qualifications for university

in the summer i'm taking 3 AS levels to hopefully add 3 As to my As at A2. as well as work experience i want to have more to show from my gap year and was thinking about AEA in history or english.

i was wondering if anyone else had taken them and how hard they were (in reference to A level) and how worth while they were

:tsr2:

Reply 1

Sugar_Puff_Fairy

I don't understand why you're doing that. You have As in 3 A2s (And strangely exactly the same A2s I am sitting this year!)... that's enough to get into university. Maybe I am missing something here, but I don't understand why you're doing these extra ASs, unless it's to do a biology/economics type degree rather than follow the arts subjects you've already done so well in??

I did a biology AS and hated every minute of it - That (+ Chemistry + Maths) is what made me turnaround from planning to do veterinary medicine at uni to totally changing my A Levels and applying for History :smile:

Reply 2

lucho22

cloudless

in the summer i'm taking 3 AS levels to hopefully add 3 As to my As at A2. as well as work experience i want to have more to show from my gap year and was thinking about AEA in history or english.
i was wondering if anyone else had taken them and how hard they were (in reference to A level) and how worth while they were

:tsr2:

To be honest doing extra AS levels really isn't really going to help you get into university - it would have been better to do another full A-level. I'm sure you could manage this in Economics no problem. As for AEAs you may as well do more that one as they are simply 3 hour extensions to the A-level syllabus that do not require extra teaching - it's more about original thinking that precise knowledge. They're difficult, but if you're good you should manage to pass. It is important to get timing and technique correct as you will be under pressure from time constraint - so get all the past papers you can. They vary in difficulty from year to year - yet so does the pass mark (usually around 50 - 60% to pass (Merit), and 75% for Distinction). I found mine quite enjoyable - but then again I am a tad weird.. :p:

Reply 3

cloudless

i'm doing the ASs cuz there subjects i like/ interested in and might not get the chance again to study them. also an understanding or economics, biology and business can't hurt.

so the AEA is just one exam/module??

how hard is it to pass with distinction cuz a merit (50%) seems like alot of people could get it or am i wrong

Reply 4

lucho22

cloudless

They consist of one exam that will generally be split into different parts lasting 3 concurrent hours. There is currently a 50% failure rate for AEAs - so it's not exactly easy to pick up 50% - but as I said it's a lot about technique..and also whether you can think outside of the information that you learnt in your text books.

The point i was making was that you could have simply studied one or two and got full A-levels which would then count a lot on your UCAS application. For instance doing both business studies and economics strikes me as a bit of a waste when you could have tried to get the full economics qualification.

Reply 5

cloudless

where do i find out when the history aea exam is

Reply 6

kellywood_5

As long as you're doing the AS levels because you'll enjoy them and not just to get into uni, because as lucho22 said they probably won't help much, that's fine :smile:

As for AEAs, you take one 3 hour exam that's aimed at the top 10% of A-level candidates in that subject. Although you generally only need 50%-60% for a Merit and 75% for a Distinction, only the brightest students take them to begin with and half of those still fail, so they must be quite a bit harder than A-level. I did the French one, so I have no idea about English or history (I would have failed both of those miserably!) but the reading, translation and writing, plus the grammar questions, were definitely a fair bit harder than A2, although for some reason I actually found the listening easier :confused:

As for worthwhile, the majority of students and even teachers have never even heard of them, so unis can't put too much emphasis on them, but it will look really impressive if you pass, it's good preparation for uni and I really enjoyed it, but that's because I'm a geek :biggrin:

Anyway, you've got nothing to lose because they don't require any extra work other than a couple of past papers. You could check the exam board's website (I believe Edexcel do the history one, but I'm not sure) for the exact date, but AEAs are always the last exams, after A2s, so it will be sometime in late June.

Reply 7

cloudless

but i can enter as a private candidate right, like my ASs?

Reply 8

hingus2000

Why not just leave them for now, if you are really interested in them, you can study them when you are mature. Or just research yourself, find out about stuff you are interested - you don't have to do everything in an AS level!