How important are GCSEs for university applications?

[GnomeDePlume]

DD1 has done well in her GCSEs (3As, 7As) all in sound academic subjects. She wants to go to university to study chemistry (one of her A subjects) eventually.

I read a comment in the Telegraph at the weekend which said that 6* is the requirement for RG universities where the student attended a selective school.

DD's school is not selective and is not by any stretch of the imagination a 'good' school (in and out of special measures a couple of times in the last few years, below average GCSE & ebacc scores).

So, how much store do university admissions tutors set by A* at GCSE? Is allowance made where students have attended bog standard comps rather than selective grammars or independants?

DD will be starting to look at universities during year 12 is it worth still looking at RG or should she be setting her sights a little lower?

Well, a lot of people had better o'levels than me but got nowhere near as high A'levels & vice versa. Obviously there were some who got a's all the way through!!! Didn't stop me from getting an interview at Oxford though.

Surely there must be some kind of positive correlation!

I think that there is probably reasonably strong correlation normally. The difficulty is spotting the anomolies. The bright student at a poor school who perhaps through a lack of dedicated teaching and difficult homelife produces the same GCSEs as the uninspired student at a selective school being flogged through by extra tuition.

One student may be on the way up, the other on the way down.

Contextual data will help a tutor spot the difference.

In my subject area, there is little correlation between A level and degree outcomes, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was also the case at GCSE A level.

The different levels use different types of skill which suit some better than others I think.

The strongest correlation is apparently still held to be that between straight A*s at GCSE and distinctions and Firsts. I don't have any scientific research to link, but it should be out there somewhere.

okay I have sifted through my kids for this year - here is a sample from the 120 that finished in the Summer

8A 2As - got AAA - off to Nottingham
10A - got AAA - off to Bristol
2A 8Bs - got AAAA - off to Imperial
2A 6B 2C - AAAB - off to Nottingham
1A1A Distinction 3 Bs 2C - AABB off to Manchester
1A 9B - AAB - off to Leeds
Distinction, 4B, 2C - AAB - off to Birmingham
10A -AAA - off to Southampton
Distinction 1A 4B 1C - AAC - off to Surrey
2A, 4B, 4C - A*BB - off to Loughborough

looked through all the others and could not identify any students with mainly Cs at GCSE getting into a RG uni. Basically all sorts of combos of A*/A/B/BTEC Distinctions seem to have got in RG or 1994 uni with at least an AAB combination at A Level

thanks happilyconfused, those results make total sense to me (and your students have done extremely well).

Equally, however, I have (English lit, my subject, is the first grade),

4a, 6a - A levels a, b, c, failed to meet conditions of offer from Exeter, went to Cardiff in clearing, to do Lit...

6A, 4A, 1B, at private school, got A, A*, A, off to Oxford

4A, 4A, B, C, got A, B, B, gone to do a foundation degree in Art at Leeds

5A, 6B, got A*, A , B, off to Bristol to do Lit.

There are various others. I think all you can see from all of this is that GCSE is at best a precarious guide, and as I mentioned way back, my son got only 7 A-C - no As, and 2 Ds - got ACUU at AS, and still got offers from all 4 RG unis he applied to - and got A, A, A, A at A level.

I truly think that anyone reading most of your responses here would think that universities set huge store by GCSE grades, and my experience as a sixth form tutor and a parent suggests they don't. I would hate anyone reading this thread to look at DC's grades and decide they should lower their sights. The thing that matters most of all is predicted (not target) grades, and the personal statement.

Students should go to open days and discuss it with admissions tutors if they are concerned. One poster said it would make no difference, but firstly they give great advice - eg that dual honours gave less flexibility in the choice of modules - and the three that DS visited made offers within a week, and all three tutors wrote down his name and notes about him. If, like him, you are more impressive in person than on paper, it makes sense to meet them. When we went back for induction, the tutor also remembered a lot of his personal statement. A good personal statement is way up there above pre-16 grades, in my opinion.

Oh, and in reference to happilyconfused's post, DS's average grade at GCSE was around b/c boundary, and his offers were all ABB, his predicted being AAB, including Nottingham, Newcastle, and Sheffield, where he is going, to study a very solid, academic subject.

Sleepy you may be making too many generalisations from the particular. Clearly your DS is very charismatic if the tutors remember him so well. And clearly he's had a good break. but on the whole GCSEs eally are very, very important for success with university apps. And the higher a student aims, the more important they get.

really, not eally.

I was a sixth form tutor for 5 years - I am now a year head and so have lots of experience, as well as being a governor of another school, linked to their sixth form. Most of what is posted here bears no resemblance to my experience of grade outcomes or the process my students experienced, or to offers made. Maybe they were all anomalous, but I have guided over 40 students through the process and been aware of hundreds more.

Well my experience is different in that case, Sleepy. In that experience, GCSEs are very important indeed, though no point quarelling. We may have experience of different parts of the spectrum.

Possibly, but we are the largest sender to Oxbridge in the County.

All I am trying to say is that those with the full package - GCSE, AS, statement, predicted - will get offers, obviously, but those who excel in their statement, who genuinely show passion for the subject, and meet the predicted requirements in my experience get offers too. Not Oxbridge, maybe, but RG, definitely.

On a side note, students from poor performing schools with B grades at A level typically outperform (at degree level) those with A+ from top performing schools. Not that Oxford wants to hear that.

