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!

Merry Christmas everyone. A rare day off for DS today - home at 1am after a long shift at the restaurant & he is working again tomorrow. So a late lunch but a lovely day. Wishing you all a happy new year - I'm sure 2024 will fly by for our young people (& us)...lots to look forward to!

DS got back 11pm last night. But he’s not back in til Wednesday and then working every day until back at college £££££!

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope everyone is having a peaceful time.

@Silkierabbit I have often wondered what your cat looked like and the photos do not disappoint 😁

Happy Christmas to all! 🎄🎅

DD has all her offers in - 4/4 with one offering a lower grade if she firms, but that’s probably the one she will insure. She wants to fill the fifth slot in the next month but still no clue as to what with! Seems a bit pointless to me but not my application.

Merry Christmas hope everyone is having an enjoyable time.

DS still hasn't chosen which unis to put down to fill his last two slots on the form. Sigh. He also should be doing (or at least planning to do) some BMO2 prep but he seems to be trying to ignore that as well. Hey ho.

I was thinking the other day that in six months A levels will be all done which feels very scary. Haven't officially had his exam timetable yet but I think he may have a clash which is a bit alarming. I'm sure his sixth form will know what to do if I am right, it must happen all the time.

Love the Floof pictures, so cute and fluffy!

Revision in full swing here. Mocks in just over a week. Lovely Christmas here, if quiet. Art applications start next term when it all becomes a lot more real.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. My son has mocks when he gets back and is not as prepared as he would like as he is finding it hard to get much revision momentum. We are going to treat them as a diagnostic tool - there is plenty of time to turn it round if necessary and I am only relieved he didn’t have to sit them before Christmas alongside interviews and admission tests.

It was a lovely ego boost to get the UCL offer just before Christmas, but he has decided he wants to move out of London which is fair enough. It is Durham he really wants, particularly now when he is not expecting good news on the 24th. Exeter won’t be the end of the world though either.

My DS also has his mocks when he’s back in school next week
I really hope it is true @Jaxx that there is enough time to turn it around if necessary as my DS is barely doing a scrap of revision. I was hoping the UCL offer would incentivise him.
Anyway hope you all had a great Christmas and wishing everyone the best for 2024!

@spacechimp79 I hope so 🙏🏻.

I said earlier today that the worse case scenario will be he does really well in the exams given how little revision he has done.

He has 5 full days now before they start, two exams on the 4th and then another 4 days until the rest of them. Maths is my biggest concern - he has done the work asked of him but no extra and there don’t seem to have been as many unit tests last term (or he just hasn’t told me).

What will be will be as ever.

Not that I am in any way saying not revising for mocks is a good idea but I can’t remember DS particularly revising for mocks or how he did but A Level results were very good. He did do some more intensive revising for actual exams though…

(DD is rather different but the two of them are. Could well come out with the same results tbh)

DS also revising for mocks. He's being consistent but no more than 2 hours a day. We'll see if that's enough to get him the results he wants. If not then there's room for him to extend his studying when it comes to the real thing.

Whilst his gcse results were great, he got more 9s in his mocks and I think peaked too early so I'm laying off the pressure a bit at the moment so I have that in reserve if needed for the a-levels proper.

Good luck to all your kids with Mock A Levels. I’m glad that isn’t happening here. Getting him to focus on his final assignments is hard enough !!

I'm told mocks not until February (I think DS may be lying) - needs to get his personal study for photography finished by end of January and the small matter of his personal statement for the UCAS form (college deadline was beginning of November so he's running a bit behind - I'm hoping the college can turn around their side of things fairly promptly). The end of term summary on grades suggests he's slipped 2 on everything so not as clear that he'll get an offer on the only course he wants to apply for..... But he knows all this, there's no point me in me saying anything, suggesting he should do some work etc - I'm going to be happy if he even thinks about university now that most of this mates aren't.

