Sadness of Open Days

[Gemauve]

So on the stand this morning at 0905, I was approached by a charming woman and her keen, enthusiastic daughter. It's the first university they're visiting, in fact the first university that either of them has ever been to, but they're really looking forward to ... and they reel off a list of good places. Daughter really wants to do our subject, and has clearly checked out the top places.

And what A Levels are you doing?

Ah.

Well, you can't come here, and for what it's worth, we're slightly more relaxed than the other places you've named and I know that you won't be able to go to any of them to do our subject or anything even vaguely related. I didn't say "and on past experience from when we were even more relaxed to the point that we might have admitted you, you would almost certainly fail, and the last cohort where we did that less than 5% of them made it to finals". Sorry.

"My school said these subjects would be ideal".

They're catastrophically wrong. Did you look at any prospectuses before choosing your subjects? No. And off they went, their hopes destroyed by 0915.

What the fuck are schools playing at? Why do they let children who don't have middle class parents get into this situation?

It's always worth talking to the admissions office, emailing them, asking as many questions as possible.

Yes, yes, yes. We have found admissions tutors to be very helpful in our (limited) experience!

Jam, my DD is planning on electrical/electronics engineering - as far as I can see the requirements for eng (Maths, physics, ideally FM) are perfect for comp sci. too. (And for physics and maths of course.) The third/fourth subjects aren't so crucial.

She's had pretty decent advice from school but it certainly didn't harm that I had the MN collective to inform us as to the desirability of FM (Trinity list and a thread on which there was some very authoratitive input). Just finished GCSEs and so last weekend she had her first couple of open days - essentially so we could ask lots of questions (pros and cons of different flavours of engineering degree etc), course structure etc. DH and I are scientists, he's had lots of contact with universities including engineering depts but frankly we were pretty clueless but we had a good idea what the gaps in our knowledge were, and knew how to find out more (or nudge DD to do so - at xmas she sent half a dozen emails to admissions tutors asking about the relative merits of a couple of her possible A level choices).

Word - I wonder if another factor in the success of your DDs school is that it's single sex? It's well established that girls usually do better in maths/science in single sex schools, and that the relative advantage is across the board (the high achievers would get top grades anyway, its the others who are likely to benefit more).

errol does your DD's school offer FM? my daughter went to some maths workshops in the summer at a nearby uni that summer as she did her GCSEs maybe there might be something for your daughter like that near you?

Perhaps I should tell Cambridge, Oxford, Durham to name a few that they made a mistake in offers made to my ex students of Business (especially Durham whose offer included a cough cough BTEC Level 3).

It also appears on the RG list for preferred subjects for some subjects...

Head - yes, fortunately it does. It's a girls' GS, maths is always one of the most common options and they get a decent number doing FM too (and 2 sets of physics). They're introducing the comp. sci A level this year (replacing ICT) too. She'd probably love a maths workshop - I'm not aware of anything like that nearby but I'll take a look - thanks!

BTW you might be amused to know, I'm your polar opposite case history. I did chemistry because I loved it, and have a very interesting job in that field which allowed me to move when DH did (within the UK and across the atlantic, even!), eventually working PT from home.

Cricket - I don't think the problem was that the girl had Business studies per se. It was that she had that, ICT and something else of that ilk but didn't have maths, when she was wanting to do a degree at a good uni in a subject where maths would be the one required subject.

Thing is, OP doesn't even know (or did she say?) whether the girl had good enough GCSE results to do Maths A-level or whether her other A-levels are up to snuff. Just because girl was enthusiastic & mother was charming doesn't mean the girl had good math skills.

Assuming it is ICt/computing degree, there are other great ways into ICT careers. More than one way to skin a cat & all that.

errol that's good to know you have managed to keep working within chemistry. I don't dislike it and have worked using it....but jobs like yours are possibly harder to come by (and I am now on my tenth house with DH) so jobs searching has had to be relatively frequent occurrence. Most careers wouldn't stand up to that.

Other than that I think it's good to have women that have managed to combine these sorts of careers but we do need role models to show what can be done. Strangely I'd love to combine the two in a way and possibly will do at some point so all is not lost!

lljkk - yes, but if this girl's maths skills weren't sufficient, then she should have been guided towards something other than a comp sci degree at the unis on her list - aiming high is good, but aiming unrealistically just leads to disappointment and a wasted journey.

errol, littleham and humanjam just had chat with DH (senior lecturer in Comp Sci) and he also added that if the school gives a choice of maths modules to take at A Level, then the decision maths module is a good one to go for. Not because it gives a good foundation per se, but because it gives a flavour of the type of maths (mainly discrete maths) that is used most in Computer Svience.

Also there are lots of different computer science degrees from very theoretical through to those which concentrate of turning out programmers.

