Thread 38 Covid Cohort, After Results Day

[CinnamonOrangeCremeBrulee]

ALL our children are heroes of their own stories, they have thrived through a once in a century catastrophe and they will succeed

This is a support thread for our young adults post GCSEs 2020, regardless of their educational setting, and their results (life updates for those who went into work or have had results earlier). 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. It's all relative!

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 continue down various pathways ( employment, apprenticeships, higher ed) We have decided for anyone interested they will find a thread within the Further Ed board.Possibly a move to Parent of Adult Children Board in future? Post Sept?

Previous thread

www.mumsnet.com/talk/further_education/4613457-thread-37-covid-cohort-2020-results-thread-heroes-of-their-own-stories

@whoamitojudge hello again I was in my first few weeks on here when your daughter got her job and was starting the training. Sorry to here she had to quit but glad she has a plan x

I was only thinking about your girl the other day, whoamitojudge and wondering how she was doing.
Im so sorry she’s had to give up her cabin crew role - she sounded like she was made for it and loving life.
I hope she can bounce back.

Fruitygal, we’ve just bought DS a reconditioned 2020 MacBook Air from the Apple site; he was advised to get a chrome book for his new school, but he’s doing music tech and they don’t support the music software, so the teacher suggested either a standard laptop or the Air.

We found it for £849 delivered, 12 month warranty, and you honestly wouldn’t know it wasn’t brand new - it came in a new sealed box, not a mark on it.

Well done to ds1, Piggy. Hope he’s learnt a lesson from the stress!!

Did your DS2 get Tennis Courts in the end? DD has got Elgar Court and is already in a group chat with 2 other girls in her flat.

Welcome back @whoamitojudge , glad your daughter seems to be moving on after the circumstances , those airlines sound great !

DS picked Aitken also. We heard the rooms ard nice, and they have a sink which is a bonus. He's happy. How did she organise a group chat? All we know, at point of booking is that there were two females and him in the flat.

Ds already has a MacBook (another one who needs it for music tech) so the DSA assessor didn’t recommend any computer equipment, just some software

Hi All. DD did really well and got her first choice at University of York. I'd covered the first half of her list in Ikea a few weeks back. Went to The Range and Dunelm today and have now got everything we think she needs :)

@whoamitojudge hi, welcome back, you were still on the spreadsheet until very recently. I'm sorry things haven't worked out for your DD at Ryanair, I hope she's ok. She did so well, hope another airline will snap her up.

Laptop v Mac for DSA - DS did his entire 6th form studies on an Ipad with magic keyboard (no specialist software, everything cloud based in the school systems). He uses it a lot for leisure too. We are a mainly Apple family but DH and I use Windows PCs for work. The DSA assessor said some of the software she was recommending was Windows only so recommended a Windows laptop, which arrived last week (there was a 10 day lead time). DS will use Google Drive for cloud storage and transfer and will probably just keep a separate set of passwords for each gadget.

@whoamitojudge hello, nice to hear from you again, I was thinking about her when airlines were talking about staff shortages resulting in cancelled flights. Sorry to hear it didn't work out at Ryan Air, I am sure the other ones will be nicer to their staff!

Thanks for the birthday wishes for DS.

@whoamitojudge Sorry she's faced a change of direction but clearly someone else snapped her up. I hope she continues to pursue her dream when she can.

Found the new thread and everything is moving so fast I can’t keep up.

Our update is DD has got Aitken accommodation at Birmingham.

Has everyone at Birmingham got their accommodation now? Do we need to pay for it in full? When do they get their first student loan payment?

You can pay in full or set up a direct debit. Not done it yet...

Just checking back in with a namechange - an old favourite. I am quite confused about the chain of events now - when do we expect the student loans?

whoami glad to see you again. We were all thinking of you recently. Sorry to hear of issues, glad to hear of plans.

@Fruitygal @Oblomov22 @Alsoplayspiccolo @CinnamonOrangeCremeBrulee @EquallyDivided @Monkey2001 @EwwSprouts
Thank you all so much, it was a very traumatic time but she’s happier now, still working at the airport and hoping to go back one day

DH went to Trent and he's as square as they come! He also earns double what I do and did well out of it.

Just seen someone mention Leicester so I'm jumping in to mention (because we only found out about it as freshers from one of the random second years who came in to chat to us in the department) that Highcross do a student lock-in session after hours one night near the start of term where the shops stay open with some really nice discounts on offer for students of both the unis. Wasn't well publicized to us when we started so I thought I'd mention it.

Other trick I found by chance that might work for getting a march on others buying second hand textbooks... if you know the module codes of the first year modules, search them on the uni library website - I got our reading lists early that way and managed to raid through the Amazon second hand sellers and picked up a load of them for like a couple of pounds here and there.

I also subscribed to perlego which had a fair few of my course texts available for the duration of the course -it's worth checking as some topics are better covered on there than others though.

DH also a NTU graduate & his best mate’s wife. Both successful & enjoyed their time there. I met DH at home before his final year & visited him regularly in Nottingham. Great city.

Tuition fees loan goes straight to the uni, you never see it. Maintenance loan is paid in three chunks; end of September, January, April. Details of the amounts and dates should be in DC's account with Student Finance. (That's for England, other parts of the UK are different!)

Uni accommodation fees are normally timed to come out a week or so after the loans have gone in.

Thanks for the tip @CoffeeWithCheese

I followed your advice and have ordered the core textbooks that aren't available online through the library - eyewateringly expensive, even when available second hand 😱

Dd hasn’t got an email about accommodation induction yet Nottingham folk - but maybe the catered halls do it differently? She’s signed up for a Christian Union getaway from the 19th-21st Sept though so hopefully she’ll have made some new friends before she even gets to uni!

Oh that's a good idea crazy, how did she find out about that?

I think she followed the NUCU Facebook page @singingstones

@crazycrofter DS has an email from Notts accomodation saying he booked it months ago and doesn't need to do anything. They will be in touch soon. It went into his Spam yesterday. He also had something from the Students Union.

Thank you @CoffeeWithCheese it’s my DS going to Leicester.
That’s really good to know, I will tell him to look out for the date