AS v. A2 results - your thoughts please

[FellatioNelson]

Hi All,

DS1 has just had his AS results. When I went to his teacher consultation I was told that as a general rule they expect most students to get a grade higher at A2 than they get at AS. (this was before his AS grades were in.)

Partly because they get the chance to re-sit any modules at AS that they scored below their potential on, and partly because they tend to step up the work level/commitment at A2 as they become increasingly aware of the need for good grades for a decent uni place.

In your experience is this true? Have your children done better at A2 than at AS?

I am finding it very hard to encourage him to go ahead and apply to university on the basis of grades one higher than he has so far actually achieved. I don't want him to aim too low but I also don't want him to have unrealistic expectations and false hope, and therefore totally wasted applications, and end up in clearing.

Any advice?

I got ABBC at AS, all As at A2.

My best advice would be to aim for 2 'top end' unis that maybe he has a slim chance of getting into with his current grades but could with his predicted ones, 2 with a good reputation that he has a chance of getting into with his current grades, 1 with a good reputation that he's almost certain for and a total safety that he likes the look of. That speads your UCAS choices nicely and even if he gets rejected from the 2 top places at least he knows he tried. The good reputation cert/total safety can be his 2nd choice so he avoids clearing.

That sounds very sensible - thanks. He got BBCC at AS level. The strange thing is, his two Bs were in the subjects he was least confident about! That's good, obviously because if he could turn those into As we'll be delighted, and if he stays at B then that as much as we'd dare hope for. He is retaking a couple fo papers as apparently he was only a couple of points of As.

The subjects he got Cs in he was really expecting Bs - misplaced confidence I think!!! I expect he'll bring them up to B on re-take, but whether he'll manage to turn them into to A's at A2 is concerning me.

AABB should be sufficient for somewhere decent, but I'm nervous as hell about it all. Such a minefield!

I did the same - revised the things I found hard like there was no tomorrow and left the stuff I thought was easy. It was enough to pass the exam but you don't have the detail for case studies/you've not learnt the arguments exactly and then you don't get the marks to bring you up a grade.

Luckily in at least one of my subjects it was very dependent on you applying the skills to what they gave you so I probably did better than I should.

It did prove to me hard work paid off though!

DD2 is in year 13 and got AABC at AS - she has stopped the B subject and is hoping to go back up to AAA with perhaps even an A* in there somewhere. The C was the result of a dodgy chemistry exam that she is resitting in january and her teacher is giving her an A as predicted grade. I would say that DD2 and her friends have certainly stepped up their effort this year and are planning to start revision for Jan exams at half term -last year DD2 started her revision on the first day of the xmas holidays.

She has chosen a mix of universities that should give offers from A*AA down to AAB (its difficult to go lower than this for Maths without going down to a completely different set of universities)

Don't follow DD1's example though she did really well in year 12 and then did the minimum in year 13. She still got into her first choice uni even though she missed her offer. I was older and greyer after the whole experience though.

Just a word of warning. Doing quite a few retakes is hard work and takes alot of the time from the work that should be done for the A2s in order to get them up a grade. Work out carefully if a few more marks are worth the work. ie. would it be better to put the work in for the A2 stuff and leave the retaking of AS.
The A2 syllabus is harder than AS it not just more.

that's a good point - thanks. He's not retaking everything, just a couple of papers I think - one to bring a B up to an A, and one to bring a C up to a B.

was wondering about the relation between AS grades and A2 predictions. Looked at the student room and some posts say you tend to go up a grade because of the opportunity to retake and other posts say you go down a grade because the workload is that much harder.

Anyone got a definitive answer?

Ds1 has only AS predictions at this stage as he is Y12 but it would be useful to know which unis to consider visiting.

I think it depends on the subjects being taken eatyourveg

If you got a B at AS in a subject where knowledge is being constantly built on such as French or Maths then if you retook an early module you would usually do a lot better because your knowledge of the subject has developed and then with the extra effort in year 13 a higher grade would be possible.

But if you got a B in a subject such as History then to retake would need a vast amount of facts being relearnt and an improvement in essay technique so it would be harder to increase the AS grade through resits. In this case the extra effort in year 13 would be needed to maintain the grade rather than go up to a higher one.

Just my opinion from the subjects my DD's have taken!

The teachers' predicted A2 grades are what matters for UCAS.

They are often higher than the actual AS grades.

What they need to do on the UCAS for is to carefully select courses to include a realistic insurance course.

A2 modules are harder than AS, but most students drop one of their subjects for U6, eg go from 4 subjects to 3. This gives them loads of private study time.

DS1 got CCCE at AS level. His college take the view that these grades equate to predicted grades - which is very difficult. It meant that DS had to apply to universities which would accept these grades (therefore not the top 25 universities!)

He dropped French (his E grade).

For all his other subjects, English Lit, History and Philosophy he did some re-sits.

For History and Philosophy he had done the same thing - two exams, A in one and D in the other - so he re-sat the module he had got the D for, which brought his grades up to a B. (Can't remember what happened in English )

He then worked really hard before his exams (which really worried me - I was thinking 'too little too late'!), but it paid off, and he ended up with AAB.

I got the impression from his college that they thought it would be unusual to make this kind of improvement - even though as a college they have an excellent academic reputation.

From our perspective, I would say that I think the first year of A levels came as a bit of a shock. DS1 is clever, and I think he thought he would just coast through things - and it took the shock of his AS results to push him into a bit of hard work.

BTW - for us it has been a bit of a nightmare - DS1 accepted a place at a university that was prepared to make him an offer, based on CCC. But having achieved AAB he turned down that place and has re-applied, for a 'better' university. (Thankfully, as of today, we have just heard that he has two unconditional offers, so all is well - but to have to go through the whole application process again has been awful)