Medicine 2023 Entry - Part 4

[opoponax]

Anyone out there with DC applying or reapplying for Medicine 2023, please join a friendly thread for mutual support and useful advice.

DS hasn't been in touch about Chem (OCR A) and he's now in a 2.5 hour music A level exam.
Big day for him prob his worst. And the heat. Wow awful

Hi I wonder if anyone can offer some guidance.
Sorry this is so long, but I don't know how to ask you for help without providing all the relevant data.
DD has an offer at Southampton and a backup offer at ARU. She has great predicted grades and has had great test results all through the 2 years of A levels. She had her very first A level two weeks ago and there was a problem. The desk number she had been given was someone else's seat. There was no desk and no paper set out for her. There were I think 3 students in this position. She and they had to stand at the front of the hall while everyone else got settled in, got ready and then started the exam.
At this point my DD is 100% convinced it is all over, this subject will go down as ungraded and her career in medicine is finished unless she does 2 years of A levels all over again.
These students were found desks and papers about 15 mins after the exam started. They did the paper, were given the extra time at the end and that was that. She said she did really badly. Her friends all said that was an easy paper. She has since got the details of that paper and said, yup, it was an easy paper that woudl not normally cause her any issues. This is the subject she has consistently had the highest grades in throughout the last 2 years.
The other issue is that she didn't know what her candidate number was, as that was supposed to be on her desk, so she could only put her name on the paper.
Later that day she emailed her subject tutor and her tutor. Both said they would look into it and very quickly she received a email from the college exams email saying "...we are sorry you did not have an allocated seat for your exam - this was due to a technical problem. Apologies for any inconvenience caused by this - please note we will apply for special consideration for you to the exam board for this exam..."
On the plus side all the other papers she has done since, she has come out of the exam hall quite happy with her efforts, so this first paper really was an outlier. It is a terrible shame it was her first paper.
DD has 4 exams next week, so I really dont want to talk to her about this. She is now of the mindset that what will be will be and is focussing on her exams.
I think I need to do something on Monday, and have thought of these:

1. ask the college (her subject tutor) to contact both Unis for which she has offers and ask them whether they will still take her if she does terribly on that one subject/paper (will we know what the grades are per paper?), due to the circumstnaces, as he will be able to confirm her capabilities in a more independent way that I can
2. ask the exams office to contact the examining board to ask that if her paper1 is a very different grade to papers 2 and 3 for that subject that they mark up paper 1 in line with the 2nd two papers
3. Ask the exams office to confirm they added her candidate number to that first paper
4. Ring the unis and ask them what their process is for these kinds of situations
5. Could I ring the examing board to ask them what their process is in these situations?

DD mentioned something about resits the following week, but she has booked her first trip with friends away for that week, so to do that woudl mean cancelling that much needed holiday she is so looking forward to and has paid for herself.
I woudl be so grateful if anyone can advise what I ought to do, or if they have come across this kind of thing before. thanks

@WaitingForRainAgain breathe ! School will have applied for extra consideration and this should ensure she gets up to 25% extra. At this stage I'm not sure the exams officer can do much more, but it is definitely worth your DD (once all exams are over) emailing the admissions depts at each Uni - you might find there is an actual form to report this on their website. Look for special consideration form.
Keep all email correspondence and make sure any communication is done in writing. If on results day this one paper has caused her to miss a grade you will have evidence to argue her place. But, if all other papers have gone well, I doubt she'll need that.

@mumsneedwine thank you so much. More breathing is indeed needed! Everytime I think about what should I do? I feel sick. I can't talk to DD as she is on another planet at the moment with all of her exams in 3 weeks, and 4 papers next week. As I am sure are a lot of the DC as many will be doing the same subjects.
My DD thought the consideration would only give her a couple of marks, so up to 25% is a great deal better than what we thought.
I will look for the special consideration forms now to get her to do that after exams are over, thank you.
My worry is that I or the college ought to contact the Unis now, rather than on results day as I am assuming results day will be a bit of a bun fight. DH and I didn't go to uni and we don't know what the processes are.
I was worried that if this subject comes out at a lower grade than needed, the university will give her place to someone on their waiting list on the day and she won't have time to talk to them about this issue, is that not the case?
Thanks

@WaitingForRainAgain get her to email admissions at both Unis once she's finished exams.
And if I was you I'd email her exams officer, copying head in, and ask what extra consideration she will get (25% is the absolute max). Explain exactly what you put here, how it affected her performance, and stress that her Uni place depends on this subject (especially if it was Chemistry). No emotion, just clear facts. Write it, leave it over night, reread and then send.
Hopefully she's done well enough on the other papers that this won't ever be needed, but appeals on results day will be easier if have evidence of the effect.

thank you @mumsneedwine I will send that email and overnight thinking. It was maths. She seems happy enough with Chemistry and Biology so far.
It is a 6th form college, and I have no idea who the head is or if there even is one, so will do some research.
I have no idea how the marking works - are the A levels marked at the college, sent away to anonymous marking people...?

@WaitingForRainAgain , the maximum special consideration is 5% and that is for something like a parent passed away the night before an exam etc. Your dd will get between 1 and 3 % which is the norm for an exam disruption etc. The school will put in the consideration, exams officers do this day in, day out during exam period. You should have been sent an email from the exams officer before the exams started with details plus you can Google jcq.org.uk special consideration for the policy that applies to all exams sat this summer.

@WaitingForRainAgain apologies for raising hopes to 25%. We have had students get that for exam centre errors though.

