly, hopefully is feeling the benefit of taking them.
Talked to her about bedtime routine, you can guess how that went...

Thanks for the tip about vit d spray, I'll look into that

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48711619
I hope this link about travel costs works.Snozzle will relate to this.

Definitely can relate.
We've done four open days in the last five weeks. We've driven to all as train cost would have been huge. We've had to stay overnight for two of them - cheap travelodge had to suffice.
Because of our postcode Dd gets a bit of help from Next Steps South West - but this has been a £40 MasterCard. Obviously every little helps but we've spent a lot more than that!
Dd isn't keen on applying for any unis she hasn't visited so we've made the effort and thankfully can afford to do so. But I bet there are lots of families where this just isn't possible.

Well it turned out very expensive for us, but only because the car broke down on the way to Warwick, was not fixable and we had to but a new car.

Lots of the individual unis have funds to pay travel costs to uni for open days. I wish they publicised this more.

Not been to any Open Days with DD.... but did this news item. Sister in law (plus her DH and other DS) took her son to two Unis on South Coast and all of them stayed over...

I arranged last minute work experience for DD at local school, typically not heard anything about her day but she is going again tomorrow

DD has been to 3 open days. The first cost £102 for a day return just for her. The second stretched the entire length of the country, so the train fare & hotel rooms alone cost over £200. As discussed on other threads, DH & DD paid for an Advance First ticket, as at least they had food & space. Another day return cost DD and I £72 for a 60 mile trip. We have another overnight trip planned for September which will cost around £400. We would never qualify for support, but that is still a lot of money.

That's a small, but positive step Sandwich.

We have every railcard going. Disabled, young persons, family and friends, two together. We rely on rail travel a lot and it works out much cheaper.

The £102 was with a YP railcard. She had to leave before discounts kicked in. Painful! It would have been cheaper to drive, but we had other commitments.

Wow that is a lot of expensive numbers and yes positive step... Hoping if I back off, she will tell me eventually what she did for her work experience.

I've found out open day dates of uni's within 2 hour car distance from us, but DD doesn't seem bothered. Only that criteria because DD hasn't looked into anything and I'm not taking her miles away if she isn't interested

I think it is quite a good idea if you can do it to travel by train. My DS will have to do the journey a lot and it’s important to give it a trial run in my view.