Thread 45 GCSE Covid Cohort - Bunnies bouncing into Spring

[OrangeCinnamonLatte]

This is a support thread for our young adults post GCSEs 2020, regardless of their educational setting, and their results ( or life updates for those who went into work or have had results earlier). It is respectfully requested that all are supportive and helpful to each other. If you want to start a debate, e.g state vs private, uni vs employment please don't within this thread.

Some of us have been here since first thread back in yr10, some will be new. Everyone has been friendly and helpful in the past. Everyone is welcome. It is hoped this will continue. We were previously on the secondary board and then further education, now we shall be here in 'Parents of Adult Children' gulp

Our DS/DD may continue down various pathways ( employment, apprenticeships, higher ed). Be warned there might be lots of 'Uni Freshers' chat this time of year. My experience is that everyone is welcomed wherever, whatever their child is doing we have some in work, gap years , apprenticeships etc too. Lots of contributors with different experiences and always sympathy and advice to be had

previous thread

It is interesting, @Piggywaspushed, and only slightly depressing when I compare the numbers to my own salary (sigh). Ah well, back to marking essays and studying for my current degree...!

Also if you are interested in meeting diversity targets maybe that is another reason to give st Andrews wide berth, but Durham and Bristol/Exeter do ok

Did you also notice that 24% were recruited via work placements or internships? Interesting!

Makes total sense though piggy doesn’t it. And a lot of that will be law firms that basically recruit off their vac schemes

Yes, guess so!

Yes, interesting and not surprising about that figure!

In a completely different field, anecdotally those in design jobs who have salaried roles often find them through internships. (In illustration, most are freelancers, which presents a different set of problems.) The next big challenge for DD will be seeing whether she can find a year-long internship/placement somewhere for 2024/5 (if not, she drops down to the three-year version of the degree).

DS1 entered second round of National Grad recruitment for local government but hated all the online group presentations and so on, so suspect he won't get any further.

He could do with a decent milk round type uni to be honest. It is definitely true that they are less supported and less targeted elsewhere.

Thanks for sharing @Piggywaspushed. Interesting.

The landscape for internships / placements has totally changed since my day, I did a sandwich degree and the uni did most of the organising of placements, they made suggestions, put our names forward and we went for interviews. There was no question of anyone not getting one, we went to all the big names in our industry, mine was a massive help in obtaining my first graduate job. Later I was responsible for recruiting and supervising sandwich students, seeing them develop and grow up over the year they were with us was a huge source of pride. Now there are no guarantees of getting one at all, the students do all the work to find them, it is so much harder. DS has found one fairly easily for the summer, but it is voluntary, virtually zero chance of a paid one in his field, so he has had to restrict himself to close to home here. Good luck to your DD @PhotoDad and anyone else whose DC will be placement-hunting.

Hello everyone! I'm rarely online at this time today and at this time as I'm usually in church, however we've had a bid leakage and no heating all week so had to stick around for plumber to arrive and thought i'd see what's going on here .

@EasilyDirected I'm surprised to read your uni organised placements for you and you just attended interviews, gosh! I wish that's how it was in my time. I was on a sandwich course but we were totally left to find placements ourselves, I hadn't been residing in the UK all that long and didn't know my left from my right needless to say i couldn't find one. Can I ask where you went to uni? i went to a rubbish uni (bottom up from leagues tables!) perhaps it was just the university i attended.

Hi shimy!

Our sandwich placements were also organised by the Uni I went to. I think it was fairly common within Engineering as they had built relationships between employers and uni staff, so had mostly the same placement opportunities year on year. My DD wants to do a placement between yr 2 & 3 and it seems so much harder to organise now! So if anyone knows anything about maths placements do let me know 🙂

@Piggywaspushed the data is interesting - though I now want to know what the population data is to compare against - eg if 49% of graduate posts went to non-russell graduates, what % of total graduates are for non-russell as a comparison? I may find myself disappearing down a rabbit hole looking at this now!

Hi Piggy! long time. Hope your DS's are doing well? (sounds like a letter )
It is hard finding placements isn't it? DS1 got one by sheer divine intervention because there's no way he did it by his own strength! Preparing for this exercise again with DS2 who is a lot more enthused.

Well , DS2 is fine shimy*! DS1... just the same...

@handmademitlove Get her to register on Gradcracker, it is mainly for STEM subjects but I've seen lots looking for people with Maths degrees as well (depending on what she wants to do later).

@Piggywaspushed Your DS1 is doing a Masters isn't he? what does he want to do next and is he enjoying his Masters?

I do kind of think that personality and confidence are what get graduates into these schemes more than uni/support/grades etc. I worked at a big four accountancy firm but I joined once qualified. I remember going on a course for aspiring managers and we all had to do these personality tests where you ended up being mainly blue, green or red. Can’t remember the exact meaning of each colour but we had to stand with others of the same colour at the end. I was struck by how neatly everyone there was red! From memory, you got red if you were ambitious, driven, a leader, a go-getter etc etc! I wasn’t surprised that there were only about 3 in the green corner - I think we were more reflective, introverted types 😂

My old firm definitely favoured red types when recruiting!

He doesn't have any plans, other than waiting for the outcome of the local government recruitment.

Enjoying and DS1 don't go in the same sentence...

@Shimy it was Portsmouth, in the late 1980s. The department had contacts all
over the place. I'm really not sure how we'd have done it otherwise, pre-internet.

Thanks @Shimy will pass that on

@Piggywaspushed Fingers crossed for your DS & the LG recruitment. He's dome well completing his degree and Masters. Quite a few of that cohort dropped out during the pandemic. I actually think my ds1 & yours were saved by their introversion.

@EasilyDirected It was for I.T (London Poly) and despite being in the city had no contacts whatsoever! loads of us didn't get placements and there was no help whatsoever not even with our CV's. Mind you this was in '91 so perhaps the tide was changing already by then. Didn't want the same to happen to DS's, thankfully DS1 was successful.

Yes, I suspect the social isolation wasn't that undesirable to them...