Possible Problem With Applying for Uni This Year.

Hi there,

I have a bit of a problem applying for uni this year. The reason is because I had a stroke in January of this year. This has caused me to have some difficulty getting grades in my subjects but I have still managed to get most of my grades so far, however not all of them. Because of all this I'm worried that I may not get all the grades required to get into my university of choice. So I'm thinking of sending an email to the uni explaining my situation in case I don't get all the grades.

Would this be a good idea? Or should I wait to see if I get the grades first?

Regards,

loooiioool

Any emails about this sort of thing should not come from you but from your teachers.

Have you also spoken to your exams officer about seeking consideration from the exam boards? A university will need to know whether the exam boards have agreed to adjust your grade for this or not before they decide whether they can offer you more flexibility than they would otherwise.

This needs to be done ASAP - talk to your exams officer at school/college today if possible and ask them to help you.

You should avoid emailing your universities directly about this but if your school/college aren't willing to contact them on your behalf you need to send through information before June.

You should email them now and explain your situation. They may show sympathy and reduce the requirements of your grades. You may have to send proof though such as a hospital letter. If you wait till after you do your exams to tell the uni then they may think that you're making it up to try and get in with lower grades because you think you done badly. So email then before your exams. They should be quite sympathetic as you are still working hard to get the grades.


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I was going to do that and hope they'd show some sympathy, however nobody understand how much a stroke affects you unless they've had one themselves. I hadn't thought about it possibly sounding like an excuse. Thank you.

Yeh but as long as you provide proof it should be fine and they'll also see that you're still working hard so they'll probably be sympathetic. Good luck


Posted from TSR Mobile

Thank you!!

Fingers crossed.

Hi there,

I have a bit of a problem applying for uni this year. The reason is because I had a stroke in January of this year. This has caused me to have some difficulty getting grades in my subjects but I have still managed to get most of my grades so far, however not all of them. Because of all this I'm worried that I may not get all the grades required to get into my university of choice. So I'm thinking of sending an email to the uni explaining my situation in case I don't get all the grades.

Would this be a good idea? Or should I wait to see if I get the grades first?

Regards,

loooiioool

I've spoken with my college and they've given me extra time in each exam with the exam boards permission. I have proof of my time spent in hospital to back up all my claims. I will go in tomorrow and ask them about it.

Thank you.

In many situations, if you've been given special consideration for the exam, you won't always get special consideration from the uni as well.

However, I do think it would be a good idea to make the uni aware of your situation- partly so that once you arrive at uni, they can make sure you receive any necessary support.

If you wish to ask for your illness to be considered as extenuating circumstances, it's fine for the initial communication to come from you, but supporting evidence will be needed from your teachers and medical professionals- so it would be a good idea to discuss things with anyone you might need supporting evidence from before contacting unis.

There's a lot of misconception about extenuating circs and the line is that when a circumstance is known about well in advance, as this is, then the task for the school is to level the playing field as much as possible in advance of the exams, such as by giving extra time, a separate room, rest breaks and the like. No extra marks are given in this kind of case, not even in the case of a student missing school, because the view is that there has been sufficient time for the missed work to be made up and it's the job of the school to do this. Extra marks are only given if something happens in the immediate period before the exam which is judged to have affected the performance on the day of the exam. Anything else is regarded as a problem which should have been solve by other means. Many people are confused by how the system works and it seems to have become a commonly held view that extra marks can be obtained for many things, when this is not the case.

Sorry, I was using "extenuating circumstances" in a less formal sense, meaning "extenuating circumstances to allow for a potential contextual offer at uni admissions". I was discussing the circumstances being considered by the uni admissions team, rather than specific extenuating circumstances for exams with extra marks being given by the exam board.

Mitigating circumstances would have probably been better phrase to use, but apparently I can't write clearly this evening

TBH, I was only quoting you as a peg to hang an explanation of what the system is for the benefit of other posters on here. I should probably have quoted OP really.

Don't worry, I don't feel got at or anything My original post was pretty unclear and it is always good to clarify points properly.

No, it wasn't unclear, I just picked out a phrase I could use to explain something which people who don't spend much time chatting to exams officers (like I do!) don't understand, i.e. the majority of A level students. It's something you don't know unless it affects you and there's a huge amount of mystery about what you are entitled to. (Very little on the day. Maximum 5% for the death of a parent or sibling in the immediate exam period. Quite a lot of levelling of the playing field in advance.)

Yeah, it's not something I fully understand to be honest, apart from the fact it's very rare to also be given a contextual offer if you are given extra marks in the exams.

Is it 5% of the total marks, or 5% of the marks you get?

I don't know the answer to that, actually - one for my next chat with the exams officer! You never really know what the board has done. The only indication we get at work is on the results sheet where there's an asterisk next to the result, which means they have considered something or other, but we never know how much has been applied, if anything.

Oh that's interesting. I would have thought the system would have to be a bit more transparent than that!