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?

I think I am quite a researcher about everything. i am always googling this that and the other and being a bit nosy I suppose.
I didn't go to University but have a few friends whose DC are going through it and have done some googling of it all as a result of that.

Out of interest OP what stops your institution offering integrated year 0s?

I don't know: no department does it, certainly. Does any RG university offer that?

Whoops!

Advice = noun
Advise= verb

Just proofing how an MC I am!

Just proofing

Proving.

I know 'RG University' is bandied about all over MN a lot but is it really the be all and end all? Is going to any other just a waste of time?

I sometimes feel as if the only things that matter are A* Grades and getting into an RG University IYKWIM.

Poor proof reading

It is interesting to hear above that someone else hadn't heard about Russell Group Uni's either.

DS's school were pushing Oxbridge for him, I vaguely knew that the old "Redbricks" might also be a good option, it was only when asked at interview by one, whether he was only considering Russell Group medical schools that he or I had heard of RG and then googled.

I hadn't heard of them til I joined MN 3 years ago Silver I thought it was an abbreviation of Reading University and wondered why so special. Turns out DB went to one too albeit in 1984.

I'm still not sure what tangible benefit RG is to most graduates. However in certain fields, particularly academia where you obtained your degree is important.

But it does vary depending on course/subject and field you are aiming for IMO.

When I was at school (in the dim distant past) we had limited (awful before sixth form) careers advice. I asked my teachers what A'levels I needed, and as they had done a degree in the subject they knew.

For my DD I have printed out and pointed out that if she studies in England she will have to search for courses that will accept her A'level combination. She has her own plans, and ultimately its her choice.

Yes I think a copy of Informed choice and maybe Trinity college Cambridge's acceptable A'levels and being told about the UCAS website, should all be given at the same time as the Sixth Form prospectus.

OP - foundation/year 0 are certainly offered at RG institutions. If you have any influence please consider these. Your WP dept will love you forever!

Kings do one for Medicine: www.kcl.ac.uk/prospectus/undergraduate/entryrequirements/name/emdp/alpha/MNO/header_search/

Manchester's here:
www.manchester.ac.uk/study/international/admissions/foundation-courses/eu-students/

Warwick has some here:
www.wbs.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/foundation-year/

I'm still not sure what tangible benefit RG is to most graduates.

Quite a lot of employers only recruit, or only recruit seriously, from a short list of universities. That list is pretty much equal to, or a subset of, the Russell Group. There are exceptions, obviously.

The Russell Group is pretty much the same as "the Redbricks" plus Oxford, Cambridge and the top of the post-Robbins plate glass universities. Not all of them have med schools, and there are a few universities with medical schools which are not in the RG, but as a first approximation it's "places with a med school" just as (struggles to think of an exception) a med school was the defining characteristic of a redbrick.

Oh, we do foundation years like that, on a massive scale. It was your talk about integrated year zeros that you can do on SLC funding that confused me.

Informed choice and maybe Trinity college Cambridge's acceptable A'levels and being told about the UCAS website, should all be given at the same time as the Sixth Form prospectus.

When does that happen? If it's any time after GCSE decisions are made it's far too late.

Gemauve That's useful, so guiding him to "Redbricks" as I knew them wasn't so silly then.

Interestingly though, although he did get a place at an excellent RG uni,it might have been less risky to have included a newer (less prestigious?) med school as a back-up as getting in is so competitive - again a missing bit of advice from school careers teacher.

All water under the bridge now as he has just qualified.

The madness lies in the English education system forcing early specialisation. In Germany students have to do German, a language, maths, a science, a humanity plus others to Abitur, therefore no path is closed.

Here Sixth Form prospectus is given at the beginning of year 11.

BUT for GCSE they have limited choices: so have to do Maths, 2 x English, double or triple science, RE, a MFL (usually), and are encourage to choose a Humanity, and then 2 free choices. Which leaves most things wide open, much more than my day when you could drop whole sciences. My DC also did receive careers advice and a 1 to 1 interview before choosing options. (But room to change is essential, my DD during GCSEs has gone from wanting to study horse management to Psychology).

