Corona Cohort: Statements Scripted, Grades Predicted

[Monkey2001]

This is a thread for supporting all young people post GCSEs 2020, regardless of their educational setting. It is respectfully requested that all are supportive and helpful to each other. If you want to start a debate, e.g state vs private, please don't within this thread. Please also be sensitive when responding to threads about grades.

Some of us have been here since first thread back in yr10, some will be new. Everyone has been friendly and helpful in the past. Everyone is welcome. It is hoped this will continue.

From OrangeCinnamonCocktail:

Our DS/DD may go down various paths (such as employment, apprenticeships, higher ed) We have decided for anyone interested they will most likely find us within the Further Ed board.

Previous thread - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/further_education/4339233-Thread-19-Corona-Cohort-Enrolling-on-Year-13-hopefully-NOT-unlucky-for-some?pg=1

DS has made a very rough start on his PS but its a long way off being ready. He's got a coursework deadline next week so hopefully after that as school want it in for checking by half term. This is where I'm finding it harder with him boarding now, normally we'd be able to bounce ideas back and forwards / have me check drafts over the course of a week or so but with him only being at home at weekends, which are full of work, hockey, football and now open days its hard finding time.

DD says the first of her classmates has an offer from Nottingham! It's definitely real now...

Wow! That was ultra quick!

DS has resubmitted his form after working out how to add the CiDA tinpot IT qualification!

Hopefully, it will be sent off soon.

He has assessments this week so has been working like a Trojan.

Obviously the universities must know that the people sending their ucas stuff in now are likely to be applying for oxbridge too.

UCAS form submitted to school last night after manipulating his PS to get it down to 3999 characters. I guess we just wait now....I don't remember the process being so stressful in the 80's. I'm guessing the UCCA and PCAS forms were hand written and sent off in the post 😂

@icanbewhatiwant I asked DS’s school about this - they said (1) some schools get the whole year to do their UCAS stuff now so they get it over and done with (rather than running parallel Oxbridge / non-Oxbridge processes and (2) universities will assume top candidates have applied to Oxbridge.

DS got an email from Durham to confirm receipt of his application - it was clearly an automated email that every applicant gets but it didn’t stop me re-reading it again and again to see if I could glean any insight into what they think of his form. Sigh. It’s going to be a long few months.

Been ages since I've been on the thread - hope everyone is okay.

We've had the cold from hell, that lasted weeks but not Covid.

DD working on PS with aim to get it in by half term. Read version 3 last night, and she will sit down with Biology teacher to go through it. Very stressful process, and I'd love it to be submitted asap. She's desperate to get an offer from Southampton.

DD also doing exams this week, which have been, ahem, mixed so far. Hoping they've gone a bit better than she thinks as she does tend to think the worst.

I'm a bit shocked that Liverpool don't seem to be doing in person open days, and that Southampton only have one this Saturday which we didn't get into. Hope they put more on!

We had to handwrite our PS in a box on the UCCA form, but I don't remember worrying about drafts. All much more formal these days!

Offers already?! @SandyBayley brace yourself for the medicine wait, lots were into April last year, which feels ages way. At least Oxford will come in early on a known date.

Ooh it's actually happening! Who will be first on the thread to get an offer??
DS has tests this week in both subjects that he wants his predicted grades to go up - but he's hardly doing any work, very eye rolly when I suggest it. Driving me bonkers.
Me: if you don't revise, you won't do well enough for them to put your grades up. If they don't put your grades up you won't get any offers. So why aren't you working?
DS: dunno

I don't remember anything resembling a PS on the UCCA form and PCAS hadn't been invented when I applied, you just filled in the Poly's own forms, I seem to remember they came in the prospectuses. It all seems very quaint now.

Oh dear @singingstones. Dd has history today, the exam she cried in before the summer, didn’t write much and just scraped a C. Bizarrely they’ve given her an A prediction based on what they think she’s capable of and she’ll only need a B for OT. But she’s putting herself under pressure to get at least a B and justify their prediction

I've been wondering about offers v final grades. If predicted grades are higher then the 'standard offer grades', and DD gets an offer based on predicted grades, but her actual grades are lower but still meet the standard offer grades will her offer stand, or does she have to meet her predicted grades?

Hope that makes sense. I think school a bit over optimistic on Chemistry and think it may be lower, but still what she needs for typical offer.

sorry if that's rambling...probably just finding new things to worry about!

Someone told me yesterday that the predicted grades are around 40% inflated and I looked at DS' and thought, right you are, if so he would just scrape into his 'insurance' choice.

Wheres she has to meet the conditions of the offer, so if she's predicted AAA and the standard offer is AAB and they offer her ABB, she needs ABB. Predicted grades and standard offer become irrelevant when the actual offer comes in.

I remember doing PS for UCCA and PCAS. I think a teacher looked at a draft, but it was just basically a handwritten CV. I'm sure they were much more interested in hobbies/achievements etc rather than anything academic. I don't remember writing anything about why I wanted to study geography!! I know there was a choir at school known as the UCCA choir - didn't need any musical ability, existed just for those with nothing else to put in their applications!!

DD doesn't have any actual exams until mocks after Feb half-term. Lots of unit tests and timed essays, but not whole exams. Not sure if that is good or bad.

@singingstones

Wheres she has to meet the conditions of the offer, so if she's predicted AAA and the standard offer is AAB and they offer her ABB, she needs ABB. Predicted grades and standard offer become irrelevant when the actual offer comes in.

Thank you - so they don't adjust offers 'up' if the predictions are higher than the standard offer.

I don't think so Wheres but they do give a range of offers as you can see on discoveruni. (Or at least let people with a range of grades in.) Apart from contextual I have no clue how those decisions are made I'm afraid.

No, the offer will not be based on predicted grades. There is a really annoying thing for medicine that at some places they score your predictions, but then don't expect you to get them. So for an interview at Exeter you have to be predicted 3xA*, but the offer is AAA. Many schools, like ours, will increase the predictions on request if not ridiculous for people who need good predictions. The Exeter approach (for medicine) is unfair on those from less flexible schools.

Thanks @singingstones I'll take a look!

@Monkey2001 - that sounds bonkers? Doesn't it mean that schools will inflate grades to get offers?

@Wheresthebeach the school policy is officially "aspirational but achievable", but DS's Physics teacher said that if anyone needed higher grades they could ask and agree to come to some after school sessions for an uplift. Another friend at a local school was asked last year what predictions she wanted and was given them - I think they also just approved them if not ridiculous.

Predicted grades will thankfully be a thing of the past soon. Our DS school won't inflate the grades, so very annoying when you know other colleges do massively over predict. I do think my DS doing GCSE's needs to work very hard as they are going to be very important when they drop predicted grades.

Aspirational but achievable is what our school says as well. I can see the argument for an overhaul where actual grades are used (although I recognise that’s a nightmare)

Ds did mocks before the summer holidays. Those grades are going on his ucas forms. Isn't that how other schools do it?

icanbe, DD got ACD in the summer exams (the C was one mark off a B), but was given BCD on her report, and has now been told that the B has turned into an A for predictions (she hasn’t been told the others but seems to think ABB overall, due to NEAs and content being cut).

No parents evenings this term and no more exams until January mocks.