Year 12 - 2024/25 - Support, Discussion and Looking After Each Other

[BlackBean2023]

A survival thread for Y12 parents (24/25) now that GCSEs are over and our young people move onto KS5

How lovely to see all these ambitions start to unfold! DD won’t be going for Oxbridge, but her school are very organised and ensure that all applications go off early so that they can then concentrate on their studies. So her school deadline to get her UCAS form finally submitted to school is 16 October, right after the Oxbridge, medics etc are in.

She loves the idea of Edinburgh, but given the severity of cuts they are contemplating I am not at all sure that her niche course will survive there. All courses available for 2026 entry should be shown on UCAS by 29 April, so we shall see.

@Waspie yes i's only 40ish mins from here to Oxford, we went by train from our local station so super easy to do. If your DCs have the opportunity it's worth going, I encouraged DS really as a motivating thing, even if he doesn't get anywhere there hopefully he'll have done enough through motivation to get somewhere else on his list. That said, his top list also includes Imperial...😂

Good news on the work experience @Waspie.

We've booked Glasgow and Sheffield so far. Glasgow will involve an overnight stay. DS school have said they can have 3 days 'off' for open days. He went to see the Chemistry dept at Warwick with his A Level class just before half term and was impressed but thinks it's too close to home!

Goodness how organised your kids are. Mine has no idea of subject let alone which city! There doesn't seem to be any mention of uni from the school until much later in the year!

@SunblockSue is your DC open to thinking about post-18 routes? One thing you might think about is booking onto an early open day at a university relatively close to home (and therefore not costly to travel to), just to get some ideas rolling. The main open day “seasons” are in June and Sept/Oct, and it is worth thinking about the June ones as by the autumn the pressure is building towards final decisions - if they want to apply in Y13. The equal-consideration deadline in the coming round will be 14 Jan 2026, so a couple of weeks earlier than it has been in recent cycles.

That's us too!

Work experience was useful (if a bit boring) as at least now he has some idea of office work.
Neither DH nor I do that kind of job, so he has never had much to do with it.

Mostly sat and watched, but they did let him do some recruitment and contract work, which he said was quite interesting.

DD is adamant it’s weird to go to a uni open day 5 hours away on a day trip alone.
Is it?

I don’t think any decision you make on this is weird, but perhaps she is really saying she’d far prefer to have your company - which I can understand.

Does she actually need to visit this uni in person, or could she perhaps access a virtual open day? Then think about an in-person offer holder day later on?

Yeah it is that. We are v close. I think she needs to see it really.
i shall mull it over !

DD2 doesn't know what she wants to study but thinks that she'd prefer a campus university rather than a city one. DD1 is at a big city university so I partly wonder if she is reacting to that. Though I do think that a campus would suit her. We're going to look at Bath in June and will stay overnight with her godmother who lives in the city. So I'm looking forward to that too 😀DD is going to take a year out so pressure off a bit this year. School won't be happy as they prefer them to defer but DD wants to apply with known grades.

I’m impressed at how organised people are dd not really done much research into university. Her grades have dropped a little and she was never going to be applying for top tier universities. I don’t know, I’d like her to have some ideas, but I don’t want to put too much pressure on her. She doesn’t want to be too close or too far away. Beyond that who knows. She’s thinking economics or finance or combination of those. Not really something I know anything about!

I’ve decided to view the open days like house buying prep and just do the research properly so will go along with dd and make weekends of it. DD is very happy.

DD has moved around a lot with my divorce and other things so I think the location really matters to her. It needs to feel like she could settle. When I went I did visit some but really didn’t care the way she does. Just unfortunate all the ones which have the courses she likes are quite so far…!

We’re only organised as I need to budget to afford the trips!

@Countrylife2002 Have you got a railcard (Two Together perhaps?) to bring down train fares?

@Countrylife2002 I feel as you do about organising trips to open days, I just need to know when and where so I can sort them around my work commitments. I also think DD will make better decisions after physically having seen the unis.

It does take some thinking about for us because most of the unis she wants to visit have their open days either on the same day or within one or two weeks of each other which means June weekends will be busy.

I had a very interesting phone call with DDs teacher after expressing my concern about her own self belief in her abilities (despite her being extremely able). What a wonderful caring teacher, she was really tuned in to DD and the issues she and other girls may have around being high achievers and the pressures and doubts that many of them have. I am so pleased I have spoken to her as I feel she will be a huge support and mentor to DD going forward. DD will listen to her advice over mine too 😂.

Thank you dd has a 16-17 card which is 50pc so that helps!

That sounds very positive @bluefineliner hopefully your daughter will gain an awful lot from her teacher's support and mentorship. Sweeping generalisation but I do tend to find it is young women who doubt their abilities more than young men. That's not to say young men don't, of course, it just seems to present differently.

It is certainly about organisation and prioritising which open days to attend. We have lots of clashes through June so decisions will need to be made. DS has lots on his list because he is uncertain, so hopefully attending a few will give him, and all of our children, some clarity. It's wonderful if the young person knows exactly what they want to do, and where they want to do it, but I'm sure there are more who are not certain and need the help that the open days will give. Many seem to offer virtual open days and subject taster lessons too. So different, and much better, than in my day!

