How did your overwhelmed teen fill in their UCAS application choices?

[lljkk]

If you had a teen who found the UCAS choices very hard to make, how did they decide in the end?

I ask in case there is a way of choosing I haven't thought of so far.

Trying to keep this concise. Rather than Uni, After A-levels, DS/we would like DS to do a higher apprenticeship, but the process is very confusing, hard to get places. It seems like DS has to directly approach & sell himself to employers if he wants to stay local, persuade them they want to create an apprenticeship for him. DS won't directly approach & sell himself to employers. Else wait for adverts (may not happen) that could take him anyway in UK. Apprenticeship is Plan A but it might not happen.

DS wants UCAS application for a conventional course as Plan B, but he's overwhelmed how to narrow down to just 5. Within 3 hours travel time, there are dozens of possibly suitable courses at a tariff he might achieve. We have discussed Software Engineering, Data Science, Data Analysis, Computer Science. Looking at the modules doesn't help DS decide between them.

His only firm decision is a campus (not city) university. He's unlikely to consider Uni if his results or CCB or worse (can eliminate those tariffs). The filters on FrogUni & UCAS website are very limited.

Any other ideas how to choose?

@Parker231
Internships have long gone to those with parental money. I know some are paid but they can be a very unfair form of recruitment. Interviews in person tend to favour confident people and many struggle to shine. They might be awkward or feel uncomfortable. Have unsuitable clothes etc. Many stress out during internships. So what is fair about that as opposed to sifting by qualifications and uni?

I think other posters have indicated in the past that the tests employers use to sift still get “passed” by grads from the top universities. Have you ever looked at what A levels and universities your successful grads come from? You are LSE: so are recent grads from the same illustrious type of uni or are the majority from a Luton or Northampton type of uni? I suspect not. Do your methods produce the same result as sifting by qualifications and uni attended? I’m curious because I’m not sure the results are actually different.

Yes. Many grads aren’t recruited uni or qualification blind. We have a situation where less than 40% of grads are getting grad level jobs(I think I read the other day) so it’s very very tough. That’s why I think choosing a uni and course that give the best prospects of getting a job is vital. Will an employer really care if you studied modern or medieval history? Probably not. But many will care if it was Durham or “nowhere” because they trust Durham to have admitted many high calibre students. At the lower end it’s bums on seats and that’s reflected by poorer employment prospects. But not in every degree discipline! Certainly there are excellent niche courses in unexpected places but if it’s a job the student wants, research is vital.

Place marking . DS2 will be the same I’m sure. He’s quite a young yr 11. Whereas DS1 (yr 13) is very sure of what he wants, very motivated and is hoping for Cambridge. They are two different people and will make completely different choices I’m sure.

@TizerorFizz I’m with you on “grad” level jobs. My own child got a good job in a City firm on the support services side of the business on graduation (the role advertised online, application by CV!) but he was the first to say that any bright school leaver could have done the role. However, it was a foot in the door and he is now working his way up the ladder. Many of his friends got entry level admin/sales type roles to start with that many moons ago would not have required a degree.

@VanCleefArpels
Well I guess years ago there wouldn’t have been the same numbers of people with degrees! When I first worked someone having a degree in our admin teams would have been rare. Move on 40 years it’s a very different story.

I do think many grads are going to have a tough time in the next few years getting the jobs they want and, from reports I’ve read, getting a foot in the door what many are doing. Grads do get jobs but many are over qualified for the roles. Around 35%.

I think my figure of 40% getting grad jobs was incorrect earlier. Having read further, it’s nearer 50%. However it’s not what many thought they would be able to do post degree and lots of opportunities disappeared in 2020. So there are now more grads chasing what jobs there are. This is why the jobs market should inform degree choices rather than worrying about the niche options that most employers won’t give a fig about.

Whether recruitment is blind or not, some part of the recruitment process will indicate who is well educated and who is not regardless of the qualifications. As a society we have got far too hung up on the churning out highly qualified students rather than well educated students.

