Applying for Uni 2020

[daydreamornot]

Thought it may be nice to have a 2020 support thread, everyone welcome! (maybe Oxbridge posts could be kept to the Oxbridge thread).

Just as a point of comparison, they've made the SAT and ACT tests (two competing university admission qualification tests) in the US absurdly long, just to catch the odd student who works very very quickly. They don't want anyone to finish the test with time left.

They also statistically adjust the scores to similar cohorts from prior years just in case the test this year is a bit harder or easier than prior years.

And yet we still haven't attained the Govian heights of everyone being above average, it's like no matter what we try it's just not possible .

Sorry MissCouduct I don't know how well you follow British politics but a while back our Education secretary Michael Gove was reported as saying in a round about way that he wanted all schools to basically be above average by our measures. It was worryingly illogical from someone who at the time was in charge of our education system. Still it makes my children laugh every time he pops up on TV so I thank him for that.

Excellent point about percentages and allowing for improvement Millicent, I hadn't thought about it that way.

From a domestic (or anecdotal) point of view massive variations in grade boundaries over the past eleven years within the same subject hasn't had any real impact on the results of my seven DC or their cohorts: shockingly hard paper = low grade boundaries and straightforward = high. That's why I'm not too exercised by it Millicent - it does seem to always come out in the wash.

That said, the BBC website is reporting OCR English Lit grade boundary for an A to be 89%! Is that correct? That really does sound a bit bonkers.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49347539

Yes, it’s a reason for accepting some ‘grade inflation,’ thinking of it as standards being raised rather than dropped. But if you standardise grades across the years then no improvement can be seen. Obviously, (though not to Gove!) 50% of children will be always be above average and 50% below, but if teaching methods actually are improving, then that average can be at a slightly higher standard.

Sorry, cross post Goodbye. That’s an amazingly high boundary for an A. What on earth is the A* boundary?

In an ideal world exams should allow for the whole range of ability to obtain distinct grades, so at the very top end there should be some marks only the very brightest can access, but these should be in proportion to the numbers of those students. I would think an A grade student should be able to obtain around 75% of the marks and an A* student maybe 85% upwards. Both 55% and 89% for an A are extreme.

What's really weird is the BBC is reporting 89% for an A with OCR English literature and 69% for an A with Edexcel!
DS is doing OCR.

Loose hopefully with that boundary the board will get its act together a bit when writing next year’s exam.

@oneteen, I do agree about the pressure and merry go round.DS/ went from GCSEs to as levels to a levels to uni and he started his placement 2 weeks after uni exams finished. He applied to nearly 40 companies, countless rejections ( 1 assessment centre he went to rejected him as his writing wasn’t good enough despite him telling them about his dyslexia).

I wouldn’t let him have a year though after a levels as I don’t think he would have gone to uni. He is desperate for a year out after uni though.

I think the vastly differing grade boundaries must be pretty dispiriting for the students. Even with my mature head on it seems somehow unfair even when I understand why and how it works.

Just realised that it's only a year since we were waiting to hear about DS1, there was so much to do to get ready once we knew, then he went and didn't come back for so long then he came home in May and hasn't shifted, it feels more like three years than one!

@ExCwmbranDweller

Sorry MissCouduct I don't know how well you follow British politics but a while back our Education secretary Michael Gove was reported as saying in a round about way that he wanted all schools to basically be above average by our measures.

I only know what I read in the Economist or see in the news here, so I was unaware of this.

Gove is a thief! That turn of phrase comes from a weekly radio program on National Public Radio, which is a bit like BBC radio here. The show is set in a fictional prairie town called Lake Woebegon

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon

The closing line from each episode is:

"Well, that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

Let's hope Gove is not supervising the maths curriculum.

You've got to think one of the scriptwriters is British!

Hi just placematking to pop back later and have a read through.

Ds a levels are Classics, Geography and History. Predicted ABB wants history at Queen Mary. This is partly because he is a HUGE West Ham fan and the uni is near the stadium

Hi, just popped in to say good luck to all dc collecting AS results tomorrow.
Feels a bit strange to have a year off from August results, but I'm definitely not looking forward to this time next year.

I've been looking at DS's shortlist to see if any of the courses are in Clearing.

Bath has dropped from A*AA to BBB/ABC.
Southampton has dropped from AAA to BBB.

That's quite a difference. They must have been very undersubscribed.

Wow that's a very welcome surprise to see Bath on there. Also a very happy one as whilst maths was good physics was a big shock C which has left DS very glum indeed. Although to be honest in my mind a C at that level in Physics is awesome and I would have been really proud of that!

Met his prediction for English and Philosophy and clawed his way up a grade for psychology! Not quite enough to do EPQ (school has set the bar high deliberately!) but a good incentive to aim high next year!

@Ironoaks when you are looking at the clearing site, how do you work out which offers have gone down? Are you comparing with a list you previously made?

All DS's shortlisted courses look exactly the same as they did before, so I may be doing something wrong...

KingscoteStaff
I'm comparing the typical offer shown on the course page with the grade requirements they are advertising in Clearing.

Ok I am being stupid - I was looking at the course page and presuming they would have been changed...

DD collected her AS results this morning and was pleased she managed to get 3 As for the subjects she's continuing for A2, so is still on track to get the grades she needs for medicine. She narrowly missed an A for Physics which she is dropping anyway so won't bother to resit that. I'm not sure if results generally were OK as her friends didn't get the grades they wanted despite working hard. AS levels are bitter sweet really, it's a lot of continued stress, but at least now she knows she has done 45% of her final A-level grades. (she needs A A A for medicine next year, obviously there are no A at AS level but her marks within those A grades look quite strong which will be useful at aiming for those A grades at A2).
Congratulations to all your DCs with grades today.

P. S. Please don't think I'm a grade snob, I failed a lot of my gcses, I dropped out of half my ALevels and only got interested in studying later in life (went on to find what I actually liked studying and got my PhD at 40). So I'm not boastful of my DD who pushed herself hard because she's passionate about medicine. My DS is a few years younger and he's strictly average academically, but is passionate about his own interests outside of school. I couldn't be more proud of him either. Academics aren't everything at all.

@excwmbrandweller. I didn't see your comment earlier before I posted. All DDs friends struggled with physics AS too. Scored were brutal. A lot of students predicted As got grades C-E today. I wonder if they will reconsider the boundaries. Only 1 of DSs very big school got an A in AS physics, not what they expected at all.

Each university publishes a list of courses that have vacancies in Clearing, and most publish the lowered grade requirements. These can be compared with the original advertised typical offer on the page for the individual course.

Bath handily shows the lowered entry requirements above the original typical offer on the course page. I have attached the screenshot for a 4 year Physics course.

Sorry Kingscote by the time I'd sorted out the screenshot and explanation on my phone, you had already worked it out anyway. Hopefully my explanation will be helpful for others reading this in the future.

Wow that's really interesting, I will let him know, he wasn't so sure of the subject as he was maths but he was really disappointed with the C, he's really annoyed because nearly all Maths degrees want As in more than just maths. I've spent a lot of time pointing to the higher grades on his piece of paper but apparently 'maths is easy so they don't count' - please imagine that said in an Eeyore tone for maximum effect.

How do you see the clearing grade requirements? I must be rather thick becauseI can't work it out.