GCSE's

PinkPig · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:09

I also think that saying "you only need 5 Cs to get into university, the A-levels are more important" is a bit short-sighted - if you want to get into a good university then decent GCSE grades are a big advantage.

matthew_o50 · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:10

Tell her to do what she wants to do. As long as she has the most saught GCSE's such as Maths, Science and English the rest don't really matter.

You can do A-level Business Studies without GCSE but if that is what she wants to do i'd really advise that she did the Business GCSE as it will really, really help her with A-level and her school might require that you have the GCSE in order to do the subject, especially if there is high demand for it.

Pine · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:17

Arcade Fire said:
You're doing a 4 GCSE IT course? You do realise that IT is one of the most worthless courses you can do in school, right?

I'm going to take a stab in the dark, and guess that you're quite a bright kid and that you'd like to do a Computer Science degree eventually - if not that, then either another science or Maths. I will give you some fantastic advice now, and tell you that an IT GCSE or an IT A Level will be utterly worthless to you. Learn to program in your spare time if you want to do something computer-related, you'll find that far more useful.

This man speaketh the truth.

Also, you could quite easily not require Business Studies A level even if you wanted to do it at university. In fact, it's on LSE's blacklist of subjects. Maths and maybe Economics would be a much better bet I should imagine.

panthro · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:18

PinkPig said:
I also think that saying "you only need 5 Cs to get into university, the A-levels are more important" is a bit short-sighted - if you want to get into a good university then decent GCSE grades are a big advantage.

I meant to try and explain to her, that her GCSE's are not the "be all end all". I managed to get into brunel university studying engineering with pretty poor GCSE results.

Phog · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:21

Indeed, they do mean very little after you have A Levels, unless she wants to go into one of the top medicine schools. I hear some are starting to require a certain number of A/A*'s are GCSE now! :|

panthro · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:32

Phog said:
Indeed, they do mean very little after you have A Levels, unless she wants to go into one of the top medicine schools. I hear some are starting to require a certain number of A/A*'s are GCSE now! :|

I was having a conversation with her the other day about what she wants to do, and she is considering medicine or physcology. Im not worried about her underachieving because she is hard working and naturally clever (only one out of 3 of us!). She is top of her class for nearly all her subjects. Im surprised that some unis are asking for A* at GCSE.

Phog · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:34

Those were just rumours though, don't quote me on it!

Pine · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:36

panthro said:
I was having a conversation with her the other day about what she wants to do, and she is considering medicine or physcology. Im not worried about her underachieving because she is hard working and naturally clever (only one out of 3 of us!). She is top of her class for nearly all her subjects. Im surprised that some unis are asking for A* at GCSE.

They don't usually ask for A* GCSEs, it's more to do with the general high standard of applicants with straight A A-level grades at some of the better univiersites and more popular subjects. They end up looking at GCSE performance as a way of differentiating between some candidates.

panthro · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:38

Pine said:
They don't usually ask for A* GCSEs, it's more to do with the general high standard of applicants with straight A A-level grades at some of the better univiersites and more popular subjects. They end up looking at GCSE performance as a way of differentiating between some candidates.

what kind of subjects would you need to do at A level to gain entry to a decent uni in either:
a) medicine
or
b) physcology

Arcade Fire · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:39

panthro said:
what kind of subjects would you need to do at A level to gain entry to a decent uni in either:
a) medicine
or
b) physcology

a) Chemistry.

b) I don't know, but I guess that useful subjects would be Biology, Chemistry, Sociology, History, Psychology. In roughly that order.

Pine · 12 Mar 2006 at 23:43

panthro said:
what kind of subjects would you need to do at A level to gain entry to a decent uni in either:
a) medicine
or
b) physcology

Just dug this up off thestudentroom.co.uk (Good forum BTW)

Medicine Stuff, can't see anything like that in the Psychology forum, but I'm sure they'll be something somewhere.

matthew_o50 · 13 Mar 2006 at 00:11

panthro said:
what kind of subjects would you need to do at A level to gain entry to a decent uni in either:
a) medicine
or
b) physcology

For medicine your looking at A-levels in Biology, Chemistry, Physics and possibly something like Maths for most Universities that do it.

For psychology you'd probably require an A-level in Psychology and another 2 subjects, i'm not sure if they have to be related or not.

Che · 13 Mar 2006 at 00:30

Pine said:
In fact, it's on LSE's blacklist of subjects. Maths and maybe Economics would be a much better bet I should imagine.

Why is law on that blacklist? I'm guessing it's maybe because they don't want their law students having either some knowledge or none at all and want them all at the same point in their learning. But why wouldn't that apply to economics for example? :confused:

Arcade Fire · 13 Mar 2006 at 00:43

Presumably the Law A Level is pitched at such a pathetically low level that they don't consider it worthwhile, and they're rather their students had some other measure of reasoning ability - an A Level in History, Philosophy or English, for example.

The fact that people regularly get accepted for Law having done only science and Maths A Levels speaks volumes, I think. In fact, a friend of mine who took Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology A Levels recently graduated from Oxford with the top first in Law in the entire university.

It could also be that they think the Law A Level is detrimental to the students' education. Many A Levels are notorious for teaching things as fact that patently aren't. You can get away with this in sciences, but it's harder to do in arts subjects or 'soft' sciences. Presumably the A Level skips over a great many subtleties.