Does not having a modern language GCSE really have an impact on UCL applications?

[L1vewell]

Just that really.

Ds interested in doing Computer Science.

[ErrolTheDragon]

Bubbles - all teachers have to have passed gcse maths or equivalent themselves, and there will be many far more numerate than that level. GCSE maths doesn't require anything remotely like uni level maths ability (actually, the worst maths teaching I've ever had was from a maths prof because too much was 'intuitively obvious' to him!)

[BubblesBuddy]

GCSE maths is not considered good enough to teach it though! However I think you’ve missed the point. The notion that it was ok to drop a subject because it was poorly taught was put forward. I merely asked if that could apply to maths too. We all know that and sciences really struggle for qualified teachers. Yet we require maths gcse for just about everything - even literature degrees. MFLs are never all about using them in a job. Some people will and others never will. That doesn’t mean they are not valuable as part of a general (broad) education. Just like maths!

[MarchingFrogs]

People say it is "harder"

Over 45 years on, I've still not forgotten the withering look our German teacher (Austrian, had started her career as a French-English simultaneous translator and was later to teach me Spanish) gave my dad when he rashly Indicated that he had always been led to believe that that was the case.

She was jolly good at withering looks with her students, as well, particularly at A level when one's 'having a go' at translation missed the mark by a rather wider than usual margin...