11 Plus Exams Forum

I have recently realised that my data is way out of date and there seems to have been quite a lot of movement in which University courses are the ones most highly sought after. A friend of mine has a dd with 9 A*s and 4 A As's who wanted to put Durham first and Bath second for Physics but was told by her school that she would be wasting her choices with no chance of offers and that she should rethink her choices. In my opinion the school were caring too much about their percentage success rate for girls getting their first choice and not enough about her choices. Are these two really so unattainable? They were just solid choices in my day. DG

It depends what you want from the course - academic, good employment prospects or to make 'contacts'.

Courses between Unis also vary a lot more than they did. We looked at every University offering the degree my DC wants to do and there was a massive difference in both content and assessment approaches.

Look on the UCAS site or on ukcoursefinder and you will find what the requirements are.

If you were interested in reading English which courses would be considered to give you the best employment prospects? DG

http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.c ... ?s=English" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Each 'ranking table' will give you a different answer though so do look at other tables.

.

This is fascinating but what do the different headings mean? I certainly understand the issue about Durham now, when did it become so highly thought of? Is this in the last ten years or twenty? In my day Bristol was the place to be. How do they work out the employment prospects headings? DG

I always understood the Russell group of uni's were the ones to aim for.

However, looking at the Wikipedia article, Durham was not all this list which surprised me. However, the article does mention the 1994 lst of uni's which contains other well known uni's, including St Andrews, Prince Williams uni.

Russell group are not best for everything ... it depends on the degree choice.

Durham is not a Russell group uni because when the list was compiled it didn't have a medical school.

When I was there in the 1980s it was considered 3rd after Cambridge and Oxford. I have just been reading the Alumni mag which mentions it's world-class research in Physics.

However your friends grades seem ok - why does the school think she doesn't have a chance of an offer?

I thought Imperial Colleage has always been 3rd after oxbridge. In terms of science and technology subjects, it is world class. Job prospects are excellent too. My classmates and myself were all able to choose our career paths immediately after graduation. I saw from the paper about two years ago they started the entrance exam systems making it more difficult in get in.