The GCSE results thread

Ksanti said:
Congrats on those grades, be proud of yourself. Almost any university will be interested with those as long as you're doing useful subjects for A-Level.
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Doing maths and the 3 sciences for A-levels and I'm thinking of doing further maths as an AS but I'm not sure it's worth the hassle. If I got 4A*'s in my A levels with those subjects I can go down the medicine/dentistry career path or engineering.

PermaBanned said:
I just burst out laughing :p

Languages can be easy enough to learn with a really, really good teacher. Most of us don't have that privilege. I have friends getting As and A*s who failed French.
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I agree with that, I had a crap teacher initially but then she left and was replaced with a far better teacher hence the A*.
 
My uni never asked for GCSE grades, and no one has asked for them since. I can't even remember what I got anymore. (Other than A in maths). Hell my degree is just a line item buried at the bottom of the CV these days.
 
sldsmkd said:
My uni never asked for GCSE grades, and no one has asked for them since. I can't even remember what I got anymore. (Other than A in maths). Hell my degree is just a line item buried at the bottom of the CV these days.
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If your looking to be a doctor or enter a top uni, then they definitely look at at gcse's, it's one of their ways of differentiating the top candidates. Personally I think gcse's are more important than ever considering the competitiveness to enter courses now.
 
PermaBanned said:
I just burst out laughing :p

Languages can be easy enough to learn with a really, really good teacher. Most of us don't have that privilege. I have friends getting As and A*s who failed French.
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Yes I get that, but I'm comparing it to, say, German. I realise that a good teacher can make a huge difference with languages, much more so than most other subjects, but with French it seems like too many teachers are accepted just because it used to be the /done/ subject and too few are good at teaching it, rather than the exam being hard.

The emphasis should be on improving overall standards, not saying 'oh well, our teachers aren't that great' so we'll just make the exams easier. Obviously that line gets stretched at points and you can't say that about every subject and make all exams really hard, but I think language teaching is one area that really needs work in the current education system, as it's not something that a good student can teach themselves and cram in the weeks before the exam.
 
Well I got an E in German ....

Wait a minute, NO! I mean .....

I NEVER DID GERMAN! :p

*Ssshhhhhhh!!!!

I had a terrible German class, every lesson was a riot with 80% of the class ignoring the teachers and doing whatever the hell they wanted. The few kids that actually wanted to learn like me couldnt, hence E grade.
 
Gf's sister:

A*
French
Spanish
Business Studies
Maths

A
English Language
English Lit
Science

B
Additional Science
Religious Studies

C
Drama
 
PermaBanned said:
Yeah, but some of them are for modules, some of them are for subjects, some of them that should exist don't, i only have like half the certificates... and all of that requires effort to decipher, and i may be many things but i'm NOT a morning person ;)
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Yeah, just look for the Subjects with capitals to 'find out what you got overall for that subject'
As for me I got (in total):
1 D
2 C's
6 B's
4 A's
2 a*'s
On top of that I also got a Level 2 National Certificate in IT (Distinction):D

Also I see what you did there ;)
 
My cousin got 10 A*s and 2As for her IGCSEs. Aunt is over the moon about it announcing it to everyone on Facebook haha. Should set her up pretty well once she starts applying for Unis though, some are notorious for placing a lot of importance on GCSEs (e.g Durham).
 
GTRacer said:
some are notorious for placing a lot of importance on GCSEs (e.g Durham).
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Excluding the elite universities I don't think this is true. A-levels and non-academic activities/what you blag in your personal statement would seem far more important in landing a good place. It's when you get a bunch of applicants with both excellent results and personal statements you need to further whittle down the selection.
 
Maths - A
Physics - A
Chemistry - A
Biology - A
Geography - A
ICT - B
Statistics - B
History - B
Business Studies - B
Systems & Control - B
General Studies - B
Short Course RE - B
English Language - C
English Literature - C

Wasnt far off an A* in both Physics and Maths they seemed to have dropped 6 marks off my Physics coursework which made it an A :(.

Peed off with my ICT, English and History results. I had A*'s in all of my ICT coursework but I had ICT and a History paper on the same day. I got a C in that History paper so I must have had a bad day. I am just generally rubbish at English but I was hoping for a B. :/

Overall I'm happy and I am allowed to do all of my choices which are Maths, Physics, Computing and Psychology. But they will not allow me to do Further Maths because they think it will be too much work load for my laid back attitude :p

I did post before but there was no detail :p
 
mufcmark said:
If your looking to be a doctor or enter a top uni, then they definitely look at at gcse's, it's one of their ways of differentiating the top candidates. Personally I think gcse's are more important than ever considering the competitiveness to enter courses now.
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They look at A levels not GCSE's. The whole qualification is worthless these days now anyway, you cant just give everyone an A* for attending. You had to be in the top 10% of results to get an A when I studied for mine, if you scored in the bottom 50% you got a D or lower. A* was restricted to genius.
 
sldsmkd said:
They look at A levels not GCSE's. The whole qualification is worthless these days now anyway, you cant just give everyone an A* for attending. You had to be in the top 10% of results to get an A when I studied for mine, if you scored in the bottom 50% you got a D or lower. A* was restricted to genius.
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Yea arent unis now beginning to use entrance exams instead of relying on GCSE, and even A Level results because of the number of people getting A / A* grades nowadays?

