Year 13 2023/2024 - General support thread

[Rollergirl11]

It’s now the time for our young adults to sit their final year at sixth form/college. Everyone is welcome!

DD actually started her EPQ in mid October and had to submit it before the end of March, so I guess it's perfectly possible timewise to do an EPQ starting from now.

However, that was in Year 12 when she was less stressed and it does depend on things like NEAs (DD has 4; no way would she want to do an EPQ on top of them this year).

But entering a student that doesn't want to do one is madness! It's at this point I'm happy about DD's non-pushy school (though annoyed in other ways; she still has no predicted grades for instance ...)

Yes I think it's possible for DD still to do it, one of the issues last year was she took 2 jobs and worked basically full time as well as her A levels and it was too much though she saved a lot, gained great experience, made friends, paid for 2 holidays abroad and saved 10k or so plus bought the entire contents of Vinted but epq went west. But the main thing last year was for her to get through it ok, she had a Mum with cancer and a brother who was an inpatient and pretty much in a coma with the wrong drug they gave him day 1 to cope with so it was whatever helps get her through. And she managed amazingly.

That all sounds really tough @Silkierabbit Your DD must be incredibly resilient. Hat off to her! 👏

@mushroom3 Ds also submitted for maths at Manchester and likely to be his favourite (assuming Cambridge does happen)

Wow @Silkierabbit. Hope things are better now for all of you.

Thanks Moonlion DD, DH and I things are much better for now with my cancer treatment over and DS out of hospital since April and back swimming, going on holiday etc. DS things are still very difficult for and he's too afraid to leave home still after what happened and still mute and not writing but he can eat ok, walk and see now and he just games a lot. We have nearly done kitchen renovation now tiles in today.

I just have 10 years Tamoxifen and reconstruction op to go with the cancer treatment but huge wait on that, may be 2025 which is crazy as original op was Dec 21 to remove cancer. But its state of NHS atm. But the tough parts of treatment like chemo are done though the op is 3 to 4 months recovery, week in hospital and second op after but at least its just cosmetic.

How exciting seeing the offers flow in! DS has been unwell with a stomach bug for just over a week, went back to school on Wednesday. Was worried about missing lessons at this stage & is behind with personal statement although his school have been focussing on the Oxbridge lot so he has a bit of time, but we would all like to just get it done.

@Silkierabbit your DD (&you) have done brilliantly, what a challenging time. So sorry to see that your DS is still struggling

We're off to the Nottingham Uni open day today. Think DS may not like that the Business School is on a separate campus but we'll see. May also be put off by the fact that I travel there for work most weeks but in reality our paths wouldn't cross.

Have a good weekend all!

We’re on our way home from Liverpool. I pressed him for a ranking of the 4 we’ve seen, Edinburgh still to go.

Currently it’s:
St Andrews
Liverpool
Leeds
Manchester

The course at Liverpool has changed a bit since we first looked. A lot less in the area that he is interested, to the point of really just coming up a week or two in broader modules. That said, the history talk
was very good and they do have so much on offer.

What's the Liverpool campus like @StColumbofNavron?

DD has applied but we decided against the open day as it's a bit of a pain for us to get to.

We've also just come back from Liverpool . Nice campus . Found it very unpretentious. Staff and student polite and willing to answer questions. Very close to city centre.
I did speak to admissions about a couple of questions we had . Apparently they view every single application manually.

Computer science had over 3000 applications last year. I think course space was around 250?
Wanted to ask why they were in clearing in aug then but didn't want to send impolite.
Didn't get chance to look at accommodation but I think at glance it's quite pricey compared to other northern uni's .

We didn’t explore too much since he is only about the course really, so we were done by 11! However, from what I saw it was decent and pretty nice. It’s got a road through it and there is a north and south side as far as I could tell. He was surprised when I called it a campus as he interpreted our walkabout as it being spread about, but it is just not as clearly obvious as I think Leeds was for him.

He was taken by how radical it seemed, every other lamp post about socialist meetings etc. I thought it was cool, he was more amused.

Leeds had been his favourite until St A and the second until Liverpool, I would say that though he is sensible and wouldn’t decide on this basis being an ardent Liverpool supporter has definitely clouded it between Liverpool and Leeds.

It will make a decent insurance for him.

Did you manage to view the accommodation? If so , what did you think ?

No, afraid not. He never does because he reasons he can state a preference but might not get it why bother. I mean, he literally is all course and he doesn’t attend anything other than the history talk, sometimes I can convince him to the history drop in if there is one.

In short, we know nothing but what the websites tell us and anecdote on here and the Facebook group about accommodation.

@sambamyty hope you don't mind me jumping in but we viewed some accommodation & it was decent. I don't think there is any catered accommodation, at least not on campus. DS liked that some of the halls were individual houses with flats - purpose built around a courtyard. A lot of the halls are in the student village which is a 15 minute bus ride near Sefton Park, but we didn't have time to visit that - we attended an open day in September.

@legosunqueen thank you .

I'll take a look at Sefton park accommodation online. We've only been to Lancaster and Liverpool so far and I thought Lancaster's accommodation was very reasonable ( and lovely ) but i suppose you can't really compare cost in a city campus to a village type one.

Thanks for all the Liverpool info - that is interesting about comp sci being in clearing when it was so oversubscribed. Then again I wonder how many offers they make.

My theory is those ( as mentioned in this thread ) use it an insurance choice . Once firmed with the likes of man uni , Bristol , Warwick etc space then become free in clearing ? Could be completely wrong.

Dd friend was rejected from Lancaster this aug and was offered Liverpool during clearing.

I think you're right, maybe only a relatively small number of those applying will firm or insure Liverpool and of those, maybe more will insure than firm? (But I don't know about comp sci and how well-regarded and desirable their course is, so might be completely wrong.)

So pleased that DS2's application is finally in, albeit with one choice missing.

@sambamyty what did you think of Lancaster? It’s the only uni we didn’t manage to make the open day and it’s potentially likely to be DD’s insurance. Am I right in thinking it’s collegiate?

Loved it . It's such a great campus . Like a small village. Accommodation is good and very affordable too.
We were actually weighing up the pros and cons between Liverpool and Lancaster last night .
The only two positives we could find over Liverpool is it has the RG name and it's close to the city for social life etc .
Lancaster is ranked higher for cs too.

@Revengeofthepangolins well done DS. It is a weight off isn’t it? DD needs to do her ‘My Cambridge Application’ today but she’s already decided that she isn’t going to submit a further PS. She’s happy with what she’s said on her main one.

DD has just sent in her final EPQ on Friday. The college are submitting in December and she will get her grade in February. Otherwise the next submission date is April and you get your result alongside your A levels in the summer. At least this way if she gets her A in EPQ and receives some reduced offers I try will take the pressure off for the exams a little bit.

In other news there seems to be a flurry of 18th parties on the horizon. DD and her boyfriend got dressed up to go to a black tie themed party last night. It was lovely to see them looking so grown up and sophisticated. There’s another one next weekend and then DD is hosting a Halloween party in 2 weeks.

Can’t believe it’s half term next week. The school year is racing by as always. In November DD has her mocks and so does DS in Year 11 so feel like this is the calm before the storm! 😬

@sambamyty thanks for that. If DD gets an offer we will make sure we go to an offer holder day. So the accommodation is all on campus?