Year 12-13 AS levels and beyond

[HSMMaCM]

Following on from the preparing for AS levels thread.

Hopefully everyone is finishing off AS exams.

Thank you goodbye for your advice. All views welcome BTW as I try to process this.

I suppose she could drop down a year if school are amenable (I'm assuming that they would be ok).

Yes,I would let her do it Carl ,it sounds such a fantastic opportunity for your dd.With the proviso that her school will let her back and she has a tutor.
Can anyone explain UMS to me?Dd got 82,72,86 in her Maths As .She will retake the Second paper but is it worthwhile redoing the first?She's disappointed by her marks but needs an A for her Vet. science.

I've now spoken with the Head of Studies ( or some such title) and school would be amenable to letting her defer y13 until September 2017, in theory.

We would have to keep her place 'open' which I assume means pay the fees .

Fortunately, she would want to take forward two decoupled A levels and one pre u, so that raises fewer logistical problems I think.

He did offer some words of warning though; coming back to a school where she will hardly know anyone. Again. Might be unsettling. Plus she will have had a break from studying and school ( with all its rules and regs).

Still a lot to consider, but at least it sounds doable.

The film opportunity sounds amazing. What does your DD want to do? I assume that she's keen to go for it? It sounds like you could ensure that she doesn't burn any bridges educationally with a tutor or year out. She might even benefit educationally from the opportunity to do some reading round her subject, especially if she's doing A levels like English or History.

My DS got an overall grade A in one of his subjects. One of his papers was well into the grade A category, in the other he missed a grade A by 2 UMS points. He's a very good student and a B in this subject is very unusual for him, plus there is a very significant gap between the UMS marks for the two papers.

I'm not sure whether he should just leave it as he got a grade A overall and if remarked the mark for the "B" paper could go down. Or, whether he should go for a remark as he's going for a very competitive course and maybe that "B" could affect his chances even though he got an "A" overall. If remarked I don't think he could go down enough to lose the overall A.

Today's Times has this:
"An actress who combined filming a television series with studying for her A levels spent less than three months at school before her final exams and still achieved her grades.

Sophie Simnett, 18, juggled revising for geography, English and drama exams at Putney High School, west London, with 12-hour days filming the Disney children’s musical drama The Lodge.

The student, from Chiswick, said that despite her good work ethic it was difficult to squeeze in revision while on set. “It genuinely wasn’t because of me being lazy — I would fall asleep eating my Nando’s trying to read about rock formations,” she said.

Sophie, who started acting at the age of seven, has had offers to study film and drama at Bristol, Surrey, Warwick and Royal Holloway but is not planning to go to university yet, even though she has met the grades for her first choice. “If I’m getting jobs now, I don’t want to lose a streak and then have to come back,” she said."

Hi Y'All! Been missing in action for most of the summer and finally found my way back!

Lovely to read all about the results, DS2 did well so I am hoping that continues next year

He has 2 more open days then it is Decision Time...

Carl - if it is a decent film company then you have to encourage your DD to go! How many people even get that type of opportunity? Good Luck!

Thank you everyone. You're all properly lovely. No one telling me to get a grip!

I feel much calmer about it now.

DD is excited (and shocked) by the offer. She's been preparing to go to university with all her friends next year (open days, PS prep etc) and this has come from left field (she sent the interview tape in with no expectations and such a long time passed without a response).

Though she doesn't necessarily see herself as an actress in the long term (it;s certainly not her dream like many other young people), she knows this could be an opportunity to do something really different.

Even her brother the very conservative academic has said she would be mad not to go for it (though he may be being swayed by the £££ on offer).

Carl - I know someone who left school at end of year 12 for a second lead role in a West End musical. School were not happy. Over ten years later, she is still working in the industry. I don't suppose the opportunity would have presented itself twice.

If dd is doing essay type subjects, then a year out to do the film is almost a no-brainer, what with the reading around she could do on set. Science/maths may be slightly trickier, but I'd still encourage her to go for it...that's if she wants to!

To be honest Carl she's only had a year at her current school so socially it would be easier to leave and come back again, than if she'd been there since Y7.

