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?

Can I also recommend Young Rewired State - a free, week-long activity this late July for budding coders? If he's just starting A-level he'll have a ball: have a look around Festival of Code - hopefully you'll find a local centre.

I saw that but it clashes with a holiday, he is doing this Cambridge Coding course though which looks rather exciting. We will look out before booking a holiday next year!

Sorry Gemauve, I think I have derailed your thread, I didn't mean to.

Looks good OddBoots. Excellent credentials for the course tutors.

Imposter, the link to Young Rewired State looks interesting. Do you know what is the minimum age? I could not tell from the site. My son is 8.

Politicians and the Media also deserve a dose of the blame for this.

There is so much talk about "applied knowledge" and "vocational training" that academic kids with non university parents think that subjects with names like jobs will be better than those with school names.

I had a real struggle persuading a friend of DDs that she did not want to do Accounting and business studies at A Level and then do an accounting degree.
Once she got the hat in Further Maths GCSE and is now thriving at double maths A Levels heading towards a pure maths degree I fely utterly vindicated
and her parents now get the fact that pure subjects open more doors than applied ones.

that academic kids with non university parents think that subjects with names like jobs will be better than those with school names.

That seems to have become a real class divide.

Desperate to know what Gemauve considers to be a selective university.

Hi blueshoes I don't know for sure what the minimum age is. I seem to recall that last year my DS' group included someone as young as 10 or 11 with her older sister. The only limitation was that they had to have an adult accompany them to the weekend events (as they entailed sleeping over away from the centre at the festival, which this year's in Birmingham).

The site is annoyingly difficult to navigate, but you could email them at [email protected] or tweet twitter.com/youngrewired

Desperate to know what Gemauve considers to be a selective university.
Surely that is

• any course that appears in the top 50 rankings
• or any university in the to 75 UK ones

Desperate to know what Gemauve considers to be a selective university.

One where simply having the published entry qualifications is not sufficient to guarantee a place.

Thanks for clearing up the Computer Science A level issue. Very reassuring .

How.... does one know which Unis those are, Gemauve?

Which league tables do you consult, TalkInPeace?

has anyone mentioned access courses? would she be eligible?

My DS' school recommends this website for university rankings: www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings/ - you can sort by subject and then by sub-category that interests you.

lljkk
Any of them TBH : they are rarely more than 5 places out from each other

and they are just a guide as the decision is such a personal one in the long run

Access courses are the same level as A levels, and usually only a choice made by mature students returning to education, they're not generally done by 16-18 year olds who have a decent choice of A levels.

Selecting vs recruiting universities - partly subjective terms, partly definable. Definable in that a selecting institution will have more applicants predicted their standard offer than they will make offers to. Recruiting institutions offer to everyone predicted to meet their standard offer - may often have clearing places. This changes year on year though which is where the terms become a bit more subjective. Media studies at London Met will be a recruiting course. History at Oxford will be selecting. Top 20 in say Complete or Times subject tables more likely to select.

How.... does one know which Unis those are, Gemauve?

Talkinpeace has told you. Pretty well any tables will do, they're much of a muchness.

The thing with the league table I recommended is that it focuses on subject, rather than university. A particular course can be much more highly ranked than the university in which it is situated. Yes, there is a value to go to the highest ranked universities for traditional courses, but for the newer subjects or more vocational ones it may be preferable to focus on the subject's placing (or at least, to bear it in mind).

which is why that site is quite good as you can look up your subject area and it shows which unis care about the same things you do

So... Hertfordshire is hard to get into and well respected but Brighton is for dummies?

Bristol is well choosy who they'll take for history but you only have to smile at Hull to get in?

Except not for 2015 entry when history at Bristol was also completely pants?

Wow, that's a confusing system for telling what's good and what isn't.

Id probably say top 50 for subject more likely to be selecting rather than talkinpeace's top 75 actually.... Maybe even top 25 for MFL. There will be exceptions though.

Courses are selective, not universities. At Oxbridge all courses are selective. At other universities not all courses are necessarily selective: published entry qualifications suffice to enter all but the very top 5 or 6 maths courses, for example.

But the OP's point still stands, even for students who do manage to get in with less than ideal A level subject choices. Students who enter maths degrees with maths + e.g. law and psychology on average do worse than students who enter with maths, further maths and a third subject such as physics or chemistry.

So even though many "top" universities take students with AAA or A*AA in maths + 2 non-facilitating subjects such students are still at a disadvantage. They also aren't able to get into the very top courses with such subject choices. People often say that further maths can't be made a requirement, as some schools don't offer it, but the number of students entering Oxbridge and Imperial maths/engineering/physics without further maths is small.

Wow, that's a confusing system for telling what's good and what isn't.

Whether or not a course is selective is no guide to quality. Anyone working in a particular field can point to departments which are difficult to get into but undergraduates will (in various ways) get a pretty raw deal, and conversely to departments which struggle for numbers but treat students fantastically.

Weak departments in universities with a good overall reputation (often itself based on the world circa Supertramp having chart hits) are flattered; strong departments in universities with a less good overall reputation (often pure bigotry against post-92s) are unfairly traduced. REF results don't help, because the people that wrote the high quality, high impact papers may be rubbish teachers or on teaching buy-outs or palming it all off onto their postdocs.

However, my point wasn't about any of that. My point was that getting into selective universities requires decent subject choice. The question of whether doing selective course X at selective university Y is actually a good idea is a separate one.

People often say that further maths can't be made a requirement, as some schools don't offer it,

The argument's unconvincing. A Level Music is, for practical purposes, a requirement for Music, and you don't have to look far to find schools that don't offer it. Ditto MFL, some Classics courses, etc, etc. Indeed, I suspect that finding a school that doesn't offer Physics at A Level isn't hard, but Physics is a pretty mainstream requirement.

You can self-teach Grade VIII theory as an alternative to Music at most universities, but then you can often offer self-taught STEP as an alternative for further maths; you don't have to be a social justice warrior to argue that "you can always self-teach" is pretty much "let them eat brioche".