Thread 30 Covid Cohort, Mad March Hareing Towards Exams

[OrangeCinnamonCroissant]

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.

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 29

I've made this one a little bit earlier as things are so busy, at home and on thread, so please feel free to use up previous thread first

So would I!! @22Newnames - no info from exdh or DS so far...

Typical men!! @ChristopherTracy

I'm another one keeping my fingers crossed @Monkey. As I've said before my nephew took a couple of years to get in with similar A levels as he originally wanted to do Maths. He ended up working as a Heath Care assistant during his Gap year which is really good experience. Before that he had no idea about doing Medicine even though my sister's a doctor. He's qualifying this year from Manchester.

@Sazzy well done. Is it a Medicine offer?
@Hatti Bristol are a law unto themselves. DD got her first offer in April, but the following year I think it was earlier. The first year she was reduced to tears by her interviewer & came out totally traumatised, as they were still following the old ways.

Glad to her about offers and sorry about the rejections.

Medicine applications sound absolutely brutal. It's no wonder under represented groups remain under represented!

@22Newnames Feedback is that 'the engineering building is bigger than a secondary school on its own', that DS likes the 50 3D printers, the size of the university much bigger than expected, and 'the facilities are massive'.

I'm sure that's the sort of incisive commentary you were holding out for. They are now in the City Centre 'Spoons so more updates when I have them.

@Monkey2001 Sorry to hear about Manchester & fingers crossed for Newcastle. Am I right in thinking that your Ds A Level subjects constrained where he could apply? Apologies if you already know this but I know Bradford run a foundation course in clinical sciences which enables students to transfer to medical degrees. Would this be of any interest?

We had a positive day and dd is now decided on Nottingham. We looked at Raleigh Park self-catered and Rutland Hall (catered on campus). Dd is undecided about that, but we thought the catered is really good value - sampled the food at lunch and it was tasty and plentiful! The campus is huge and lovely - although I wasn’t impressed by the academic buildings but! I think Birmingham is still my favourite campus so far!

@heifer sorry to hear about the rest break situation. My dd definitely wouldn’t want to put her hand up and walk out in front of people.

@Volterra it’s a shame when they don’t get on with the medication. I hope your dd can salvage her final year one way or another.

Congrats @sazzy5 and @DoggerelBank.

@Monkey2001 Will keep everything crossed for some good news from Newcastle soon.

Stress levels seem very high in DD at the moment. Very worried about 'letting everyone down' and 'being a disappointment' if she doesn't get her predicted grades. We're saying all the things you'd imagine but it's not getting through...

Thank you Crazycrofter

@Volterra. I hope it all turns out okay, retaking the year may be a good idea although I can imagine it seems daunting

Thanks for all the good wishes. The medical schools have halved their offer numbers this year, so it is more possible than usual that DS's waiting list place will turn into an offer, so great to have the force of this thread behind him!

@Decorhate, yes, he did the wrong subjects (no Chem or biology) so was very limited in where he could apply. Thanks for the suggestion, but the Bradford course is for widening participation applicants, so he wouldn't qualify, but he will do Chemistry next year if he doesn't get in this year, so that will open up about 15 options.

At least he is not letting the rejections get in the way of his mocks, he was pleased with the PE mark he good back and the others have all gone pretty well. I agree that the real exams are going to feel overwhelming though as they have been very limited for the mocks and his school only has one set. Physics particularly poor with 1.5 hour paper when the papers in the real think total 6 hours. Maths teacher (GF's mum) had Covid recently and is now worried about whether they will get to the end of the syllabus, there will be no time for consolidation. ☹️

Glad to hear of successful offer holder days, exciting times!

@Monkey2001 If the Bradford course is for widening participation they don’t make that clear anywhere on their website, they only talk about students without Science A Levels - and they accept international applications. Dd had a classmate who came through that route & I don’t believe he would have come under that category.

@Monkey2001 @Cantonet it isn’t medicine but it’s sport and exercise medical science. He still has to get 3 A’s though, which I’m a bit worried about. I think he will be getting A*, A, B. But for now he’s happy to have one offer in a Uni he wants to go to. Everything crossed for DS monkey.

@Decorhate it may be that only WP can use it for medicine. This is from website

Actually, just seen what you mean, at Sheffield it is just WP, but others may not be.

Keeping everything crossed for your DS, Monkey. The waiting list odds sound encouraging, at least, and hopefully Newcastle will snatch him up.

DD was finally rejected from KCL today. No real surprise there as her predictions were a grade lower than required, and not a huge disappointment as it was very much her 4th choice.