Not a huge amount of revision been done here so far as we were away for Christmas. DS has got his head in a book currently though and doesn't go back to school until Thursday, then there's a couple of weeks before the exams begin. I'm hoping he will do well enough not to be discouraged but not so well that he gets complacent if that makes sense!
Getting a couple of unexpectedly low offers is a bit of a 2 edged sword. He's said a couple of times "I mean I'd have to do massively worse than expected not to get those grades" leading me to point out that whilst that is true, it could still happen! There's still time to improve poorer grades but that means there's also still time to drop good ones if you take your eye off the ball. So slightly suboptimal mocks marks might actually be a good thing in a way, just to keep him focused.

Thanks Stony and Ithink

Mocks here are very start of Feb which is better for now.

DH has been to Paris to see his Mum, brother, SIL and niece. We had a lovely day out seeing the seals and seal pups on the beach at Horsey on Boxing Day. DD has met up with friends and now doing a bit of studying.

My daughter said no trips last Christmas and she did spend time revising, and also I believe her first draft of history coursework was due in January. But she now says she didn't revise nearly as much as she could have, and nothing like what she did for her actual A levels. Her mocks were in February, though she had a four day stay in hospital in the middle (which led to her MS diagnosis in April). Other than Psychology her teachers weren't particularly encouraging, but she persevered and got the results when it really counted.
Good luck to those facing them soon!

Mocks next week here, no school til then. I know much less about what ds is doing than most of you! (Asking is not popular) He's in his room, says he's working, but I suspect mostly from bed. In the meantime I'm trying to make summer plans, but need to leave room for him to make his own ones. Tricky! He's an only so everything's really revolving around his timetable over the next 6 months.

Happy New Year everyone!

My two have got the rest of this week off and don’t go back until the 8th. They both have second round of mocks in Feb so thankfully these holidays have been a break from any work/revision.

Feel like I want to fast forward the next six months and skip to the summer holidays. Have both GCSE’s and A levels this year and seriously not looking forward to it! DD wasn’t in a great place mentally when she did her GCSE’s 2 years ago (anxiety sky high and fell out with her friendship group leaving her with no friends) and needed a lot of support from me and school. She’s much better now so hoping it will be more smooth sailing. But DS has ADHD and needs full on support from both DH and I when it comes to managing his revision for his GCSE’s so think it will be a bit manic. 🥴🥹

We're in the same boat @aramox1, I darent book anything too expensive. I'm thinking the first two weeks of September should be safe to go away and I'm beside myself with excitement that we'll never have to go on holiday during the school hols again. Will save a fortune!

Ds has a small room so prefers to study downstairs- at least I have a good idea of the work he's putting in although he seems distracted by his phone a lot.

Happy New Year everyone.

Interesting about the Imperial course Light and Not will have a look at that. DDs best friend has Imperial as their first choice though its another very competitive one and what we ideally need is a less competitive one which she is happy with.

I also wondered about FM A level in a year out Jax rather than Economics - its something DD needs to think about but has a strong preference for Economics. At the moment I think we wait until 9th January and see what that brings.

Yes summer holidays is difficult to plan and I have the last time to use internal Borneo flights (from 2020) then so have rebooked them as they are free but trying to work out who will go is challenging and flights out will only rise in price. Though 9th Jan will bring some clarity.

We can't make holiday plans yet as waiting for Oxford and if DS is unsuccessful his firm is likely to be Edinburgh. Their freshers week seems to be very early, on the 9th of September which means we can't have a September holiday!

Yes beware of Scottish unis - freshers weeks at some can start as early as 2 Sept! They all start earlier (and usually end earlier if in the summer too).

I booked our summer holiday back in September. We are taking advantage of both of them finishing mid June and going a bit earlier. Still have had to account for 2 prom dates and DD’s girls holiday to Malia though so we are going mid July. DD then tried to book a holiday with her boyfriend which meant she’d be away for A level results day. Had to explain that probs not a good idea if things don’t go to plan and she has to go through clearing; will need to spend the day on the phone finding alternatives and not really something you want to be doing hungover from Aiya Napa!

I'm impressed with holiday plans - DS1 doesn't want to go on holidays with us anymore. He'll miss out on the California trip I'm planning this summer....

Happy New Year all!
No holiday plans for us this summer so hopefully DS will go away with some friends or his girlfriend.
Or just work lots hopefully and save up for uni.
Will defo need to work lots if he doesn't get an offer from Cambridge as he wants to put UCL as his first choice 😩