A very quick in-tray exercise will determine who can construct a grammatically correct sentence and perform some pretty basic arithmetic. So very often those from a post 92 don't cut the basics even with a 2:1. I have no time to go back to basics with someone I employ and far too many graduates are not work ready.

@TizerorFizz - our internships are paid at the year one graduate salary. There is a recruitment process and family connections won’t help. They work over the summer between their year two and three at Uni. Our blind recruitment process has taken students from Uni’s across the country. The recent success came from Canterbury and is off to NY on a six month secondment in January.

My last firm (finance) did events for the degree apprentices and they got to go to the graduate events too. They were not treated like just any new employees and left to fend for themselves.

They really were looked after and given opportunity to work on big projects, not confined to being an extra pair of hands in help desk roles.

www.techskills.org/degree-apprenticeships/dapps-opportunities/bsc-dapps-providers/

I did not say family connections would help. But how someone is brought up does. General education, being able to chat easily, presentation and all sorts of soft skills are big taught at university. What you pay is just one barrier removed.

I think one success from Canterbury doesn’t show the whole picture. What is the overall picture of RG, top RG vs all the others? In very competitive jobs it’s often very skewed to RG plus a few others. I’ve no doubt students come from unis all over the country but that tells you absolutely nothing. As you haven’t answered the direct question about RG or not, I’m rather assuming you know the post 92 are under represented. Probably the universities like Surrey, Sussex and Swansea too. Apart from the odd success of a non RG student, I think some students from poorer backgrounds at non RG universities will be under represented.

My DH finds grad recruits don’t have great English too! No one at any stage of their education has ever corrected “your” when written instead of “you’re” for example. He’s fed up that again and again he has to send technical reports back to grad engineers for correction spelling mistakes! They cannot go out to clients and it’s embarrassing!

Are not taught at university….

[quote VanCleefArpels]@TizerorFizz I’m with you on “grad” level jobs. My own child got a good job in a City firm on the support services side of the business on graduation (the role advertised online, application by CV!) but he was the first to say that any bright school leaver could have done the role. However, it was a foot in the door and he is now working his way up the ladder. Many of his friends got entry level admin/sales type roles to start with that many moons ago would not have required a degree.[/quote]
Having a degree has become the default "requirement" for lots of jobs that don't need them, but that's simply because of the growth in people going to Uni and was inevitable and entirely foreseeable.

When I left school in the early 80's, 5 O levels at grade C or above was your gateway to a good, long term "office" job and if you got 3 A levels (any grade) you could get a trainee professional job in a professional office with on the job training/study support to qualify in that profession.

With school examinations being dumbed down over the decades, a few GCSEs or A levels no longer means what it used to mean, so they've become worthless for employers and are now used mainly for entry into further/higher education.

You didn’t need 3 A levels! 2 was perfectly ok and in fact was what was needed to go to do a polytechnic degree. Looking back at DH’s old grammar school A level results, (his mum kept the school magazines where the info was published) a whole load of boys got 2 A levels! I doubt any had problems becoming accountants, surveyors and similar! 3 A levels were taken and passed by boys going to the “red brick” universities. There were plenty of these too but now all the leavers go to university with a few grad apprenticeships too.

I’m not against widening of education but it has been met with some employers doing far last training. They tend to expect grads to be “oven ready” or they recruit them for lower level jobs with no list grad training. One thing that might help is that these grads might get into degree apprenticeships and change career. At the moment more do this at the expense of 18 year olds. Of course their employers know they are solid performers so they are less of a risk.

I do agree though that the solid intelligent school leavers of 40-50 years ago have now all gone to university. DH has tried to do day release for engineers leading to undergrad and professional qualifications (pre apprenticeships) but it’s very slow! Most high quality young people are at university and don’t see the advantage of the work/part time route. One of his offices is near his old grammar school so no one from there was interested!

