64% of UK students studying Computer Science did not study A-level Mathematics...

IBM to be honest doesn't discriminate with UCAS points. Same goes for a few others (HP, Siemans etc), and it's working fine for them.

And to be honest, it is a HUGE misconception that universities outside the top 10 do not have vigorous syllabuses.

Some of the mathematical content on my degree:



I obviously had to pass that in order to obtain a 2.1. The one's that couldn't generally got 2.2s or lower.

That's where your theory falls flat.

But because I got a C in Alevel IT due to having problems using Microsoft Office, I am being discriminated against.

Furthermore, and here is the problem - if say I did a masters at a top 10 just so that I can get pass the app stage, I would still have the problem due to Alevels.

There is also much more to computing then theory; programming skills for example, it's no good being strong at the theory side if you can't program. We had guys leaving institutes such as Edinburgh/ St Andrews to join my course due to it being very unbalanced.

The problem with these graduate schemes is that they accept anyone from any course, that is one thing they should look at changing.

Owh, yes. I was planning to update that one. I've mixed feelings towards it really.

Damn, well whatever the outcome was, I hope you're okay. It was a nasty position you were in and I'm glad you have good morals, ethics and values. That will take you a long way in life.

Why so? So now you make a comment about making a labour market more socially mobile and now you want to make it more narrow? lol

So people who could comfortably do a job and learn quickly having done an academic degree should now be cut off from these positions? You're bordering making yourself simply sound bitter here. You've gone from complaining about big firms not accepting lower ranking university grads (in line with UCAS point requirements) who have industrial and practical experience to shutting off academically gifted graduates who are willing to learn practical business and industrial skills on a graduate scheme?

And what 'theory'? I simply stated facts.

You need to get it in your head that these companies have been recruiting for decades and they want the best grads. The best grad are usually fast learners who have the core skills a firm needs to train them. The best grads have usually got the best grades, have got a 2.1 or above from a leading university. That's fact.

You're probably going to come back and say these are mainly the private kids. Well it's not. tens of thousands of graduates follow the above formula and apply to these companies every year. Let me remind you, these are the best grads. It doesn't mean that you can't apply to smaller firms. Unless you've been at the top all your life, why do you expect to start your career at the top?

What I've highlighted in bold says it all. And this reflects by many of the best grads coming from elitist backgrounds. Obviously if you have the best schooling, you are likely to fulfil your potential at an earlier age, which affects where you study. Who says you cannot blossom later? Which is what happened to me and many other grads.

The problem is if you are say a law grad, you are screwed, because you just wont get a training contract now.

UCAS points to be honest is a recent thing. 30 years ago, if you got a 2.1 degree, you would be able to break in with less effort.

My brother recently became a captain, without a degree for a famous airline. If he had graduated now, he would have to be degree educated. He also got a D grade at Alevel maths, by your logic he is not fit to do his job.

Finally, you seem to be missing 4 key points:

1) I can do a masters at a top university if I really wanted too. I have the grade.

It is just not worth the financial investment because my ALs will be a cut off. So your idea of where you studied is fallible for that reason alone.

2) It is not a even playing field from the start.

A levels/GCSEs can be passed at A grade, if you are taught how too.

Natural ability is important, but plays a small part in these type of exams.

3) Someone who has turned things around at degree level is probably in some ways better then the "best grad" you refer too, they know what its like to fail, and how to deal with it. It shows that they are motivated, and obviously they have developed mechanism to avoid repeating that.

This is a very important transferable skill in the commercial environment when things are not going well. As it shows that they will not give up if the odds are stacked against them.

4) Assessment centres/ online tests will filter out the weak candidates for corporates.

P.S.

I feel that every company should follow IBMs approach.

With regards to your comment about A grades, I don't think that is the case. A lot of the time, more evident at A-level, the top grades are only achieved through independent learning in addition to what is taught in the classroom. It has been widely publicised, and I'm talking about state schools, both on TSR and in the Media that schools are constantly focusing on getting those C/D students to achieve a C or above so as to maintain or improve their league table position.

Unit 2 – IT2 This unit provides 40% of the AS mark. This unit is a coursework unit. It consists of three tasks: Task 1 – Create a Leaflet using a DTP package Task 2 – Create a Mail-merge document using a word-processor Task 3 – Create a Presentation using presentation software - See more at: http://www.ealingindependentcollege.com/courses/as-and-a2-courses-a-level-retakes-a-level-retake-a-level/a-level-ict/#sthash.d118pKiG.dpuf

Knowledge representation: propositional logic, description logics, ontology, rules, uncertainty and vagueness.

Knowledge reasoning: description logics-based and rule-based systems, tableaux (completion) algorithm for description logics, forward chaining and backward chaining for rules.

