A level maths

[ProfessorLayton1]

We still have AS levels here and Dd for various reasons did three Maths papers and one of them is A level paper sat early.
She was doing Maths, further maths , Chemistry and biology ( doing further maths was the reason given to take maths early)
She has A level in all paper apart from the maths A level paper day early in which she has a B.
She is keen to apply to Cambridge/ UCL to do medicine -

1. Her option is to sit A level maths paper again next year - will this affect her application to these universities if has a resit ?
2. She is 5 marks away from the grade boundary - is it worthwhile asking for a remark in maths? I can see the subjective marking of English/ History being challenged but how does the marking for maths work ?
3. Either way - resit or B in maths is the end of her dreams to apply to these universities, is it?

Need advice.. although she says it does not affect her ... she is very silent and is spending her time in her room since morning

I think for maths she needs to speak to her teacher. DD did poorly in one of her AS papers (C1), and was told it was not worth resitting as her performance in C3 and C4 the following year would carry more weight. Despite two DC taking maths A levels, I never understood how marks were allocated. In Yr13 DD managed to get the hang of what was required, so her grade went up from B to A without a resit. It gets even more complicated with FM, as you can somehow rearrange papers to give a good chance of the A in maths. I assume maths teachers understand. And will be able to reassure her if they feel she has underperformed.

For UCL/Cambridge at lot will depend on BMAT, which is something else altogether. She should make sure she has two alternative choices which fit with her academic/UKCAT/PS strengths.

Applying for medicine is rarely straightforward. The best advice dd had was to treat it as a two year process, and not to get to fixed on where she wanted to go. Some things go right, some go wrong. If she is a good applicant she will almost certainly get a place. But perhaps not where she wants to go, and perhaps not on first application.

UCL is notoriously averse to medical applicants taking A-levels early. I'd recommend checking with them whether they'll take any notice of the maths A-level at all.

She hasn't done an A level early, with Maths, you just have to seat 6 papers. Commonly, pupils do C1 and C2 first year, with C3 and C4 the following and then either Statistics in year 1 and Mechanics in Year 2 or vice versa. However, some will also do C3 and/or C4 in year 1 just because it is possible to resit them the next year without it being counted as a resit and only the best mark will be counted, hence nothing to lose approach.

Some modules are also the same in Maths and FM and it's possible to count a FM course grades towards Maths. This is what DD did as she dropped FM in Year 13.

The way it works is that you have to get the same total score to get an A or A, but to get the A, you need to get at least 90 in C1/C2/C3/C4 (hence swapping between Maths and FM).

DD just managed to get 90 in C4, so just scrapped the A*.

You need to find out what grade she got for each module. the 'C's are what matter most. Mechanics/Statistics not as much if she can get over 90 in all Cs.

If she got say 90/90 in C1 and C2, but 50 in Mechanics, she is still just about ok, but considering she can't go lower, she might still want to redo C1 and or C2 to push these up, that is if her teacher thinks she can do it, otherwise better to focus on C3 and C4 next year.

Hope it makes sense, my brain is fried this morning!

Thanks for all your explanations
I sort of get it ... that's what her maths teacher has said to her as well
She wants her to resit maths ( one paper) next year but Dd was not very clear why or I just did not get it.

For now, she needs to concentrate on UKCAT!

Re-read what I wrote and that was very poorly explained!
Do you know which modules she got a B in? Was it one of the Core ones? How many did she sit? A friend of DD got a C at Core 2 and B at Core 1 so resit it this year in Year 13 (so along Core 3 and Core 4) and got a final grade of A.

Different schools do different things. In DD's school you could sit C3 or C4 the first year, so couldn't chance it and hope to get a high 90, but some schools do. However she could have resit C1 or C2 the following year if she hadn't got 94+ (she was aiming for the A*).