A levels 2018-2020. long wait 2

[Blitz]

A couple of DD friends have AAB offers for Medicine this year from Nottingham and Newcastle. Not contextual offers but really high ukcat results and A*A*A*A* predictions.

However, I would agree, you should aim for AAA +

[kenyancowgirl]

A couple of DD friends have AAB offers for Medicine this year from Nottingham and Newcastle. Not contextual offers but really high ukcat results and A*A*A*A* predictions.

However, I would agree, you should aim for AAA +

I can’t comment on Newcastle but for the Nottingham offer I would imagine that they must have been contextual to get an AAB offer - they were very clear that there are only 2 standard offers (AAA or AAB contextual). Or a candidate with AAB predictions on a Nottingham Uni WP pathway - they were also clear that the UKCAT and predicted grades are only used to assess invitation for interview (but were one of the only universities who also scored PS’s but will not next year.) Remember that contextual refers all the way through secondary so even if they went to a contextual school for a year! Alternatively it might have been for the Lincoln pathway (which was new this year and they were struggling to fill as they did not have enough applicants.)

[Catseye]

A couple of DD friends have AAB offers for Medicine this year from Nottingham and Newcastle. Not contextual offers but really high ukcat results and A*A*A*A* predictions.

However, I would agree, you should aim for AAA +

I can’t comment on Newcastle but for the Nottingham offer I would imagine that they must have been contextual to get an AAB offer - they were very clear that there are only 2 standard offers (AAA or AAB contextual). They were also clear that the UKCAT and predicted grades are only used to assess invitation for interview (but were one of the only universities who also scored PS’s but will not next year.) Remember that contextual refers all the way through secondary so even if they went to a contextual school for a year! Alternatively it might have been for the Lincoln pathway (which was new this year and they were struggling to fill as they did not have enough applicants.)

My son's girlfriend who is reading medicine at Notts who has just finished her second year exams and arrived with my son today to spend the w/e here confirms this and the average A level grades in her year are about A*A*A-A*AA for successful undergraduates.How she knows this, I know not.

[kenyancowgirl]

Medical Schools usually publish this information after the beginning of the academic year - alternatively an FOI is made - TSR always seems to have the figures at its' fingertips!

[tiffinboys]

Medical Schools usually publish this information after the beginning of the academic year - alternatively an FOI is made - TSR always seems to have the figures at its' fingertips!

TSR Medical admissions information about offers and competition ratios is mostly outdated.

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/univer ... ion-ratios" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Best to check with medical schools which are of interest to you.

See the previous post by Toadmum about medical schools website. Very useful.

[kenyancowgirl]

Yes that article is out of date - there is a lot more current info in the Medicine forum on there. And there are many other sources, including the university’s themselves, as you suggest. However, I have no plans to derail this general A level thread any further - I was merely responding to the comment about AAB from Notts, as this must be a contextual offer based on the information given by the university itself.

[tiffinboys]

‘TSR always seems to have the figures at its fingertips’ would give a different impression. DS friends were cautioned by his school about such outdated information. Buyer beware.

[kenyancowgirl]

Yes that article is out of date - there is a lot more current info in the Medicine forum on there. And there are many other sources, including the university’s themselves, as you suggest. However, I have no plans to derail this general A level thread any further - I was merely responding to the comment about AAB from Notts, as this must be a contextual offer based on the information given by the university itself.

If you take the comment out of context you can deliberately misunderstand it, TB, if you choose to - in relation to FOI requests being made, TSR always seems to have the figures at it's fingertips, which was what I actually said, in response to Catseye. I also said I am not going to derail this general thread, but, for students going to university, TSR, has a vast ream of information - some good, some not so good - and as in many forums, there are some very helpful and informative forum members on there and then there are other forum helpers that are very much not helpful but just look to criticise/complain/put their own opinion! For many students, however, it allows them to ask questions in a fairly accessible way - and has representatives from all the universities, should they wish to ask specifics. I would not dismiss it out of hand, but I would also suggest that no student would purely look at TSR for research into universities and not the university websites as well - especially for something like Medicine that has so many critical steps to achive an offer. Most would, you would hope, visit the university website first, in the same way we would hope individuals on here would visit school websites first.

[tiffinboys]

I hope you understand what I was referring to. It was not in any way personal criticism.

There may be some upto date information in individual random thread from TSR users, but the information about medical students admissions TSR itself collate and publish currently is out of date. That’s all I was highlighting. It would mislead some one if they treat it as most current information available.

Rest of course is correct to refer to universities website, medical school admissions websites and to TSR threads, but that was not the point of any dispute.

[kenyancowgirl]

AQA Chemistry seems to be containing several things that were on the spec in previous years but are not on the spec now. Paper 2 deemed difficult with both papers being unlike past papers - even the Chemistry teacher has said she thought both Paper 1 and 2 were very hard.

Biology, however, after the ridiculously low grade boundaries last year (think it was 54% for an A*), Paper 1 was very easy, so grade boundaries are likely to be high....