Advice on number of A levels for Uni admissions

[bigboned]

Ds has sat an A level a year early and achieved a B. His school does not do AS levels. He was sitting 3 other subjects but wants to give up 1 - he hates it. How will uni admissions view the fact he has done 1 A level early, and is now only sitting 2 A levels with no AS levels? School advice is to speak to admissions tutors but he has absolutely no idea what he wants to study. Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks.

Not discouraging. Factual.

I do not want the many people who don't have experience of how the system works to think that having the minimum requirements is all you need. Which is the falsehood you persist in repeating, polonium. It is just not true.

Minimum requirement means just that. Without the minimum requirement you're not even considered. With the minimum requirement you will not be considered if there are others better qualified than you.

going back to the Maths/FM thing - what DD1 did was sit the Maths modules in Y12 but not cash them in until after she'd sat the FM modules in Y13. She got her marks for the Y12 modules (but not the grades), which meant she knew what marks she needed to get in the Y13 modules to get the grades she needed. Then after the Y13 results, she could (if she'd needed to) juggle the module combinations to get the results she wanted (it's possible to have A* in Maths and B in FM, or As in both form the same results).

So in this (quite specific) situation, you have ASs and A2s from the same sitting. However, Maths unis know how that works, although the UCAS form was trickier as DDs didn't have as many ASs as she "should" have done.

'Typical offers' aren't the same as admitted grades, just the same as predicted grades aren't the same as achieved grades. If your higher bar theory is true, why was pretty much the entire Russell Group in clearing, and in many cases accepting students at grades below the minimum grades stated in their prospectuses?

Universities are selling you a service. Of course they want to make their offering look as desirable as possible.

The thing is it'd a numbers game innit ?

The minimum requirement is just that - the bare minimum.

If however there is pressure on places then most applicants will be rejected on the first sift. Not an auto-computer-says-no rejection, but a realistic sifting.

If 100 apply for 10 places and the majority have more than the minumum then anyone with the min probably won't get an offer.

Unless we're looking at contextual offers, then slightly different .

Just to add have been through the UCAS system (er, and resits and clearing...) before with older teen, so am familiar with some of the requirements - this DS is just a bit of an unusual case. My concern is his struggling on with a subject that he hates will demand a huge amount of work to scrape through, at the expense of other grades in other subjects. I don't feel this is cutting off options, its being realistic about whats achievable.

Polonium - whilst your assertion that the entire RG was in clearing is more or less correct in terms of the individual institutions, most only had a few courses to fill. The vast majority of courses at RG institutions do NOT go into clearing.

The minimum requirements for most elite universities at GCSE level is 5 x Cs. Do you really think that a candidate with 5 x Cs, who does not have mitigating circumstances will be in the 'possible' pile?

Do you actually have any experience of university admissions?

I do find your contributions to this thread bizarre, polonium. What is your agenda?

titchy -

CLEARING 2014
Just over 36,000 courses overall will have vacancies on Thursday morning as pupils receive their A-level results compared with around 30,000 at the same a year earlier – an increase of a fifth;
• Some 18 Russell Group universities are advertising courses through clearing including Bristol, Durham, King’s College London, Exeter, Nottingham, Warwick and York – two more than in 2013 when Bristol and King’s were not initially featured;
• Courses with vacancies at leading universities include respected disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, economics, maths, geography, history, English, French and German;
• Almost 120 universities and higher education colleges are offering places to study law – one of the most sought-after courses – including Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Southampton.

Looking at the Telegraph clearing list, I can't see that any Law courses at those universities are available.

Maybe I'm reading it incorrectly.

TheWordFactory That was weeks ago.

Hakluyt - my agenda is widening participation in university education. Your elitist nonsense on this thread is very damaging.

Ah that'll be why there are only courses left in Congo Dancing at the University of Anfield Road .

Pol you are categorically making the WP agenda worse. Too many applicants rule themselves out by picking the wrong A Levels, taking A Levels they are not academically cut out for, or thinking their 5 C grade GCSEs will not be a problem at the likes KCL etc. Then they get disillusioned when they get no offers.

To truly widen participation, something my institution does extremely well I might add, we need to stop peddling misinformation, and make sure teachers, careers advisors (where they exist) and parents are properly informed about what we as universities are actually looking for.

