UK university after attending EU school with European Baccelaureate

[Dryroses]

Is anyone the parent of a recent graduate from an EU school who can shed some light on the admissions chances to a UK university? We are category 1 and are moving our kids to the EE2 in Luxembourg (from the local school) next year. I wondered if anyone might be able to give some feedback on whether they felt their children were well prepared academically for UK universities? I have heard that sometimes the UK admissions officers don’t understand the EB grade equivalency and can underestimate the difficulty of the program. Is this still true?

We went through this a few years ago. Our experience was that UK universities are aware of the EB but indeed clueless about how to position it, because they see so few applicants.

That can work for or against you, though. DD was offered 70/100 by Bristol (which normally doesn't throw easy offers around) and another RG uni, and 80/100 by the RG uni she ended up going to. Other parents told us of some even weirder sets of offers. (80 looks like a big number, but it's quite doable; it's probably the equivalent of A*AA in the English system. 70 is the equivalent of AAB, which I suspect will not get you into Bristol.)

Another thing to watch for is that the UK uni may sometimes ask for a high minimum grade in English. For non-native speakers this is understandable as their English exam is "English as a foreign language", but for the native English-speakers a slightly lower score may just mean they are not all that good at/interested in literature and doesn't imply that there will be any barriers to learning. DD's English was not her best subject and she got less than the minimum, but we wrote a letter to the admissions tutor and all was fine.

In terms of preparation, DD reported that she probably had a wider general education than her peers, but she took a little time to develop the UK study skills which A-levels prepare you for better. She ended up with a good 2:1 and did fine overall.

The European schools in general are fantastic and surprisingly non-political (small p). We were expecting all of the signs to be up in all 5 of the principal languages (that list varies by school), but very often it would only be in one. If the Dutch section is organising an event they will put the sign up in Dutch, and if you can't read it, well, you either learn to read it or you make a Dutch friend.

Name changed for this one. ❤️

My child attended the EE2 in Luxembourg and also attended a RG uni. They felt they were better prepared when starting there than many of the students who had done A Levels.

The oral bac exams were excellent preparation for weekly tutorials where they had to present an idea and defend it.

They got a 1st for their Bachelors and a 1st for their Masters at top UK unis.

They felt the offers they received were probably easier to reach than the ones sent to A Level Students. But they ended up as one of the highest scoring students on each of their degrees. And never felt out of their depth despite not being top of their class at the EE. The school prepared them very well for uni.

Many of their old class mates also attended other top unis (Imperial, Oxbridge etc).

This is great feedback, thank you!

@EE2LUX Which languages did you select for L2 and L3? Mine are speaking, reading, and writing in German from their years in local primary, and they also have a decent handle on French. We are thinking of going for French as L2 as it seems more useful in the workplace here in Luxembourg, but we’ve heard that the French L2 kids tend to get lower scores at the end because of the harder French marking. Is it a bad idea to carry French as L2 only through to S5, and then swap to German for S6 and S7? Will they be able to maintain and improve their German if it is only their L3 for the first 5 years?

My DC was in the English section with FR as L2 and another (not German) language as L3.

I would go for the language they are strongest in for L2. They will have to do subjects in L2 in secondary so the stronger that language the better. Having storing German from the Lux primary system will be a big help.

They can take French as L3 and will anyway pick it up in the playground and just by being exposed here in Luxembourg.

It depends on the subject. I had a pleasure to teach a few students who transferred from EU to the UK system for the sixth form, the last two years of UK high school before university. They had a good general education but not in-depth enough as required by the UK A-levels. This was generally a problem for the specialist subjects like law, business or economics. The students usually had to switch to another, more generalist subject they were better acquainted with from the European School (the one I encountered was Brussels), which was usually Philosophy and Politics. There were no problems with maths, but surprisingly there were a few problems with foreign languages. Here the European students had a good L2 standard for GCSE but not sufficient for A-level. For example, they thought it was too much work to study two books (or a book and a film) in a foreign language and write essays about it in a foreign language as required by the UK A-level. I was quite surprised by this as some students came from bilingual families and spoke those languages at home. History was another subject that was generally fine too (and probably science, but cannot confirm as not my area). Another issue you might come across - but as someone had pointed out this depends very much on the institution, is the lack of GCSEs. This might be a problem particularly if the student has British nationality, for foreign nations, this is more easily excused under UK NARIC equivalency rules. Nevertheless, UK students usually hold 7-11 GCSEs in a variety of subjects and this is taken into account when Universities are making them offers, so you would be competing for a place against students who already have a set of exam results from general education they had sat at the age of 16. Increasingly, the universities do require GCSE in maths and English and this is also a standard requirement for professional master's courses, e.g. teachers training, law, accounting etc. However, if they require it, they might offer you an equivalency test instead. For English, you can ask your DC to sit Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English or Proficiency, which is accepted by all Universities as evidence of native-level English standard.

My dd went to a European School - had a wonderful time and is now very happily doing a degree in the uk. I thought the world would end as she didn't do GCSE/A levels. I was wrong. She got three offers from excellent universities and has had a great experience.

My Training Provider (not a University) didn’t accept my Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English and asked me to do GCSE equivalency test instead.