I would expect that all these stats are very well known to Oxford. And all the other good universities too.

There's too much variation in the admissions process to say with certainty that a PS can make a difference. Sometimes it won't even be read before it's put on the 'no' pile. That's where good GCSEs help.

There was a long debate about it with Oxford about six months ago. They didn't like the study, because the numbers of b grade students were so small... I wonder why...

Equally, a lot won't get put on the no pile. These students have one shot. They won't get 52% of a place, or 37%, or whatever. They will, or they won't, get an offer. The only way to be sure they won't is to not apply.

Given that we all agree that ABB is the minimum RG offer, and that next year the AAB widening will be ABB, I hear, the best advice to a student with predicted grades that meet the university's usual offer is to apply. If they get no offers, which would run contrary to my experience, there is extra, and if they get their AAB/ABB, they will amost certainly also get offers through clearing and adjustment. That is how I will be advising mine this year.

Sorry haven't read the whole thread. I would recommend your dd (NOT YOU) calling the admission team to discuss requirements. make sure she has read all the website and is asking for info not on there/clarifying things mentioned. I would expect they would appreciate the level on interest.

I certainly agree with aiming high.

I always get students to aim high, but where you meet the published criteria, I would say it is aiming level.

Which is why the vibe on this thread - manifestly incorrect, as a couple of well placed posters tried valiantly to assert - that somehow 7 A/A* was a widespread requirement for the first cut, is unhelpful in the extreme. People will put their kids off applying and that is really bad.

Just wondering why Grammar school pupils grades count for less than those at comps? Grammar schools are state schools and as such suffer from bad teachers, have children from a deprived background etc.
Surely all comps 'set' their pupils anyway?

grammer schools in my understanding are way more "middle class" than the "average" comp say - for a whole lot of reason -

catwoo and AnOtherName Unis are considering results in the context of the other information provided by school and pupil. It really isn't a simple judgement which ranks selective independents, independents, grammars, comps because there are so many variations in the characters of these schools, and in the individual experience of pupils . Sometimes the reference tells us as much by the way it is written as it does in what it says!! Some unis do do a computerised sift (because there may be hundreds or thousands of applications and they just cannot look in detail at every one )but have formulas for scoring results according to contextual data but this will usually weight GCSE and As level scores and predicted grades against the average for the school (rather than the type, although they may factor in whether it was selective).

I am afraid some very in demand courses can have thousands of applicants, and a minimum 3 A offer (some are now including As in that ) so unless there is strong contextual data to support the judgement that they have more potential to do well on the course then all the others applying with a full set of As at GCSE supporting the 3/4 A/A prediction at A level they would be unlikely to get an offer. In DDs cohort there was a pupil with 10A and predicted, and realised, AAAA, pooled by Cambridge but rejected by the Chemistry course at Durham for instance. The most in demand course in the country is Economics at LSE, I would not want to be admissions officer for that course!

However as Sleepysand has highlighted there are plenty of Russell Group unis and courses that do not face the same demand, and standards for entry are not so stratospheric. This doesn't mean they aren't almost as, if not, equally good academically, demand is driven by all sorts of other factors, such as out of date parental perceptions, social life, the city or town they are part of, the sports on offer etc. And there are often back ways into even the most elite institutions, doing less popular courses or joint honours. The offer to read Eastern European History at SEES, part of UCL is a lot lower than to read History at UCL itself but I wonder how many employers would know that.

The key thing as everyone here has posted is to read the prospectus and if your results are not quite what is asked for speak to the admissions officer.

On top of this all unis are keen to widen inclusivity so they really do want to hear about any barriers a pupil has encountered, including poor teaching, personal hardship, SLDs etc. A lot of parents and teachers still seem to percieve SLDs as a label they should avoid. Yet all universities are now very accomplished at understanding the needs and supporting those with SLDs, far better than most schools, not least because we understand that SLDs can go hand in hand with strengths that often come into their own when studying at the higher level. My friend's dyslexic daughter when applying for medicine went for an interview, and was handed a form to complete by a very embarassed looking interviewer with a very caring look, and the offer of anything they could do to help, including a more comfortable chair than the other interviewees! Obviously it shouldn't be this patronising but she was offered a place.

I have found all the answers to my original question fascinating.

What I had thought was that one or two admissions tutors would come on and say that all universities use a standard scale assigning scores to GCSEs and AS levels with a weighting for contextual data. This is then used as a 'first pass'.

Instead what there is seems to be a lot more complex and far less standardised. On the whole I find that reassuring. Applicants to courses are individuals rather than the product of a sausage factory. All will have strengths and weaknesses and will find that some courses and institutions will suit better than others.

Hey ho, DD starts 6th form this week. Fortunately at this stage catchment areas dont apply so she is able to cross the county border to go to a far better school than is available up to GCSE. It is sad how few of her contemporaries are making the same move.

My daughter only has 3As at GCSE but has amazing AS results and is predicted AA*A and recently got an offer from Manchester within a few hours of them receiving her application. She also has an offer from Durham and has applied to 3 more incredibly competitive universities (even more so than Durham) but has repeatedly been told that she has a very good chance. GCSEs are absolutely not everything unless you're applying to Oxford or LSE.

DD got 5 RG offers with 3 x A* and the rest A
the only Uni she was ruled out from was Oxford who wanted 5 x A*