Starting year 13 2016

[HSMMaCM]

Continuing from the year 12 - 13 thread.

Good luck with continuing studies, uni open days, driving tests, etc.

DD's approval rating for Soton went up another notch this evening when perusing the bag of brochures they gave out - the sporting activities one is at least half devoted to watersports!

Errol sounds like it would be wasted on our dd's....

Can I go ?( ok 30+ years too late but I look young)

Yes Errol you may well be right.Some of the other vet. Schools don't seem to be interviewing more than normal though.I'm wondering whether there will be many more clearing places this year.
Does anyone know how I can find out how many clearing places were available for vet. Science last year?

I have the clearing newspapers for the past three years. Happy to look it up. It doesn't tell you the number of places - just which universities / courses entered clearing.

However I would take it with a large pinch of salt as it will be completely different each year as universities adjust recruitment based on last years successes and mistakes.

She's got her offer, A*AA MEng, AAA BEng I think as expected and maybe wiggle room on the latter if its the firm choice (got this second hand via DH). So thats all good.

Teta - they say life is wasted on the young but I think DD is more aware of the extracurricular opportunities at uni than I ever was ... but yeah, its hard not to be a bit

That's great news Errol. Remind me again, what were her predicted grades, and is she doing an Epq? I'm not sure Dd is going to get an offer from Southampton.

3A* was the 'optimistic' prediction they put for ucas but 'realistic' maybe a star down on one. She's done an EPQ, dont know yet how that went.

Thanks Errol. Dd is predicted 3 As, but there might be hope yet.

DD hasn't been predicted 3 As, but fortunately she is being realistic about her choices. She has done more work on her UCAS form today. I know because she has been firing me questions from college all day today.

Arghh, I need a spreadsheet, forgotten precisely what your dd was applying for dingit.

That's ok Errol, I never remember anything! Aerospace engineering.

DDs boyfriend has an offer from Warwick

Brilliant news Errol.Another hoop jumped through.Well done on the others with offers.Dingit your ds will get there .Wow what an interesting subject to study.
Dd1 has been given her estimated Epq mark - A.Can you get an A* on this?
Forecast is A,A,A in Chemistry with a possiblity of an A* if she works really hard.But I'm not sure sure how accurate the forecasts will be in the Sciences bearing in mind the new A level format.
I'm just looking forward to all this interview hoopla finishing so dd1 can concentrate on her exams.We may have to accept that she gets no offers, though I hope she does.Its been very difficult trying to fit in the required work experience since last Easter and dd1 has had very little down time.Some mature students are already getting offers from Surrey but many places haven't started interviewing yet.

Teta - yes, there is an A* grade for the EPQ.

Dingit - I took a look at the soton website, they seem to do a (to me) bewildering set of different types of aerospace - its the mech. rather than elec or astronautics variety is it? Fingers crossed for her.

Gosh, some v high offers and v bright DC on here! Fingers crossed for them all.

DDs UCAS has apparently gone off. Now to hope for the offers!

Argh, forgot that using Bolding on the app plus one star would mangle how it appears on the app! I sometimes have to reread things in the browser to make sense of it!

Oh well Errol i think dd1 is happy with the A ,although its an estimate and can go up or down one level.Bearing in mind she had 2.5 days to write it up and had to wrap it up very quickly.
Littlehohum thank you so much for the offer.I would really like to know how many places are available but it sounds as though that info. is difficult to find.I think the situation will probably be quite different this year.
Well done to bigTillyMint's daughter.Apparently our local school still has to send everyone's in this year!

Teta dds Epq is driving me mad, I think she's leaving it to the last minute too.

Errol I get so muddled with all the variations, but as far as I know they all start with mechanical, and then specialise after the first or second year.

We've been to Brighton today, which asks for BBB, but you can see why, not such polished facilities, an old poly etc. Still liked it better than I thought. Also they are not guaranteed halls.

You sometimes need to doublecheck the accreditation on courses though ... maybe theres more than one accreditation body for aerospace, I found this http://www.aerosociety.com/Assets/Docs/Accredited%20CoursesMayy_2016.pdf, it doesn't mention Brighton.

The lecturer made a point of the course being accredited, and mentioned aiming for charted status.
Just need some offers now! Drums fingers....

not such polished facilities

I'm actually more suspicious of too many super modern, polished facilities. Many of the ex-polys (and some of the other universities, to be fair) have fancy new buildings. They have spent the 9k fees on this, perhaps at the expense of investing in high quality academic staff etc.

I would agree though that Brighton is not one of the stronger places in engineering.

They were currently building a new facility

Dingit - oh, good.

Re facilities- it depends on what they've chosen to make new and shiny, imo. In some of the sciences and eng, the outside of a building matters less than whats in it - is the equipment up to the job (which doesn't necessarily mean everything brand new), or will the students and the academics be limited in what they can do.

Dh did comment on their wind tunnel. It looked like a hairdryer compaired to Surreys which took up a whol room

DD is pretty much ready to go with applying, personal statement reading quite well now I think and we're both feeling positive about her 5 choices, her course (zoology) and the whole Uni project generally.
She has to wait a couple of weeks to see the right person at school for a final "check and send" though which is feeling slightly frustrating. I'll be so happy when it's in the post/ flying through the ether, and we can cross our fingers for some nice responses.

I hope she ends up somewhere really good for her!

Best of luck to all as you start hearing back, or like us are close to applying

Juggling, very frustrating having to wait for school to do their bit.

DD got her first offer this morning!
And she and her friends have booked their summer hol. Well the flights. It took a lot of negotiation and many tears!