3 A Levels or 4?

[grinkle]

My year 11 dd was going to start 4 A Levels in Sept but has just been told that due to funding cuts, and a teacher leaving, one of her choices will not be available. She's been offered one of her other options instead but doesn't really want to do it.

Year 11 parents - how many A Levels will your dcs be doing from Sept? Will 3 be enough, in these post-AS level days? Enough in terms of getting into a good uni to do a competitive subject?

And while the majority of Eton students may well be applying for at least one course which interviews, this is not the case for pupils from most other schools.

And breathe hay .

No one has said that the interview situation for Eton is a country wide state of affairs.

Hayita, I think by extension, though, you could say that concentrating on the 3 subjects rather than 4 (I'm talking from a humanities viewpoint here), gives time for extra research / reading around in the subject you love which can then be shown in the PS.

carl a pretty safe bet I would think. Although for whatever reason Eton seemingly do not disclose it www.etoncollege.com/userfiles/files/Destination%20of%20Etonians%202014.pdf

Maybe they take this as gospel

from just past 2 minutes in

Maybe they take this as gospel

You might be surprised boys.

Thanks for the clip though...

The Beeb at its best. Although the fictional SIr Humphrey is alleged to have been a Wykehamist :)

Hayita, lots of DCs friends applied for Imperial. Most, if not all, seemed to have been interviewed. Engineering/NatSci at Cambridge seems hugely competitive. Imperial is picking up some very talented students.

is alleged to have been a Wykehamist - who allegedly have similar Oxbridge % to Eton. But by the by.
I still think that there is merit - interviews or not, in straight humanities students leaving time for independent study if they are applying to competitive courses. And we no longer live in the time of Waugh where it's Oxbridge or nothing. (or indeed Oxford or nothing ). I think potential students know this nowadays.

FWIW DD got 5 offers in Stem subject with not a single interview / extra test / required extra exam

I don't think there's any quarrel about the fact of STEM courses not being interviewed for in the main TP.

hayita if the advice is being given by Eton staff to Eton boys the vast majority of whom will in all likelihood go for interview or at least be hoping for an interview then I can't see that what other pupils elsewhere are told or do is in any way relevant to the staff dishing out that advice. It seems fairly grounded advice in any event.

Surely applicants for STEM subjects should be reading around their subjects too? That's not just a humanities thing.

Goodbye - sorry - I didn't mean to say it was just humanities - it is just that that is my only (vicarious) experience with my DS. That's what I was hoping to make clear in last post but one. I have no experience of a DC applying for a STEM subject.

Regarding interviews and Physics, only one of the five DS applied to did not require an interview. And at least two he didn't apply to would also have required one.

I don't have experience of it but it does sound like the EPQ is a good thing if the DC is motivated. Not necessary but could be a good thing.

hayita I'm wondering about the implications for the Further Maths A level of the increased difficulty of the standard Maths A level. Presumably it will also be much, much harder. Will we see a return to the days when almost no one sat it?

DH remembers that in his selective sixth form of 300+ only 10 or so children sat FM, and they were all off to Cambridge or Oxford to read Maths. Now, in my DC's highly selective sixth form it seems that almost everyone who does Maths - and there are a lot of them, itself a big change - also does FM.