"Hakluyt - my agenda is widening participation in university education. Your elitist nonsense on this thread is very damaging." What utter, utter bollocks.

Not half as bloody damaging as saying to kids "Don't worry- it says the minimum requirement is 3 Cs- you'll be fine with that. And it doesn't matter what subjects they are in or how many goes you have to take"

Parents and their children need facts. And you are saying things on this thread which are wrong.

Not half as bloody damaging as saying to kids "Don't worry- it says the minimum requirement is 3 Cs- you'll be fine with that. And it doesn't matter what subjects they are in or how many goes you have to take"

Show me where I said that? I didn't say that nor did I say anything broadly interpreted to mean that. Yuk.

Titchy - show me something I've said on this thread that is factually incorrect/inaccurate.

I agree with Hakluyt and titchy, it is a fact that no UK student with our minimum qualifications will be entering our department's programmes this year. Applicants need to know that applying to us with minimum qualifications is almost definitely a waste of a UCAS choice. There is, I admit, a very small probability that our applications will drop catastrophically and we go back to the situation we were in a decade ago when our subject was unpopular and we could more or less guarantee a place for those with the minimum I would bet very heavily against that happening over one UCAS cycle. It is also possible that an individual might have circumstances which, when taken into consideration, result in a significantly lower offer. There are programmes at my university where minimum is currently fine, that will be reflected in the advertised typical offer.

Polonium, every time you imply that all you need to get into university is the minimum requirements, and every time you say that sitting exams in two consecutive years counts as one sitting you are saying something factually incorrect.

Today at 9.14.01:
The minimum requirements as stated by a selecting university are always enough to be considered for selection.

That is factually incorrect. It may be correct for a recruiting university, but not a selecting one.

Tuesday at 20.01.42:
A two year cycle is 'one sitting' for a whole A level.

Also incorrect. One sitting is one exam session.

chemenger - of course there are some subjects at some institutions which command stellar grades and they are often over-subscribed. But for the vast majority of courses at even RG universities it isn't like this.

If you compare Dept of Ed stats about A level results. Specifically the percentage of students attaining AAB in three facilitating subjects or percentage gaining AAB in two facilitating subjects.

www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/school.pl?urn=136382&superview=p16 (put your own school in here)

The percentage is surprisingly low. Even at grammar schools the percentage is woefully low. Look up your child's school and now look at your school's destination of leavers list. Students going to RG unis are not all getting brilliant grades in facilitating subjects. It's a silly thing to spread. Kids who from unsupported backgrounds read this sort of stuff and take it at face value. I've watched privileged kid after privileged kid with poor grades advance to RG unis while kids with no support with better grades end up believing they should take the place at the University of East London. It needs to stop.

But you've fallen into the trap Pol - facilitating subjects does not equal 'non-soft' subjects. There is again too much misinformation peddled about how important facilitating subjects are.

All a facilitating subject means is that you need it to do that subject at university, so if you don't know what you want to study keep in a couple of facilitating subjects so you won't rule these degrees out.

Music, Philosophy, Economics are examples of A levels which are not facilitating subjects, but are well regarded by even the most selective universities as perfectly solid subjects. Obviously they won't get you onto a maths degree, even at the much maligned UEL, but Oxbridge will quite happily accept those from their Law applicants.

Titchy - I also said I acknowledged having the minimum requirements doesn't mean you'll be offered a place. But universities should consider your application if you meet the minimum requirements. If your institution isn't doing that, you should change the minimum requirements to reflect the reality i.e. stop lying to your applicants.

A two year cycle with no resits is one sitting for A levels. It would be absurd for it to be otherwise. We've been through this. If you have evidence that this is not normally the case, name the institution and I'll seek clarification.

I stand by what I said. And if you are saying the case is different in your university, name the university.

titchy - I'm not falling into a trap. I'm showing you that the advice dished out by the Russell Group Universities body itself which specifically recommends at least two facilitating subjects is seemingly not what gets students into RG universities (because precious few people manage to achieve good grades in two let alone three facilitating subjects).

Yawn. Informed choices recommends facilitating subjects in order to keep options open. If you don't need to keep options open then you don't NEED facilitating subjects unless you are going tondo one of those degrees.

And no I won't out myself or name my institution - it wouldn't help anyway as we are sadly not a selective institution!