Really wish DS could be organised / interested in planning his next step. Still insisting he is not going to uni. Not organised work experience not found a part time job.
Only applied for 1 after I gave him the details, even got told he was hired for events then told they would register him for event nearby but nothing since.

I do wonder sometimes if it is a fear of making those really big decisions so easier to ignore them for now and just go day by day.

DD has always been pretty motivated but I definitely sense a reluctance to fully emerge herself in discussions, as if by doing it she has to really face the fact she will have to live on her own in only 18 months! She is starting to mention being able to cook certain things herself and needing to learn more and I think underneath it is making her feel more anxious too.

I don't mind a gap year for her but want her to explore everything to make the best decision so am keeping up the uni prep for now.

I didn't have this with my eldest DD, she just went off happily after A levels 😂.

I think it is challenging. DD also very reluctant to engage in university discussions. Yesterday she had a panic attack, my step dad picked her up from college, too distressed to carry on her day. She called me sobbing it was awful.

She thinks it was triggered by running for the bus! Her heart rate went up and she couldn’t get it down and she got more and more anxious about it until at lunchtime she broke down! College has a well-being hub and I’m encouraging her to access that, but she doesn’t want to. I don’t understand why. She is saying she’ll maybe see the GP, but I think she’s got more chance of seeing someone quickly through college.

Parenting doesn’t get easier does it?

Ah @wonderstuff your poor DD, I hope she has had time to recover now. It is difficult to understand sometimes because with my adult hindsight I can sometimes forget how important things seem in the present for teenagers. What seems to be something that can be got over and moved on from seems to appear insurmountable for DD at times. She does get over it, just after she has poured all her emotion and stress on me for hours 😂.

She had a bad couple of days this week and I was on edge waiting for texts from her whilst working, which she randomly sends if she's feeling sad. One particular day I was awaiting the outcome of something important to her (think friendship things) and heard nothing. Eventually sent a message at the end of the day asking how her day went... 'oh pretty good actually' was the reply 🙄.

I should be used to this by now!

I have been too busy trying to get my Yr7 understanding that secondary takes a lot more work than primary school, completely fallen off following this thread also other life complications :(
@bluefineliner lovely that you got to talk to the teacher and they understand your daughter, that’s reassuring. Also I was reading through all the posts and wonder why my DD is not listing the uni visits, and your first line makes a lot of sense.

No decided on courses or Uni yet, and I am worried about this.
Lots of class tests, other virtual competitions and all that taking a toll on DD so when she gets few days free, she is not even looking/reading through unis or anything, that needs brain 😬
@Techno56 Thanks for posting those links, having a look now :)
although she found IT work experience through a friend, she wanted to do Engineering which seems to be very difficult to get work experience
Don’t want to tag everyone but thank you so much for all the insightful posts, I wish I had read these in past two months rather than trying to worry about it myself

Hi all - havent been on here for a while but was wondering if anyone has (or has had) a Year 12 child with ADHD and if so, how they are coping with the widening gap between what the system expects from them at this point, and what they are able to do. Im not coping very well (this fires up my anxiety), so words of wisdom or reassurance would be most welcome.

DS is doing some work and may end up having decent grades as he tends to ramp up by the time the exams approach..but his first mocks were far from great.

And despite our best efforts he is not doing anything beyond the homework set up on the school app. No reading, no uni research, not looking for volunteering or work experience. Signed up for EPQ enthusiastically and has done nothing 5 months on so has missed that boat. Then signed up for a smaller independent research project and...nothing since.

He watches some podcasts around philosophy/theology as thinks he may do that at uni at some point, but cannot project himself into the future at all and not doing any extracurricular and therefore wont have anything useful to put on a personal statement. I dragged him to an open day near us, and to a couple of lectures, but everything has to be initiated by me/DH.

I can see he wont be ready to go to uni straight away, as he has very little independent studying/living skills. But he is bright and the best I can hope for is he does quite well in the A levels, bags them and maybe applies later when he is ready.

However, now we re in the season of open days, UCAS account creation etc and the pressure is building, I am finding it so stressful that he isn't stepping up or owning the process in any way. I know his ADHD means its nearly impossible for him to, but I am lost as to how much I accept this vs how much I compensate so he doesn't fall out of the system completely.

Sorry, rant over...

We have had a progress check and parents evening. All reasonably promising. Predicted grades, minimum of C in History and Geography and Distinction in Applied Business.
We are all happy with that, but aware he needs to push on a bit

@Zubomama it's really hard when you can see that they're not following what their peers are doing. DD1 refused to look at university other than to agree to do an art foundation locally. I think that it was anxiety based and she was terrified to commit to anything. In her art foundation year she changed her attitude and found a course she wanted to do and applied with no help from us, she refused any support, I have no idea what she wrote on her UCAS form! My nephew and the son of a good friend are also taking a year out and DD2 will also do that. I'm trying to remind myself that life is a marathon not a sprint.

DD finally started looking at universities. It’s going to be difficult because she’s finally got a Saturday job and most of the open days are Saturdays. So we’re going to have to be super selective, some were also offering campus tours you could apply for, so this could be an alternative. She was using uni frog, which is quite good, and selecting solid bets for grades and less than 100 miles away, almost all ex-polys and most in London. Brighton and UWE also there so I’d like her to prioritise those really. She’s dismissed Reading, which is probably the most prestigious in her search as too close!