One other thing though: if the school is insisting on you coughing up an extra £20k+ (cheek!) then maybe you need to compute whether paying that less what the film guys are paying is worth the experience it would give to your DD. That's quite a steep price. I'd actually be wrangling with the school first though, I certainly wouldn't roll over automatically on the fee front at all.

ralph I think in a way that's one of my worries; if she leaves school now that will be it and she won't return to education realistically.

And will she regret it when she's washed up?

DH says I'm getting way ahead of myself. He's probably right.

goodbye when I told DH what school said about fees, he laughed and said ' in their fucking dreams'. There's a reason why he's the successful lawyer and I'm the arty farty one with and agent to do my dirty work .

His view is that DD should go to school next term and stay as long as possible right up to principal photography ( with time off for the read through). Take her SATs in October ( is that the date? ) and use a tutor when she gets out to the States.

I think we need to ask some more questions all round ( which I will leave to my resident brief) and make this work for DD.

Carl - have just seen this and can understand the quandary but surely your DD can do her A-levels at a crammer/private sixth-form college rather than return to school, which she will have outgrown, after the filming?

bobo bonsoir .

I recall you being very enthusiastic about DD taking time out last time ( and I was being a worry worm).

She could indeed do that. There are plenty of crammers in London.

In an ideal world we would like her to study her A levels alongside working to avoid all this though. But is that doable?

Also, if she did well in her SATs and had the sort of CV the US colleges like, would she need to do exceptionally well in her A levels? Would they care that much?

BTW I don't expect answers to my questions. I'm thinking aloud .

get I agree with your husband - as uch school as possible for this last year of A levels, a tutor whilst she is away and doin the exams next summer as planned. If she messes them up she can then redo the year but at least she won't have got out of the habit of study.

Oh, I'm all for seizing fun and diverse developmental opportunities .

I don't think US universities care about A-levels at all. They certainly don't care about the French bac. It's all about the application essays, GPA and SATs, and your DD's application would stand out with her professional acting experience.

Also, IIRC, your DD is pretty young for her year, so an extra year to complete her A-levels wouldn't put her badly out of synch with her peers.

If she applied to a US college for an early decision she might have secured a place by December. Those ED places are pretty much unconditional.

She is young in the year - not yet 17.

Sounds like a good plan...

My anecdote wasn't meant to worry you - the student I know would definitely have gone back into education if she'd not continued to succeed in the theatre, but the opportunity had to be taken, really, for her.

It's great to hear all experiences. Please don't feel otherwise.

And to be fair my own fears/prejudices are just that and I am working very hard not to impose my UK-university educated - centric prism upon DD .

Carl DS's friend who recently got an all expenses paid place at Princetown didn't have to get impressive A2 grades at all.

I think my approach (on how to handle the formal exam side) would vary according to whether the DC had eyes on the US or the UK for tertiary ed. As far as I recall you once heavily implied that your two regarded the UK as old hat and would much prefer the US in any event.

I absolutely would not even contemplate a UK crammer. Just never.

I think also that in the brave new world of linear exams very few even really good tutors, especially if they're US based, will get the new specs. So I'd tend to pack a DC off to do the filming as late as the DC could go, instructing them to keep up with the Y12 stuff they've been taught, on their own, so that a year hence they can pick up where they left off. They won't need a tutor to do that and with sensible help from the school they should be able to keep fresh.

DH and I clearly think along the same lines: if this thing is a success then the school prospectus benefits. How narrow minded do they look by trying to squeeze a year's extra fees out of you - not what I'd expect from a supposedly broad minded school like that.

Typo! It was the proper Princeton.

Our school asks for a retaining fee of a thousand or two to hold a place if a DC takes a year off. (Not uncommon for academics on sabbatical abroad.) Not the same school as Curl's, but still a top 30 in the country school. I definitely wouldn't pay a full year's fees as a retainer.

US univerisities are far less interested in high academic achievement at undergrad level than Oxbridge. WIth decent but not stellar grades, I could see Harvard or Brown being very interested in her. (Less so Princeton perhaps as it is more academic, takes students with different profile.)

Maybe that's what he meant hay and I took it to mean the full year's fees.

My head was all over the place, and I was more interested in whether it was theoretically possible at all.

To be blunt, we're good for the reddies, so it will be what it will be. It's important to me, that we get this right for DD.