Exams are packaged and sent off within hours of being sat. They are then scanned and sent to examiners online. School won't even see the answers she put - but can on results day. If it turns out that this paper is completely out of line with her other results then this is when we've had the 25% applied, because the discrepancy has been huge. Unis will usually hold offers until fast appeals are done.

thanks @tennissquare she did get an email with details, a desk number etc, but that turned out to be someone else's desk. They effectivley double booked a handful of desks and a few students had nothing ready for them, and thought that the exam was not happening for them.

@mumsneedwine fingers crossed she gets that kind of adjust if it went as badly as she thinks. she is expecting that paper to be way out of line with the next two for that subject. I didn't know that the college would see the grade for each of the 3 papers, that is useful.
So I can do my email to the college next week, she can email both unis for the special consideration details after A levels, and we have to wait until results day to do the appeal if needed.
Do the colleges/schools help with appeals or do we do that ourselves?

I can't offer any practical advice @jasminetrampoline but I'm really sorry this happened to your DD. It's a stressful enough time for them without having to deal with this, particularly in her first exam.

thank you @opoponax for your kind words. I best give up on the name change thing, I am clearly not very good at it. It was so awful that day, she was devastated. She has said maybe she just isn't supposed to do medicine, but she has worked so hard for these last few years, and put her heart and soul into it. When we have discussed it pre exams, she said there is nothing else she wants to do. She has given up so much to study, or to do her EPQ, or do the work experience. All of last summer was given up to UCAT study. For this one silly thing, that she didn't have control over, to possibly put an end to her journey would be awful.

@mumsneedwine I think you are a teacher/ have knowledge of how the system works?

DD is doing AQA biology. Found paper 1 quite good , but paper 2 just so so.

Shes found a few unofficial mark schemes online and thinks she has got around 50 on papet one and 40 on the paper two. I know this isnt an exact mark and the mark scheme may even be harsher.

She’s distraught that shes not going to hit the B and dreading uphill struggle for marks to get into sensible B boundary level.

School will be applying for special consideration for her due to death in the family.

The jcq guidelines say this is 4%. This comes out as 4% of 260 = 10.4 marks ( do they round this up to 11 or how do they deal with this?)

Any advice or pearls of wisdom please?

Thank you

@kackle please please please tell her not to base any grade on unofficial mark schemes. Lots of questions have several correct answers (look at them online and you'll see an accept column, this is developed by chief examiners as they see the way students have interpreted the question). So extra marks can always be picked up from those stupid, highly inaccurate, bogus mark schemes that someone has made up.

Nothing good comes from trying to predict your grade. Focus on the exams left to come and aim to ace those.

@jasminetrampoline so sorry your DD had to go through that, through no fault of her own. I work in an 11-16 school so no experience of A level consideration but the GCSE special circumstances procedure sounds like it is the same and it’s our exam officers that deal with it. Your DD sounds very sensible to just crack on with the rest and not dwell on it. I understand it is impossible for you not to fret- in your situation I would be contacting her tutor at college if you are struggling to work out who to get hold of- and hopefully they can put you in touch with the right people. Just having a chat about the process and confirmation the college are into it might help?

@kackle a very lovely friend of mine who teaches A level invokes fight club rules post an exam - don’t talk about what was in them and certainly don’t look at to internet for answers. In similar situations with students who are in a flap when they feel an exam has gone badly I say that it’s understandable to worry but that worry is not useful , will not change anything and may impact other exams. So they should give themselves permission to worry- BUT schedule it for after the exams are over. So literally say - I AM going to have a worry over that exam (and probably a cry) and i will have it at 2pm on the 24th June.

I have both DDs in exam years plus an exam year tutor group at work and it seems to have been going on for ever. DD2 has her last gcse wed and then DD1 goes to Friday. It’s been hard keeping up the intensity of revision she needs to be doing and hard for me to tread that line between supporting her downtime which is important and not nagging. I have also left her to it with revision and then was kicking myself when she came out of biology (which is the one I can help with) saying there was something she hadn’t revised as the teacher had missed it and she hadn’t gone though the spec with a fine tooth comb.

She got a slightly odd email from Cardiff recently rejecting her for not making the cutoff from the little interview exam thing they did. I say odd because she withdrew from Cardiff months ago as soon as she had 2 offers from her preferred options so she didn’t need them to contact her and essentially go ‘well we didn’t want you anyway! ‘

@Cathpot @mumsneedwine thanks for your replies.

This really has been a long drawn out month. Dd does Psychology which is one of the early ones, it just feels like a long drag.

She’s stressed, tearful and its a balancing act between supporting her and keeping her focused.

We have had a death in the family too which really hasnt helped. I really don't understand the process but school say she is entitled to an extra 4%. Does anyone know how this works?

Having worked so hard for her uni offers, the thought of her not getting her grade seem unbearable.

Roll on 23rd!

agree @kackle roll on the 23rd, can't wait!

@Cathpot thank you

@kackle the 4% will be automatically applied.

4% of 260 is 10.4 marks

Surely they don’t award 0.4 of a mark. Will it be rounded up or down in this case as lower than 0.5?

thanks

@kackle that I'm not sure of. I'd imagine they'll round up. But could ask exam officer if not sure - just bear in mind they are a bit busy until end of the week.

Now that exams are over, it's time to start the journey of reapplying. Would someone please remind me of the book that was referred to as the 'bible' of interview prep? I can't find the post and thought I'd carefully bookmarked it!

@IGoWalkingAfterMidnight this is my favourite. Hope exams went ok. Smash that UCAT !