[Nervous Mum]

(Original post by I have a question)
I wish my mum cared this much about my education

Of course I care about his education, I want him to get the best education, so that he can get the best paid job! After all he will be paying for my care home

[newhope]

From what I know I would ask your son to make sure that his personal statement is good. As long as it can convince the uni that he has the passion for the course he should be offered the place even when his predictions may be a bit low.

Then again emailing the head of admission for that uni/course may not be a bad idea.

[Jessca]

I achieved BBC at AS level with BBB predictions on my UCAS (I have resat these but this was what I had achieved when I was applying) and managed to get AAB, ABB, BBB and BBC offers for university

[I have a question]

(Original post by Nervous Mum)
Of course I care about his education, I want him to get the best education, so that he can get the best paid job! After all he will be paying for my care home

[newhope]

(Original post by Nervous Mum)
Of course I care about his education, I want him to get the best education, so that he can get the best paid job! After all he will be paying for my care home

Clever mum!

[Nervous Mum]

The results are in but where I am reading a lot of people giving their results at As level as ABB OR ABC etc, this does not seem to apply in my sons case. I will explain

He has achieved the following

Biology course work = A
Biology 30% paper = B ( disappointed with this as hoping for A, may resit)
Biology 50% paper = D ( will resit in January)

So overall at this moment he is sitting on a C

Maths is the strange one though.

C1 A
C2 A
C3 C ( will resit to hopefully bring up to above 90% for an A)
D1 B
D2 D ( hated this and will not resit)

He is doing Maths and Further Maths, so you can see what I mean here, about not having a straight three subjects with As grades.

And we won't talk about Physics which he bombed, he has dropped the subject.

[newhope]

Are you sure that your son is doing the right subjects?

When I did Alevel maths i stuggled at C4. If i was him I would resit C3/D1 and D2.

yes he hates it but D2 is a D and it will hampper his chances of getting an A. Every mark is important. People here have missed their grades by 1 UMS and thus lost their places at the uni they wanted to go.

If he is doing Further Maths his C3 should be higher. Maybe it was a bad day. Only he will know the answer to that question.

Further maths is hard. I know that from experience! My friends did those exams and I had a look at their materials. You need to practise a LOT!

[Nervous Mum]

He has one module he can throw away because his school do 13 modules and he only needs 12 so D2 is the one he will throw. He is definitely re-sitting C3 to bring the mark up to 90%+.

I am wondering why you ask whether he is doing the right subjects?

He is hoping to do a Maths degree at University, so I would have though Maths and Further Maths A Level were right on track.

[toronto353]

(Original post by Nervous Mum)
He has one module he can throw away because his school do 13 modules and he only needs 12 so D2 is the one he will throw. He is definitely re-sitting C3 to bring the mark up to 90%+.

I am wondering why you ask whether he is doing the right subjects?

He is hoping to do a Maths degree at University, so I would have though Maths and Further Maths A Level were right on track.

I think that newhope's advice was based on an examination of your son's marks and his own personal experience. However, I have known people who have had similar results in the same subjects go on to study maths at university. Your son should look at how he prepared for his exams and perhaps if there were any difficulties that he had in C3. From my own experiences, C3 is a difficult module and so if he can examine how he prepared for this exam and what difficulties he had, he can learn from what went wrong and address those mistakes.

Newhope is correct to state that the further maths modules will be a step up and so by addressing the issues that he had now, he can hopefully get strong results in the further maths modules. At this stage, it's a case of move on from results day and now look at what issues there are and what he can do to tackle these.

Newhope gives one idea which might be useful. I can also concur with him. When I studied for my maths A level, I found that practising for exams by doing as many past papers as I could was incredibly helpful. That might not work for your son, but it may do.

[Nervous Mum]

I totally agree with you, I did the same with my book-keeping, did many many past papers.

However, my son's argument was there was no point answering questions that he knew the answer to, so he would pick out the questions he did not know and work on them.

I think this time round I will encourage him to complete fully all the test papers.

[newhope]

(Original post by Nervous Mum)
I totally agree with you, I did the same with my book-keeping, did many many past papers.

However, my son's argument was there was no point answering questions that he knew the answer to, so he would pick out the questions he did not know and work on them.

I think this time round I will encourage him to complete fully all the test papers.

Wrong approach and I suffered from it.

Let me give you an example.

I am good at maths. Not great, but good. I was predicted an A when i did it 6 years back. Now i did the same approach as your son. I would skip questions I knew and did questions I could not do.

When I did my real exams and did the 'easy' questions i sadly had a brain freeze in some parts. I was not sure about what I did was right or not since I never revised it properly. I was being confident. Yes, your son may already know it but no harm in doing it. Every UMS is important. I lost my A in maths by 2%. Had i practised the easier questions I would have got an A. I am sure i lost easy marks there.

Anyways if ur son wants to do maths at Alevel u need to make sure that he is very strong in maths. C3 and C4 are hard papers. SO is further maths. A friend of mine got an A in both maths and FM. He went on to do well at maths at uni.

My advice is this. If your son does fine at FM then he should do Maths at uni. He should aim to get an A at FM. In this way he will know that he will be ok at uni. If he gets a B he may struggle. If he gets a C then there is no point.

Maybe if he wants to practise more he can do the questions from the Step papers which Oxbridge provide. Even if he does not want to go to Oxbridge he can atleast see if he can do those questions. I would think that those subjects would be covered in uni anyway. So atleast he has a taste of what is to come.

[Jadee1234]

(Original post by Nervous Mum)
I think my son is going to be predicted ABB, he is hoping to get AAB, based on the predictions is there any point in him applying to Uni's with an AAB entry requirement ie will they base his application on tutors predictions.

Thanks

What I did when I thought I was going to be predicted ABB is talk to my subject teachers and ask one of them to predict me an A instead of a B on the basis I tried really hard, many teachers are understanding and will do this.

&& I also am going to study Mathematics at university, my teachers actually thought I'd only get ABC but I ended up getting A*AB, predictions mean nothing seriously.

Oh and I also had to resit C3 to get it up to 90%+ and even then I still received 100 UMS in C4, there is no need to worry, if he puts the effort in he should do fine, I know how he feels about Decision 2, as I wasn't a fan and got 60 UMS my first time round, but I took it again, as I didn't want to learn a whole new module, it's easy, it's just very dull and paying attention is hard... Your son seems in the same boat I was, I'm sure he'll do great.