Finishing (not starting) Year 13 support thread (number 5!)

[Littleham]

Exam season starts....

The famous Physics exam.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-33094306

OCR

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-33102032

Lower the grade boundaries is well and good but doesn't help if it has distracted them or knocked their confidence preparing for the next exams

That happened to a lot of the Edexcel GCSE Maths students decorhate. They came out of the exam and gave up for the next exams.

Not looking forward to Biology A Level next week.

You they're the two that DS did...

Littleham that wasn't the Physics paper that DS sat today - his was OCR Gateway. Sounds like these exam boards make too many mistakes .

He said he was able to answer that Chemistry question mentioned in the other article though

DS is doing General Studies tomorrow too. They don't actually teach it at his college, so no idea how that will go. He says he has looked at a few past papers today but that is all. The Unis he has applied to don't count it anyway.

Molio thanks - they did send out the Elat scores, earlier this year, with a nice letter.

Littleham - Re being happy with her insurance choice, this is where it gets tricky, as the firm and the insurance are both the same - AAA, so effectively, there is no insurance.

It's a bit weird, but the three universities she liked apart from oxford were either higher offers (A*AA) or the same (AAA). So rather than have no insurance at all, she went for both the same!

We rationalised it on the basis that without oxford, her choices would have been A*AA firm, AAA insurance.

Fingers crossed here for a good result on the stronger subjects - both now finished - to compensate for ghastly biology - poor DD has nothing but biology stress, from now til next Wednesday!

C3 maths in the morning, good luck for tomorrow everyone, another day in paradise!! At least it's a Friday!

C3 Maths here today, hope everyone's exams go well.

Yes fingers crossed today is ok

Dd is doing General Studies today. She has done nothing for it other than looked at some things online last night, so goodness knows how this is going to pan out. She can write (and waffle!) so she has that in her favour.

Hoping for a good C3 paper today!
Figment - unfortunately we are also in the position of DD's firm and insurance wanting the same grades - the only difference being that her firm is specifying which subjects need a specific grade.

C3 here for ds, nothing for dd until Monday. Hope it's a reasonable paper, good luck everyone x

Good luck to all today.

DD thinks English was ok so she's just got the second politics and French next week and then we're done. Her science friends are finding it all a bit of a struggle atm .

She's got some doubts about her uni course and there's lots of talk going n about a gap year. I'm doing lots of soothing noises about deciding these things once she has the results . Is this a normal mid exam angst thing?

Yes, I think it is Gypsy - they start to wonder if they've not done as well in the exams as they need to and so perhaps explore the other options - and I guess they need to know that it's ok with us if that happened too.

Another C3 today here, fingers crossed and good luck to all.

Thanks Atia I think you're right. She feels under enormous personal pressure to get the A* and right now not getting it and going to her insurance would feel like a failure . And yet she knows logically that both courses and unis are excellent and she would thrive at either one.

Hopefully a few weeks respite and a holiday between exams and results will give her some thinking time.

No insurance here either Figment. Indeed it's a higher offer so we didn't even attempt to rationalise it :)

Molio am I right in thinking that yours have all done medicine? If so please can I message you about it?

Gypsy we are getting all of that too. With both offers the same, DD's conversations about university are now all based on the assumption that she won't be going. I obviously think (hope!) this is unduly pessimistic, but no rational optimism is allowed! Lots of doubting about her degree subject choice (although thankfully not her A level choices, bucking a family trend to beat yourself up over things you can do nothing about!). Lots of talk about having a year out to reconsider all options etc. I think it's quite normal and healthy, and a good stress buster. DH is much less enthusiastic (!) but he is doing an uncharacteristically sterling job of keeping quiet.

I knew it would be like this.

You're very welcome to message me Gypsy but only one has done medicine - he's just completed his third year Finals.

Yes Figment, wise on the part of your DH to keep parental opinions quiet at this juncture. He can go for catch up in the summer!

Maybe one university might be a bit more flexible than the other on results day Figment. I've still got the newspapers from last year if you want me to check what happened with any of your dc's courses.

Luckily my dd's last three big exams are spread out next week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thank heavens.