@TizerorFizz

You didn’t need 3 A levels! 2 was perfectly ok and in fact was what was needed to go to do a polytechnic degree. Looking back at DH’s old grammar school A level results, (his mum kept the school magazines where the info was published) a whole load of boys got 2 A levels! I doubt any had problems becoming accountants, surveyors and similar! 3 A levels were taken and passed by boys going to the “red brick” universities. There were plenty of these too but now all the leavers go to university with a few grad apprenticeships too.

I’m not against widening of education but it has been met with some employers doing far last training. They tend to expect grads to be “oven ready” or they recruit them for lower level jobs with no list grad training. One thing that might help is that these grads might get into degree apprenticeships and change career. At the moment more do this at the expense of 18 year olds. Of course their employers know they are solid performers so they are less of a risk.

I do agree though that the solid intelligent school leavers of 40-50 years ago have now all gone to university. DH has tried to do day release for engineers leading to undergrad and professional qualifications (pre apprenticeships) but it’s very slow! Most high quality young people are at university and don’t see the advantage of the work/part time route. One of his offices is near his old grammar school so no one from there was interested!

For my profession, accountancy, it was definitely 3 A levels as I remember panicking about getting 3. I took 4 and was certain to get 2 of them, but the other 2 were hanging in the balance. As it was I got 3 grade Ds and 1 grade O, which by today's standards is pretty poor, but in those days, it was good enough to be accepted by the professional accountancy body as a student member.

As for kids from a grammar school not being interested in anything other than Uni, that's not the case anymore. My son went to a state grammar (in top 50 in the country), and on the sixth form leaver's destination webpage there are 20-30 students who are shown as going onto apprenticeship schemes with the likes of PWC (accountants), British Aerospace, BNFL, etc. The tide is definitely turning towards the "blue chip" apprentice schemes.

That's interesting, I wonder if that marks the beginning of a sea change in how young people view this apprenticeships? Especially as they avoid the large debts that university students incur.

Nursing and physiotherapy etc used to be taught on the job, via hospitals, and led to a diploma rather than a degree. It was still 3 years' training before you qualified but with more time spent actually doing the work. Now there is more theory and less practice so the students are probably better educated, but less well trained, if that makes sense. Is this an improvement on the old system? That's at least debatable…

@thing47 That's interesting, I wonder if that marks the beginning of a sea change in how young people view this apprenticeships? Especially as they avoid the large debts that university students incur.

I don't know if it's widespread. My son's school really pushed apprenticeships and at the "career's" fairs, they seemed to make sure that the big employers with apprenticeship schemes were represented as well as the Universities. So, I don't know if it was just his school that was pushing them alongside Unis, and obviously don't know what other schools do in that respect.

No it’s not universal judging by the grammars around me. The top apprenticeships are really hard to get and DC see getting one as more onerous then getting into university! The costs of living in London for some of them is prohibitive and living at home and commuting isn’t necessarily a great option either if you are some way out of London/employment area. I know they are not all based in London but getting from outlying areas into work isn’t easy without expense. If you can live at home, earn and study at a great university it’s fantastic. If some elements are difficult for you and the competition is fierce, university might still be a good option.

Therefore there cannot be a massive change until there are far more apprenticeships and uni places are part time. If there are not enough apprenticeships, there won’t be young people doing them in any great number. At the moment many are taken up by mature career changers. So there definitely has to be a change in numbers provided.

Several nurses I know who have done nursing degrees say they spend weeks and weeks working! They don’t seem to think they are particularly well educated or trained! Degrees confer expectation of something better. In reality it’s the same job and nothing much has been gained.

Several of our friends are accountants with 2 A levels but I’m older! After all you barely needed any academic qualifications to be a teacher years ago either! But when so few people did A levels, what was the point of asking for 3 A levels for lots of jobs? There wouldn’t be anyone doing them. My aunt trained to be a nurse with O levels. You did a pre nursing course. I do think there needs to be a balancing of what we need from employees and the best way to train them.