A levels 2023 - Results day and beyond

[HereWeGo2023]

Hi all. I thought I’d make a new thread as the countdown one is filling up.
Results day is here and I’m sure we will all value each others support, today and for the next stage of their journeys.

id like to know this too-we just got the grade not any numerical score?

Not sure if this helps, my DS, his girlfriend and their friend did AQA Music and all got an A star. They are all going to Oxford to study Music.
Congratulations on your DD’s place.

DS got his firm, Bath. He got his predicted A star AA. The stress after the first physics exam is a distant memory! He got the A he needed.

Well done to everyone that got what they needed for their next steps. I hope that those who have had a difficult day work things out, best of luck.

@Motherland2624

I'm sorry. Medical applications are so hard - I really hope Plymouth says yes.

If they don't though, there are still options. It's unusual for medicine to be in clearing, but not unheard of, and there are lots of options for science degrees with potential for going on to study medicine with graduate entry, or even applying to switch to medicine part-way through.

In recent years, I can honestly say that some of the best trainees I've had, have been people who came through 'non-traditional' routes. Universities look at grades, but in actual clinical practice, medical knowledge, skills, work ethic and life skills matter far more than an A*.

College provided individual exam paper scores for each subject. Then just googled this years grade boundaries for each exam board.

@abterol I feel for you. If my son had worked as hard as my daughter (who worked very very hard), he still wouldn't have got her grades. Some kids can sail through it but surely a rare breed!
Yes @SB1971 we got marks - good to know how closes to the boundaries. Plus DD was well chuffed to see 196/200 for History as she was predicted a B! She's requested photocopy of the papers to find out where those marks came off.

Some exam boards provide exact marks, some only provide grades in the first instance. Which isn't very helpful! The subject HoD can look up more details on the website.

Well done to everyone for getting through the process! I'm going to bow out now as I don't have a DC in this cohort and was only here to try to answer questions. I hope that this thread turns into one which is as supportive as the two year-group ones that I am on!

Hi, @moshmoshi

I can’t find your original post at the moment, only your reply to me.

In case your DS is rejected now, I think an FY or Access course would likely be a fine route for him. Just yesterday a DS on a different thread started ringing round for and got an FY place, so there are places available for this year still. Some FYs may go into Clearing. (You may already know that Student Finance will fund the length of the degree plus one year.)

If this were playing out in my family I would hope we would start researching Access courses and FYs with places for 2023 today and early tomorrow. Then DS could email his Firm and Ins tomorrow. If rejected, or if he wishes to reject his ins, we would move on, hoping for an FY or Access course this year.

If DS is still interested in OB he could ask their advice in choosing between open FY/Access courses.

It sounds like this has been very frustrating. Worst case, he can gain some good experience and, as you said, do the FY/Access next year. But if he prefers to start now I hope he can do that. I think chances are good. Best wishes to him

This was my son two years ago. And he got an incredible UCAT score. At the time it felt like the end of world and he was also devastated.

He took a gap year with an option to maybe resit (although I know some medicine degrees frown on this) and after a few weeks admitted to us that he felt we were more excited about medicine than he was - his dad is of Indian origin and the family over there were beside themselves with excitement as there had never been any doctors in the family. He landed himself a job in a big hospital lab processing and sequencing Covid tests, met lots of biochemists and he's now doing happily doing Biochemistry in Sheffield.

He has a friend doing medicine in Prague if that's an option and another doing it in Italy, although they need to be committed to getting fluid in the language in a couple of years and there's no loan possibility.

I know a couple of famous Doctors who got into medicine later doing graduate entry. All is not lost for him. 💐

Sorry for those who didn't get what they wanted. I hope everyone can get something else sorted soon.

Does anyone have a list of things that need to be done before uni starts? Setting up bank account etc? Need to help dd make a to do list and don't want to forget anything!

Thanks @sparkles18 , board was Edexcel so not the same exam. There were some internal shenanigans going on in the Music department this year and a feeling that the teacher was just marking time (see what I did there...) before leaving at the end of this term. Could have contributed, but who knows? Congrats to your Oxford musicians!

@poetryandwine and @Katbum following from your advice upthread I’m curious as to your thoughts re DDs scenario.

Needed AAB for firm & ABB for insurance. Got ABB but 1 mark away from A in subject choice. Insurance have accepted her and firm rejected at 21.07 last night. She really wants firm and school have said they’ll look at script and apply for ‘remark’. She’s in email conversation with firm uni but they’ve not yet confirmed if the A would be accepted to offset one of the B’s.
Given your comments I’m now concerned that it could be down graded & then lose her insurance, which she’s relatively happy to go to.

I am so sorry for all the DC who missed the mark.

It has happened to many of the best people. Scant consolation at the moment, I realise

I'm bemused by the grades Nottingham are offering in clearing for several courses.

Entry Requirements: BBC (or ACC or ABD or ACD or ABE)

Did they seriously miscalculate when making initial offers?

Which courses out of interest?

Hi, @NotDonna

Perhaps I am being thick about your question. The Firm offer is AAB and DD has ABB, including a B in the subject choice. Is that right?

Does she need an A in the subject choice for her Firm? Is the school considering having both B papers remarked, or just the subject paper? How close is she to the A grade in the paper(s) under consideration?

Potentially, or they advertised the course as ABB, or whatever it was, to make it look more popular/competitive than it is, or to encourage people to firm them.

We had the day from hell.
Woke up.and thr while village had no broadband so relying in crappie data. Ended up in McDonalds.to use WiFi and DD on thr phone in the car. Was predicted ABB but got BDD. One D was one mark off a C but even so.

Missed both firm.and insurance, many unis only using forms and rejected her straight away. Finally got an offer from Portsmouth to do Applied Languages. Really relieved eve. Though they still haven't accepted her on UCAS.

We both cried as really thr day was awful, she is asleep now and Internet has just made its way back. We never visited Portsmouth and it is 5 hrs away but DD1 excited about thr course and living by the sea...

It depends really on if her firm have met their targets for recruitment and whether they are willing to oversubscribe - that’s classified information with decisions usually controlled by the central admissions team governed by the policy that has been decided for that year’s entries. The fact they turned her down when she didn’t meet grades suggests they may not have spaces left to offer but I don’t know. I think if she is desperate for firm the only option is to wait for an answer…

Recently retired uni lecturer here. Often taking a gap year is a very positive experience.
We found students were often more mature and did better overall after a gap year.
Also they certainly won’t seem too old, even if they wait 10 years, we had students in their 50s and even 60s.
Not suggesting they wait that long but being entirely sure of where they want to go and what they want to do can only be helpful.

What's the subject involved? Some are relatively safe from being downgraded, whilst there are some where dropping a whole grade is more of a posibility.

So glad you got there in the end @Travelban . Everyone I knew who studied in Portsmouth had a great time and got a good degree. Southsea is both lively and lovely (I grew up there) and she can get the hovercraft to the Isle of Wight if she fancies it .

If she's excited about the course and location, that's a really good thing. Hopefully she will have a great time there!

Gap year students in this house, both going next month a little older and wiser with a year or so of work experience

DS also did OCR PE and is doing Sports Science at Uni so it’s his subject if that makes sense. Predicted an A star and got a B. Got marks back for each paper and he was 6 marks off an A.
All papers pretty much what he expected except for paper 3 which he apparently only got 34/60 which is really odd as he had never got lower than 50 in any mock. His teacher is totally confused as well. She’s going to get the scripts back as that paper is such an anomaly.