If it's any time after GCSE decisions are made it's far too late.

At risk of calling down the wrath of secondary teachers, one of the advantages of the EBacc discussion is that it does make it less likely that strong candidates who aren't getting good advice will make a catastrophically bad decision on the way into Y10.

In Germany students have to do German, a language, maths, a science, a humanity plus others to Abitur, therefore no path is closed.

Only 50% of students take the Abitur. So the path is closed for the other 50% at a much earlier age.

Takver exactly.

I was the first person in my family to go to uni. My parents didn't engage in any of it, from my secondary schooling, to choosing subjects, to preparing for exams, to looking at prospectuses. Nothing. They would not have known to ask what subjects mattered etc. In fact after an argument with my Dad over a problem at a Saturday job it became obvious he thought it was employer references that got you into uni rather than specific subjects and grades. They just didn't have a clue. And I have to say my school just seemed to rely on the assumption that everyone knew how all this worked. I don't remember ever having a formal lesson on any of this before choosing subjects. The importance of being "in the know" is probably hugely underestimated when considering success in FE.

I was very lucky, as I kind of did well by accident rather than design, subjects had been chosen and exams over and done with when I finally worked it all out...and I actually had what I needed for the course I then chose to do. But had to take a year out because I'd known nothing about applying for uni and screwed it all up.

Sparkling, she is taking Business Studies, Law and ICT. Her parents insist that taking Law will offer her an advantage despite other people telling them otherwise. They can't see how History or a science subject can be viewed more positively than vocational subjects.

I have been keeping notes for a book/article once my children have finished university admissions, listing all the subtle ways in which the children of informed parents who have money, time and connection to higher education are able to navigate university admissions far more easily. From a very early age, their path is smoothed. They are guided to the right GCSEs, the right A Levels, applications to the right universities, applications to the right courses. They make strategic, efficient applications after strategic and efficient pre-application work, get the grades and go. I know people whose UCAS applications only contained two universities, so carefully honed was the process, so the minimum effort was expended on the path to meeting their offer.

I remember taking a group of students to an open day at Liverpool. A lecturer from York was talking to them about computing. A student asked if they had to have Computing or ICT A level to get onto the course and she said no, she'd like them to have Maths, though. Consternation throughout the hall. Then she said that the only thing really that she wanted was for applicants to be clever. She said if they were, she could teach them and if they weren't, she couldn't. There was uproar once she'd left the hall.

If you want to head for university (especially RG, which I see as a close synonym for 'not an ex-poly') then the EBAC is a very good thing, as it means that you'll have a core of subjects which will take you in most directions.

FWIW, our secondary doesn't really start talking about university, and the A levels which take you there, until years 10/11. But for nearly all pupils, there are core GCSEs of English (usually x2), Maths, Sciences, an MFL and a humanity plus two free choices, therefore with most pupils ending up with 9 or 10, with a general view that that number of good grades is enough.

I have just been on an open day with DS2. He's been on five on his own but I went with him on this one. I overheard a conversion exactly like the one you describe OP.
A student who wanted to do a course for which had chosen the wrong A levels entirely. It was a science course and she was doing one science, psychology and something else but no maths. The admissions guy was clearly doing his best to suggest alternatives but ultimately she was not going to be able to apply with her current A levels.

Maths is essential for most of science and engineering, and highly desirable for all the rest even if it isn't a published requirement.

Maths is well respected and regarded as A Good Thing in many humanities as well. For example, if you do an English degree, you may end up doing some computational linguistics; if you do a history degree, you may end up trying to read a book like "The Wages of Destruction" which some historians find too mathematical.

At least one Russell Group university is starting to brief semi-officially that it would like to make AS Maths (let's leave for a moment what this means post-2017) universal for all students, in all subjects.

Being the single most studied subject, a lot of your competition will be doing i even if you aren't.

Giving up maths is a really big deal.