Knowledge engineering: expertise identification, capture, evaluations, reusability.
Four hours per week: 2 one-hour lectures, 1 two-hour practical.

1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment (25%).
Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (75%); continuous assessment mark carried forwards (25%).
Only the marks obtained on first sitting can count towards Honours classification.

In addition to your point, I'd question how you can be taught 'how to pass' by a teacher, other than knowing the content. Yes, you can be taught certain learning techniques or given advice on revision or how to write the best essay but we have something called the internet and there's millions of pages on exam technique. Sorry, but using your initiative is also one of the key things these big firms are looking for.

To be honest there is an easy way to disprove the point of ALs being an indicator of ability.

Let's compare the content from the A level IT syllabus (which I obtained a C grade on), to a typical computer science module from my university.

A level IT:

http://www.ealingindependentcollege.com/courses/as-and-a2-courses-a-level-retakes-a-level-retake-a-level/a-level-ict/



A typical module from university:



What looks harder?

So if anything, by your logic, I should have got a 3rd or 2.2 if I was lucky because it is considerably harder.

Many did. People getting ordinary degrees on that course was not unheard off.



Easy.

One exam technique that I learn't later on.

Practising past exam papers.

At my school anyway, they didn't even do this. By not doing so:

- Time management was poor on the day of the exam, I actually ran out of time on that IT Alevel.

- I wasn't smart with my study techniques. Instead of focusing on what my strengths were and doing those questions on the exam, I focused on trying to learn the whole module.

- Doing past papers and getting feedback from teachers, again, never happened. They didn't care.

I don't blame them when the student:teacher ratio is about 20:1

In a good independent school, it is not uncommon for students to have 1-1 tutoring, smaller class sizes, and better resources. If in that scenario they dont meet the grades, then they are poor students and your point stands.

People can go on about self-learning, but the whole point of going to a school is to be guided in the correct way at an age where many are immature. My generation also comes from the pre-youtube era.

Edit:

Finally, if where you studied was such a big deal, then these corporates should encourage those that did not go to a top 10, that got 2.1s to do a masters at one. This isnt the case, the graduate will be still discriminated against.

What rubbish are you going on about? Before A-levels O-levels became 'easy', people had to work their asses off to get a D or E. Self-studying has always existed. It really isn't hard to grab a book or a cassette and learn by yourself. It costs very little but it does require a lot of motivation. Even today, with the likes of Youtube etc. 15-18 year olds as an age group almost certainly do less work outside of the classroom than 20 years ago.

Then you're banging on about independent schools again...only 10% of the UK is privately educated.
And no, at the big companies, they don't take up the majority of the positions through graduate schemes. You'll often find these sorts in small, high cap firms generating a lot of money through high end operations eg private equity houses and hedge funds (you'll have equivalents in the tech industry no doubt).

With regards to past papers, it has always been a revision point. It simply logic to eliminate what may come up. It's happened for decades...whatever's come up in the last 2 papers is unlikely to come up next time...whatever has not come up for a while is more than likely to come up next time.

By using UCAS points as a way to filter out students, you are basically indirectly saying that you want the students that have had the best start in life (that may not do well in a state school environment).

Elitism. Pure and simple.

Wow. I'm getting bored.

So you're now offending people who have worked hard and sweated for weeks over the revision period to achieve the best grades they possibly can by essentially claiming they got it on a plate...

Face this: Capitalism promotes efficiency and efficiency promotes elitism.

Despite all this debate I'm having with you, I understand where you're coming from. I want to go into accountancy, the big4 all require grade B or above for Mathematics GCSE (I wasn't allowed to do it by my secondary school even though I was above foundation level). So I can only apply to PwC or a smaller firm. Essentially, 65% of the ACA training contracts are wiped away for me because the market is dominated by the big4, so by not being able to get into 3 of those means a lot of positions are cut off for me. I have the choice of getting through PwC's recruitment process (which I'm fairly confident I will) or joining a much smaller firm.

All I'm saying to you is even if you can't get into a market leader, there's no harm in starting somewhere smaller and working up into one of the bigger firms. Heck, you might even one day be part of a company that overtakes these 'big guns' that you want to join at present. That's all I'm going to say. You can scream as much as you like but the UCAS requirement won't go away, it's a cheap and efficient way to cut down numbers. The corporate world don't have ethics and morals, that's the first rule you should know being joining them; they couldn't give a toss about the working public.

And I didn't? I just did it the wrong way at Alevels.

One of the biggest lessons I can say I have learnt from my failure back then, and this is what I will pass onto every AL student, is to work smart, not hard. It will not only help you academically, but in the commercial environment.

You can spend 100 hours on something and it may not yield the result you want. To give an example, spending hours on learning the whole syllabus, rather then the exam technique method.

Another example: right now I have to learn Joomla very quickly as I need to create a dynamic web site which can be managed by non techies.