There was a news article with a girl who had something like 11 A*s at GCSE, and 4 A* at level, and she got turned down from all 4 of her uni choices for medicine.

Most unis really dont look at GCSE grades, and even less so now than they used to for the top courses.
 
sniffy said:
Excluding the elite universities I don't think this is true. A-levels and non-academic activities/what you blag in your personal statement would seem far more important in landing a good place. It's when you get a bunch of applicants with both excellent results and personal statements you need to further whittle down the selection.
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Which is why I said 'some.' A friend of mine applied for History at Durham and he had less than 8A*s (or something like that, my head of Sixth Form said they had a minimum requirement for the amount of A*s that wasn't officially stated but nonetheless enforced) and he got rejected by them, even taking into account that he averaged 97% UMS in History and was pretty well rounded as a student. He ended up at Oxford the following year. Actually Oxbridge don't have to place as much importance on GCSEs as their application process is a lot more personal.

bhavv said:
Yea arent unis now beginning to use entrance exams instead of relying on GCSE, and even A Level results because of the number of people getting A / A* grades nowadays?

There was a news article with a girl who had something like 11 A*s at GCSE, and 4 A* at level, and she got turned down from all 4 of her uni choices for medicine.

Most unis really dont look at GCSE grades, and even less so now than they used to for the top courses.
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Could be down to their personality though, I know of people with perfect results on paper but weren't that personable, or just too shy during interviews to suit medicine.
 
GCSEs, at least in terms of top universities, are more important than ever. A Levels were way too easy and you get offers before A-Level results.

Bhavv: I hadn't seen that, but she could easily screw it up by being incredibly arrogant in the interview (a possibility from her academic results), being too shy for doctor's work, having all the wrong subjects etc.
 
Is anyone thinking of doing an IB instead of A Levels? I've read a lot of mixed opinions on those, with some people claiming then to be much more valuable than A Levels now due to the current pass rate, but others saying that universities wont recognize the difference, and they require too much weighting on less important things like a foreign language.

I only had A levels, GNVQs and BTECs as options 10 years ago, and the last two options were pretty much only for students that didnt get good enough GCSE grades to do A levels in 6th Form.
 
I regard the GCSE qualification as worthless too. A/A* increases for the 23 year running tells me that something is wrong with the system. I don't believe for 1 minute that all the youngsters are getting brighter every year. I only have to walk through my local town centre to figure that one out.

We need to go back to the O-Levels, and bring back confidence to the system. Well done to all the youngsters on your exams, and I don't blame you. Its the system I blame and the Government and exam boards.
 
bhavv said:
Is anyone thinking of doing an IB instead of A Levels? I've read a lot of mixed opinions on those, with some people claiming then to be much more valuable than A Levels now due to the current pass rate, but others saying that universities wont recognize the difference, and they require too much weighting on less important things like a foreign language.

I only had A levels, GNVQs and BTECs as options 10 years ago, and the last two options were pretty much only for students that didnt get good enough GCSE grades to do A levels in 6th Form.
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I considered it 3 years ago when deciding on year 9-13 study, considering Sevenoaks. The value seems to shift from year to year, and IB schools only seem to approach the top of the league tables when the conversion in value is weirdly advantageous.

Generally IB's will get too much of a 'What is that?' response, as well as being too shallow in depth of study to be worth the risk of going with a not yet widely accepted standard; the fact that it's impossible to do a degree in medicine off of IBs, no matter how well you do, being a cornerstone.

I am in agreement that the A Level has been dropping in value and isn't a great qualification, but the introduction of the A* helped that, and of the three qualifications the Cambridge Pre-U suits me best as there's so much more flexibility in the syllabus and there aren't AS equivalents (which means there's still room to try something new after GCSE if the school thinks you can do it).
 
Well done, looks like most people got what they wanted, well played OcUK.

Now onto AS Levels, remember guys work hard! I could have worked a LOT harder in my AS Levels this year, but I managed to make up for it with hard core revision. But, I regret not working hard throughout the year.
 
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