My anxiety about exams is sky high; I honestly have no confidence that she’ll make her predictions or even a grade below. I know I shouldn’t compare, but it’s hard not to panic when I read about the other DCs here getting their predicted grades and above in mocks - DD has only met her predicted in one subject, once, and not at all in her other subjects (including her degree subject).
It’s not as simple as just getting stuck into revision for DD; she’s really struggling to overcome her particular learning difficulties to meet the standard of writing and organisation of thought needed (if I say that she can’t even remember to use capital letters or paragraphs…you get the picture).
With GCSEs, I was able to sit with her and help, but I’m way out of my depth now.
When I ask her how it’s going, she’s either in the depths of despair, completely overwhelmed, or thinks it’s all going fine, when actually, she’s disappeared down a rabbit hole and lost sight of what’s important.

I feel physically sick and panicky when I think about results day.

Congratulations on the offers and commiserations to those who've had disappointing news.

Sorry to hear things are so tough @Alsoplayspiccolo - it's so hard to know how to help them. Would DC accept your help in breaking each subject down into more manageable chunks for revision purposes? Hang in there!

We are still waiting on Warwick. I'm getting a bit anxious now as it's been so long since DD applied, and she's had offers from her other choices.

@Monkey2001 rooting for your DS to get an offer. Fingers crossed.

@Volterra DD took Equasym for about 8-9 months it was great for focus but the side effects were awful which worsened over time so she decided to stop taking them. She didn’t want to try anything else as she wanted to feel like her old self again. I hope it works out for your DD.

Congrats on the latest offers and commiserations @Alsoplayspiccolo. I feel your pain about exams. DD could go either way with hers and following last weeks mock disaster who knows. Her teachers have sat and gone through it with her and have said she can do another timed mock next term. She has yet to meet her predicted grades in any exam so far in sixth form and she hasn’t got the latest results yet but not looking positive.

DSA assessment booked for Monday online. Anyone had one yet?

@Alsoplayspiccolo really feeling for you. Can she or you speak to school/Head of 6th form/tutor to get some advice re revision/techniques and how to stop everything feeling overwhelming? With only a couple of weeks to go before the end of term, this could a chance to get some help before Easter.

Also, I know easier said than done, but try not to worry about other DC's mock results. I think there'll be a fair few of us on here that haven't got perfect results and not had great exam practice either.

I can't remember which uni is your DD's preferred choice, but is there a chance they'd accept a dropped grade if that happened?

Sorry you’re feeling stressed @Alsoplayspiccolo. I totally understand. Ds did another English language mock today and didn’t even get halfway through the paper because he couldn’t concentrate?! 😬 I’m mainly just worrying about English though and in the scheme of things, GCSEs are less important. But it will work out one way or another even if she doesn’t get the grades; sometimes a redirection works out for the best.

@Alsoplayspiccolo

Keeping everything crossed for your DS, Monkey. The waiting list odds sound encouraging, at least, and hopefully Newcastle will snatch him up.

DD was finally rejected from KCL today. No real surprise there as her predictions were a grade lower than required, and not a huge disappointment as it was very much her 4th choice.

My anxiety about exams is sky high; I honestly have no confidence that she’ll make her predictions or even a grade below. I know I shouldn’t compare, but it’s hard not to panic when I read about the other DCs here getting their predicted grades and above in mocks - DD has only met her predicted in one subject, once, and not at all in her other subjects (including her degree subject).
It’s not as simple as just getting stuck into revision for DD; she’s really struggling to overcome her particular learning difficulties to meet the standard of writing and organisation of thought needed (if I say that she can’t even remember to use capital letters or paragraphs…you get the picture).
With GCSEs, I was able to sit with her and help, but I’m way out of my depth now.
When I ask her how it’s going, she’s either in the depths of despair, completely overwhelmed, or thinks it’s all going fine, when actually, she’s disappeared down a rabbit hole and lost sight of what’s important.

I feel physically sick and panicky when I think about results day.

I’m totally the same @Alsoplayspiccolo. DS has only got one of his predicted grades once in the last 2 years. I can’t imagine that he is going to pull them out of the bag now- not through lack of trying but because of his processing LDs. If he was doing the exams orally he would be fine - he knows it. I just hope that because these exams will be such carnage for such a lot of this covid generation that unis will take dropped grades. Scary.

Sorry to hear of the stressed DC. One of the things to be very aware of is the grade boundaries they are using, I hate the way schools use "motivational" grade boundaries, but I have downloaded past boundaries and we do a reality check. DS's school often say 80% for A and 90% for A* for maths, which is ridiculous!

You have at last heard from KCL also. That's been a long old haul.

Sorry to hear so much stress is around.

My students only get one exam at a time too. It's pressure on timetabling and rooming and not wanting to pay invigilators. All our year 10 and 12 exams are being done in classrooms in lesson time in June. It's crap.

Our only set of Y13 mocks are being done in classrooms in lesson times too. Luckily DS's old school did mocks in exam halls, I think some of them will have their first exam hall experience ever for their A levels!

@ChristopherTracy. Thanks for that, I didn’t realise it was so big.