Now I could have done it by reading long complicated documentations, instead I used youtube, and picked it up in an hour by following 1 tutorial. That is working smart, not hard.



That is the route I took ironically.

I'm actually am working for a start up, worked on a project that has helped the first organisation using it to be nominated for an industry award.

But I am lucky; what if you are a law graduate, and unable to get training contracts due to your Alevels?

I'm looking at the bigger picture here.

Yes, working smart is very important and this is the route most clever students use. Even those you saw at school/college, when they do eventually get into Oxbridge/Imperial, they won't have the time to take as long as they did over a topic, the workload increases that much.

I'm glad that you've found good work elsewhere outside the big schemes - you know that only 17,000 graduates find places on these schemes? It can be better to start at smaller firms, as I've said before. You're given greater levels of responsibility and you're more than just a money-making face.

Law is a very elitist sector, there's no question about that. Less than AAB at the age of 18 and you can wave goodbye to a career in the Law. Tbh, it's all about supply and demand and the fact is that there are too many graduates trying to break in. So much so that firms can afford to put up such high requirements. I must admit that Law is unique in it's requirements. Most of the top graduate employers ask for no higher than ABB. The fact that Law asks for AAA at the top firms and AAB at the second tier firms means you end up with an elitist, highly selective sector. This is why it is full of independently educated public school boys.

So Law is a very example of what you mean by the UCAS requirement. However, apart from maybe two sectors, the others don't have as stringent a requirement; this is where your point about UCAS points falls flat. ABB in my opinion, given the grade inflation taking place today, is not beyond the grasps of 90% of students studying A-level. Heck, grade B is now the average for someone taking an A-level; that speaks volumes.

I do want to make things clear. Those who do go to private school do indeed have a distinct advantage over their state counterparts, in case I didn't make that clear.

That says something about the quality of those courses.

IMO a CS degree should have standard first year Analysis and Linear Algebra courses that maths students take, in addition to set theory, discrete maths and probability.

I realised this later on.
And now that I have the skill, ****, I am so annoyed I didn't know this when I was 17 as it could potentially affect my earning power.



I have always said the start up world is great. My problem right now is that I want to break into technical project management; a graduate scheme will fast track me into a PM role on larger projects. The risk with smaller companies is that when you do go and apply for experienced hire roles, you are competing with internal applicants at these companies. So unless your experience is fantastic, you may struggle. That's why once you have corporate experience - its easier to move into another corporate company.

This whole thing has now become frustrating for this reason; I know that I am good enough.

Saying that, I have networked well, and I have friends who built the experience up through contracting giving me advise. Basically they start off small, then eventually do 6 months contract working for corporates, and build it up from there.



The trouble is; it is not only law, its basically applies to anyone doing an arts based subject.

Getting a history degree from LSE, is probably not the same as getting a history degree from Surrey.

Many of these graduates end up teaching. Their degree goes against them in 2 ways:


- not vocational, hard to get work exp.
- Not from a prestigious uni,

What happens to these grads want to work in a corporate? Say Saatchi and Saatchi or somebody not law related?

A lot of Arts graduates want to go into teaching...they're not forced into it. Heck, I'm doing an Arts degree at Manchester and I certainly won't be teaching, I can assure you. Teaching is very competitive, especially for the Arts PGCEs (History, English etc.)

Arts graduates go into everything, I'm being serious here. My uncle, a normal state educated guy went to Reading 20 years ago to do History and Sociology, today, he's a trading analyst for BP. Linkedin will also show you good examples. Teaching is most certainly not the only destination for these graduates. The reason a lot of arts grads end up teaching is because they love their subject and want to share it with the next generation. There are also some fantastic perks to teaching (15 weeks off a year or something?)

Getting into other sectors isn't as hard as you think. Heck, you can even go into IT with an Arts degree. ABB and History will still leave you open to a whole host of careers from teaching to banking.

Mate, you will move up, don't you worry. There are never enough qualified people in a firm to only hire internally. Get your experience, get talking and people will notice you and take you on at the bigger firms.

Every decent university does. I did all of that and I went to Aberdeen which didn't require AL maths.

No they don't unless you you do joint maths CS degree. Oxford does this I think but Cambridge share Natsci maths as standard.

And other than Oxford, when they do have these courses, they tend to be less rigorous than the maths dept courses.


EDIT: the way I see it, all engineering, CS and physics degrees should share the first year analysis and algebra courses of the maths dept.

How do they do it if they cant get on to a grad scheme, and what if you dont have the ABB?

To be honest, I was thinking about redoing ALs but one half of me thinks its just a waste of time. So I have gone for getting professional qualifications instead - Prince 2.

It probably was easier for your uncle 20 years ago. Economy was better.




Hope so mate.