11 Plus Exams Forum

I wondered what everyone thinks of UCAS's proposal to bring forward A'levels by three weeks, with a view to enabling students to apply for a University place in the summer after they have received their results.

I am sure the application process would be a lot more straight forward with rapid acceptance of places and no need for "firm" or "insurance" offers... however can imagine it would be fraught summers for all with interviews / visits / remarks etc etc all going on in a shortish period of time. Presumably much of the form and reference would have to be done long before the results come out?

I think that with the current modular system for A levels most students know pretty well what grades they are likely to get and apply accordingly. Universities are aware of this and might well not want students who have by some fluke got better grades than they had anticipated.
At DD's school the less mature students were actually motivated to get on with some work by their university offers for places they had visited and chosen and really wanted to go to.
I cannot really see any benefits of a post results application

Magwich what about the fact that according to the papers this morning a large number of the predictions are wrong?

I can see the enormous benefit of having results in hand but fear it makes the already rather fraught two years for AS/A levels even shorter.

Agree most students know what they will be probably achieving and as to grades being over exaggerated, I think universities have a good idea which schools are guilty and offer accordingly.

I wasn't really meaning the school predictions but rather the UMS marks.
With DD1 she knew by the time she filled in her UCAS form that she had to get VERY low marks in the remaining modules to get As and everyone else also knew roughly what they would get unless they did no work at all or suddenly turned into a genius!

I can't help feeling that DD would have got an offer if this system had been in place last year. Lots of people had offers for the course she wanted but lost out because they didn't make the grade, whilst DD actually lived up to her predicted grades but ended up empty-handed. It will be interesting to see how she fares this year with grades in hand.

magwich2 wrote:I wasn't really meaning the school predictions but rather the UMS marks.
With DD1 she knew by the time she filled in her UCAS form that she had to get VERY low marks in the remaining modules to get As and everyone else also knew roughly what they would get unless they did no work at all or suddenly turned into a genius!

Agreed the module system leaves far fewer surprises that the end of the year - in ye olden days we hadn't really got a clue what we would get - only people we could compare with were those in our class... I had a relative doing the same A levels - apparently he was top of the class and doing fantastically well ... trouble was the schools were not comparable and I beat him by several grades.

I read student room and find that many of the kids don't seem to grasp the module / UMS system at all - there are many statements of "I got CCDD at AS level, am aiming to get A* at A2" - trouble is you just can't with UMS like that!

Yes - and schools are very bad at getting it over that a mark at (easier) AS is worth the same as a mark at A2 and it is therefore ESSENTIAL to work incredibly hard for AS rather than relying on snatching victory from defeat in the upper sixth.
The system is wierd however in that Miss Magwich knew beyond any doubt that she dropped more than 10% of the marks in Maths core 4 paper but her UMS was 100/100.
She also swears that the january modules in most subjects but particularly Philosophy and Ethics were far more difficult than those in june.

It is possible to get less than full marks and get 100% UMS .... sample AQA A2 maths PC4 (not sure what this is but they are all much the same...)

Top raw score poss is 75 but 100 UMS is given for anything above 65 - 86% of the max score