Choosing universities for entrance

Hi everyone,

I'm seriously stuck with what universities I want to apply to, just before I did my GCSE's my headmaster spoke to me one on one telling me he thinks I'm capable of Oxbridge and I should seriously be thinking of applying there, I then got my grades with 6 A's and 4 B's - admittedly I didn't revise really for them as I got a bit complacent - same with my AS.
I've just got my AS results - BCCC - which I am really disappointed with and I will be doing retakes this year and aiming to get A/B's.
The course I am wanting to do is either Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies or Arabic and Islamic studies.
What university would you guys recommend, and is Oxbridge out the question completely - just cause I've heard Cambridge interview like 80/90% of their applicants? I'm just really irritated with how complacent I've been over the past 2 years and I'm really going to turn my work ethic around for this year and get some work experience such as a Kibbutz in Israel done etc.

Help would be much appreciated - and be honest!

Thanks (-:

Reply 1

Nymthae

No chance with Oxbridge, i'm afraid. Cambridge do interview a high percentage of candidates but they look heavily at the AS grades and yours would definitely fall below a cut-off.

I first picked out universities in cities/areas I wanted to go to, and see if they offer my course. My course is Chemistry so I generally had few problems with that but yours probably isn't offered quite as widely. I then checked the entry requirements.

Find out what your predictions will be. It's likely they'll predict you the same for A2 as you got at AS - so something like BCC maybe. You might be able to squeeze a BBC out of them or so but getting predictions higher than your AS grades can be a little unbelievable. You can take a chance at ABB/BBB predictions or something, but I don't think i'd go any higher than that - though i'm no expert and there is honestly *no point* if you don't think you can meet that.

When applying, pick one/two 'higher risk'. So if you did take BBB predictions or something, have a couple at BBB grade, then maybe a couple at BBC/BCC sort of standard. It's up to you how risky you want to go, just make sure you have the predictions they're asking for otherwise it's a wasted application. (I did AAB/ABB/ABB/320pt/300pt offers with AAA predictions, got BBB at AS, I didn't believe the predictions myself and I only asked for AAB). If you can find ones with point offers then that will offer you greater flexibility. With the 300pt offer I could've gone BBB again or met it with ABC.

You can search on UCAS for your course and it will list all the universities that offer it. Then just check out their websites or order a prospectus if you want. If you can, i'd visit a couple of them just to see what they're like and 'get a feel' for the place. I ruled out a couple of choices doing that. There's probably some variation in the courses across universities (Chemistry tends not to be massively varied) so had a little look at what modules are offered, and if they sound interesting.

I don't have any specific universities in my head, as i'm not sure with the course and what the entry reqs. are like!