And then there's the business technogy/information technology side of things as well. These are often joint degrees with management departments and may not even require A level maths.

I don't know whether your daughter has used codeacademy errol? Not sure if the computer people on here would advise it but mine love it. They have learnt to program with it ( C and Python) Might be fun for the summer hols?

Thanks. I'll ask the Maths teacher at the next parents evening about a decision module. I'm not sure how much flexibility there is as I don't remember his older sisters choosing maths modules. They just followed a set path.

DS did the decision module this summer; he loves that type of maths. I remember DH saying it's very useful for Comp Sci.

Decision maths is not going to be part of the new maths A-level for first teaching 2017. It might be included in further maths though.

Re codeacademy, according to DH although he wouldn't rate it very highly, the mere fact that they are doing some coding is good. Most CS courses don't require coding experience, but any knowledge, whether it is at GCSE level, self-taught through iniatives like code-academy or computer clubs, is beneficial. Again, like the decision maths, not because it will give you a head start on the degree but because it will give a feel as to whether it is something you'll enjoy.

A few years ago it was noticeable that the tenor of CS undergrads had changed and there were more students doing CS because it led to a high paid job rather than because they had a love or even a feel for the subject. It was the 21st century version of accountancy.

I received rubbish advice from my academic girls private school back in the 1980s. Terrible. Incorrect. I would like to think it was better now.

Completely lazy in the careers department.

(apologies if the thread has moved on from this tack, I haven't read the WHOLE thread.......)

oh dear oringina what advice did they give you?

Be warned!

Universities are brazen about their craven grasping for money and have created degree courses for people with strange, non standard and inadequate A level (and god forbid BTecs).

Degree courses such as media studies and business studies should never exist at undergraduate level. Also courses with major/minor offerings like Engineering with a MFL are weird and useless and employers don't like or understand them. It jut raises the suspicion the candidate is not very good at either engineering or the MFL.

Look around and there is a degree course to fit every A level combination no matter how weird. Those courses attract weaker students with odd A levels and poor grades. The university just wants the money and does not care if it will lead to a job. The course may be taught by a series of temporary lecturers shipped in just for that course

My DW taught in a Russell group university that had gone about creating all sorts of courses like this and the students were poor and mostly wasting their money.

Think hard about sending your DC to university at all - just because there is a course does not mean your DC should do it. Likewise just because they can do Drama, Biology and Economics at A level does not mean they should.

What's the alternative though More? I have one DC who went along the traditional A level/degree route (History). The other is is clearly very clever but severely dyslexic / dyscalculic. Very creative though and highly articulate. He just wouldn't cope with A level essay writing. So what path should he take? Do we tell him that higher education isn't for the likes of him? He is taking a Btec extended diploma and is totally engaged with it.

What do you suggest DC like him do? What else is out ther for them?

there

More - What terrible observations with no info to back it up.

Course where "all" the students were "poor" wtf?

Also generalizing that courses shouldn't be taught at undergrad? As long as the student is gaining their own experiences from the course.

Also courses with major/minor offerings like Engineering with a MFL are weird and useless and employers don't like or understand them.

Lots of generalisations there. In my experience graduates from courses which are e.g. 85% STEM and 15% MFL actually do very well in the job market, not least because they spend a year abroad studying STEM in their MFL, so they can offer MFL fluency plus STEM skills plus maturity to employers. Moreover, the entrance grades are not lower than those for regular STEM courses (i.e. around AAA for RG universities).

It's always a good idea to look into what graduates from a given course do but making a sweeping dismissal of all courses with "minors" is silly.

BTW universities do need to recruit more students to survive, particularly with the value of fees falling in real terms, but RG universities are most interested in creating courses which will have good employment statistics and can attract significant numbers of strong students.

Really!
Back in the dark ages, Birmingham taught Commerce - and a first seemed to guarantee you a job as head of the Monopolies and mergers commission or similar.

People need to look more carefully than just at the title. There are great "Media Studies" type course but you have to search for them. Similarly Computing at one Uni is totally different to it at another. Just as Music can be totally different from one place to another.

Absolutely agree mummy. As I said above, computing/computer science courses can vary greatly and they are not all the same just because they have similar, or indeed the same names.

In my own field (librarianship), when I was doing my Masters, there were courses called information science which are basically traditional librarianship but concentrating more on the technical/computing side but then there were information science courses in Business schools which were all about knowledge transfer and nothing to do with managing information records/archives within organisations.

spinoa, absolutely agree with you. At my RG uni, the entrance requirements for our Maths with MFL are 'AAA (or AAB with Further Mathematics) or equivalent, including grade A in A-level Mathematics and grade A in the relevant language' and employability rates for our STEM plus MFL degrees are excellent, and certainly no worse than for the straight STEM subjects.