Okay so as a maths/music student changing courses to mathematical studies next year(not retaking the year- I go straight onto second year) at RHUL, I want to add my own experience here. I know for a fact that my results in maths exams here at uni are vastly better than in A levels, and although I did get ABBC in A levels(a in maths, b's in music/further maths, c in physics) I was pretty unhappy with many of my A level results because in lessons I understood things faster than others, but would then get worse results even though I worked very hard all the time.
It's the mediocre exam takers in my opinion who are hit the hardest by the way exams are put together, because those who have failed usually have a reason-bad teacher, they weren't revising at all or illness, for example-and those who have done well know this means they'll be able to get into a very well respected uni, whilst those who did okay but not brilliant have the nagging feeling that we're not quite good enough-THIS ISN'T TRUE!!! I've so far been getting better results than many of the people I know who got A*'s at A level, some who even got high grades in STEP papers, and as well as this I managed to keep up with a module on analysis which I shadowed, take notes in the lectures and do 6/10 of the worksheets. I'm fairly sure the maths lecturers think I'm weird, since I actually asked to do the analysis exams as well, but in general I know I couldn't really do much better in my maths modules.
Now I'm not just going to go on about my experience but make the point, whenever you see someone excel in his/her job who maybe didn't get into a Russell Group uni or get spot on A levels, don't simply think that they a) managed to pull themselves together and do better or b) should maybe have completed an apprenticeship instead, but maybe think about whether an even better future for them, going through the top universities an becoming more influential in the world so that they maybe didn't just excel in their jobs but could have made a real impact on others, wasn't lost as a result of exams being targeted at the wrong sorts of people.
Also shame on all those people who just replied to the original post from 0xygen by saying he must be getting bad results! You don't need to get terrible results to feel like you're failing anyway, since "bad" results are so subjective. I feel like I got bad results but most people say I haven't. I knew one person who cried after getting an A in GCSE English because she wanted to study medicine and felt like she'd failed because it was one less A*!