11 Plus Exams Forum

Started this thread as I'm the one in need of support!

How is everybody else finding the run up to their dc's exams?

I'm with you Doodles!

My son's set his heart on a Uni with ABB requirements, though his predicted grades based on his AS are BBC . He decided not to resit his Geography which he got a D in last year , so really needs to pull up his grade this year.( it's one of the few where both years count) He appears to be working and his latest school report was very good, so I'm hoping he'll pull it out of the bag. The social life/girlfriend thing has ramped up a but now he's turned 18 and so I'm praying for him to focus.

I think at his age, I can't interfere too much , he knows what he needs to do to get the grades if he wants to go to his first choice uni. He's really looking forward to it and so I just hope that keeps him motivated.

How are you feeling yourself then?

DS has just had mocks so 4 hours of exams on his 18th. It could have been much worse, I suppose. It could have been the real thing. I have NOT been on this site for nearly 7 years, have I? DS has a retake as well this summer. I have no idea how anything is going. The university offers have been quite high and he's still waiting to hear from one of them. Hope there aren't too many anxious moments for anyone. You'll need to get baking, doodles. I'd join you, but I've not been doing too well on the taste front recently. I made my worst ever cake last weekend.

Both your names are very familiar to me as we must have been posting at the same time when they were doing their exams.

The thing I'm clinging onto is people saying that although they ask for ABB or AAB , unis are likely to offer with less ( she says hopefully).

We got three conditionals and a decline, but he wasn't bothered about that one anyway.

DS has mocks next week and he has a huge amount of PE coursework to do, it's a project the size of which I've not seen since university He is retaking one of his French papers from last year as he did ok but, through no fault of his, he could have done better so he's decided to retake.

Flapjacks and chocolate brownies it is then ks10

These exams are probably the last set you will be able to support them through. Keep encouraging them and keep them healthy and well fed

Grades may well be lowered as unis do prefer to take people who chose them but one or two grades overall tends to be the most they might 'adjust' by.

Plan something nice for when they are over -

my sons already booked himself a 3 day trip in London with friends just after the end of exams, no parents invited. Not interested in a family holiday with us this year either

Slightly different problem here, eldest seemed well motivated for A-levels (at last! ) and has finally been getting the sort of results he should have been getting for the last 13 years so I was hopeful that he'd put the effort in this time. He got offers from all 5 and at least 3 of them looked achievable including his two favourites.

Then his first choice made him an unconditional offer . He has mocks this week, I don't think he's done a single stroke of revision, and I found out that he's refused to resit an AS the college wanted him to because there was a good chance he could improve his grade.

I'm here. DS1 sailed through GCSEs with little work - not stellar results but good enough and then came a bit of a cropper at AS so he is retaking a paper too. Unfortunately the one he did best in is one where the new AS doesn't count towards the A level. He's had offers from 3/5 so far & a rejection from one which had higher requirements than his predictions (by one grade). I've told him he can try again with his results. I wish he would take a gap year but suspect he won't. He still needs to work harder than he currently is to get the grades he is capable of.
Lots of unconditional offers around this year(not for us). Must be very hard to keep motivated.
Also suffering GCSEs this year, so a double whammy for us.

mike1880 wrote:Then his first choice made him an unconditional offer . He has mocks this week, I don't think he's done a single stroke of revision, and I found out that he's refused to resit an AS the college wanted him to because there was a good chance he could improve his grade.

Tell him in 3 short years he will be out the other side and if he has let his A level grades go, it won't look good for future employers trying to discriminate between a mass of 2:1s and 1sts. If it is Birmingham (no idea if it is, of course) they give u/c offers to so many that I am sure employers will be looking back in time to see what the A level grades did. And remember he might change his mind and want to do a different course, or want to do a Masters afterwards, and filling in Cs and Ds in those boxes won't feel much fun if he was capable of As and Bs.

Gap year here (pretty much compulsory in our house), and so not too much riding on the grades yet; one doing GCSEs too, and happily a family holiday to the most remote part of Scandinavia planned for the minute they put their pens down - hoping to float about on a boat, cook things on the lake beach and sweat in a sauna for a week.

Already started the industrial baking...I consider it my job to feed and cosset, but not to nag and push. They know the rules and they know what to do. I can bite my nails in the background but never let it show!