Starting year 13 2016

[HSMMaCM]

Continuing from the year 12 - 13 thread.

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

How did I forget that some of them have passed their driving test! Looks like a flipping car park out there and I've had to give lectures about drink driving (although obviously none of these 17 year olds have been drinking anyway).

DD has an induction for her new job in a shop today, so I hope she got some sleep. She's quite bossy, so probably told them all to stop talking at midnight

Anyone at York today? It's rather nice

DD's boyfriend went to Bath yesterday and said it was lovely, but he'd rather go to Sheffield.

Sensible boy, HSM

dd3 went to Bath on Saturday (with brother) and seemed to really like it. Only criticism was that they charged for the shuttle bus.

We were going to go to Bath but they don't offer Geography or History

I found this out after I'd paid for a non refundable hotel room ... grrr!!

Oh dear Horsemad. Poor you.

I knew about the history & geography from dd2 as she did those two A Levels. She loves Bath so was a bit gutted about it not doing history but is very happy at York.

Lol, I know Little That'll teach me to check first!

Oh no, Horse
But good you/DS like York

Breaking news...DS brought home a young lady on Friday afternoon. Obviously not a girlfriend, oh no, not at all...merely a friend . He made her (and me!) a cup of tea and then they disappeared off to his room. Maybe they were revising, let's hope it wasn't biology, lol!

Ooh, exciting ono!

Ono there are a few teenagers on this thread who have brought home just friends .

Glad uni visits are going well. DD is still in a quandary about what she wants to do.

DS has more or less decided on his 5 choices; just needs to decide which subject to do now

DDs is down to quite a short list now, only open day left to do for her is Manchester. Bit of york, it is nice. I worked there for a while, happy days, but they don't do EEE just electronics so it wasn't on her list. Still, nice to have a quiet weekend - she actually wanted to go out walking with us yesterday. Are teenagers supposed to do things like that?

Errol ... She wants something.

Horse, maybe we could combine our two teens and get one sensible one - DS has decided subject, just not which five unis!

We have one more open day at City (London) on Saturday and then I think we are done. DS has decided just to use 3 of his 5 choices on his application and if he doesn't get offers he will then look at the other two 'slots'. I think he has made sensible decisions about which to apply to so in theory he should get a firm and an insurance from those options but if not we can think again.

I am having to decide about my own study now too, I was due to start my MSc part time the same time DS will be starting his BSc/MComp but having discussed it I think I am going to delay a year but do my masters full time - it means I will have to give up work for a year but as I am making such a big career change I think giving it full focus is the right thing.

ono

Ono, all three of dds boyfriends started out as just friends

Good news just in, dds theory PE paper got remarked up to a C. Just waiting for them to make a decision on special consideration for the practical, but don't hold out much hope.

Fingers crossed dingit! 🙂

DD finally spent a day methodically going through all the Uni's that do Zoology as she's been saying she wanted to do for ages and narrowed it down to first of all 8, and now this morning we think we have 5! The list even includes several I had my eye on, and looks great when she showed it to me on her UCAS site this morning. She could still change things of course, but still it's looking good to me - I could really see her having a great time at any of them!

We visited Sheffield the other weekend and DD really liked it there, we had a lovely day together - a couple of lecturers were very friendly (one helped us out when we got slightly lost) and DD was impressed by the department talk. We also bumped into friends there which was lovely too. So that one's down as our aspirational first choice. Getting the grades for that one may be slightly out of reach though - they all seem so very high now (DH said Sheffield offered him 3 C's for Chemistry a few years ago - in the 80's)
Does anyone know whether they are likely to make an offer that's slightly higher than predicted grades? We felt it is worth a try?

So, we also have several that are more solidly within reach, according to AS results and predictions for A2.

And one that we really like that has an interesting course with lots of exciting field trips, and is in a lovely part of the world, also rating highly on student satisfaction - and that has quite a generous offer. That's the Uni of South Wales.

3 we've visited and 2 we haven't yet, so that's something we need to work on - one not too far (Reading) the other a bit of a trek (Swansea)

DD also feels she could improve her personal statement to make it more personal which I'm glad to hear as I think it is a little dry in current draft!
Of course I want her to include some of the great things I feel we've done together over the years - all the lovely wildlife watching stuff. So perhaps some of that may get a brief mention!

Am feeling very glad to have got to this point after all the visits!
Hope things are beginning to come together for everyone else too?

dd has done a first draft of the PS and handed it in to school.

juggling I've been to a couple of those campuses - University of Reading is on a lovely big green campus. I was really impressed. It had pretty much everything a student would need. For some reason I was expecting it to be very urban but it was actually very green and open.

I seem to remember that Swansea was next to a lovely garden but the thing that sticks in my mind is that it has the most fantastic Egyptology museum that is open to members of the public. I know it is irrelevant to your dd's course but if you need something to do while she is wandering round the campus go and have a look. Not sure if you need to book for the museum.

That's interesting, Juggling - Sheffield require the lowest grades for the course DD wants to do, Leeds I think being highest!
And DD is including travelling we have done as a family on her PS, as well as her Work Experience in Y11 which tie in nicely as personal experience relating to what she has now decided to study!

That sounds like excellent progress, Juggling! Sheffield is definitely going to be one of my DD's 5.
So long as your DD has got her bases covered with places which offer lower, I reckon putting down an 'aspirational' choice if it's somewhere they really like is a 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' thing, unless the AS/predictions are well adrift of the standard offer. (some schools, so I've heard, will sometimes make a prediction at the upper end of likely if a student makes a case to them that they really want to apply to XXX and they'll put in more effort etc... and universities do admit people who didn't quite make the offer. So there might be some wriggle room).

Thanks all, lots of encouraging stuff there! Particularly nice to hear about Reading and Swansea LittleHo as we haven't been to those yet - but they look and sound good on the website, and from what we've heard from friends. I'm a sucker for a nice pic or two!