Why is everyone in here so cocky about A-levels?

as far as I'm concerned if I get 3 a's at a level then I get into MIT! Does that not show that top American universities value 3 a's at a level as much as the 99th percentile in sat.

They did also give me an aptitude test, but I did have to do this for oxford anyway. I would say in fact the oxford aptitude test was harder than the one for MIT.

I think there is no way to compare the two types of exams!

SATS = Test of aptitude and IQ = Good for people who do well.

A-Levels = Combination of work of natural talent and hard work. Easy for those who have a natural flair. For those who aren't quite as intelligent, it allows them to prove themselves with their hardworking nature to achieve an A.

If they had been given the former, they will not be given a chance to get in.

The working world is more about hard work rather than natural intelligence.

Well after perusing the other threads you're an exception. Everyone thinks SATs are so much easier than A-levels, yet they can barely pull the 90th percentile.

To the other poster, it doesn't require much work because it's supposed to test your natural intelligence, kind of like an IQ test. Apparently A-levels don't require as much natural intelligence then?

holy crap, i know a harvard PhD grad, hes an utter genius, it shocks me that MIT wiould be more selective than harvard

I don't really see how memorising as much vocabulary as possible tests your natural intelligence. The SAT does nothing to test natural intelligence, it tests your mathematical ability (there are intelligent people out there with no mathematical ability) and your vocabulary, which is not a measure of intelligence, simply a measure of how much you can cram into your head before your exam. So either you're lucky and you've grown up with good maths skills and a strong vocabulary, in which case you still may not be intelligent, or you're unlucky and you cram and cram to acquire a vocabulary and basic maths skills, in which you case you may also not be intelligent. The SAT test is a joke.

EDIT: This is not a defence of a-levels.

Perhaps, except keep in mind that the working world hardly resembles academia in any way. It also doesn't use the knowledge gained through hard work, especially if you majored in a humanities (English, History, etc.) or another academic but essentially useless degree. Even my friend who majored in Electrical Engineering at Stanford says that he doesn't use what he learned at university. A university degree is a stepping stone to graduate school and the working world, but university doesn't really resemble the working world.

I was sort of refering more to the similarities between the working world. There's no reason why a hardworking student shouldn't be allowed to do well in education, purely because they aren't as naturally intelligent as others. Plenty of intelligent people who fail A-Levels because they don't apply themselves.

A joke? Alright, let's see you test well enough to get into a top uni. Cramming vocabulary words? There's far more to the SAT than that. Most people I knew who scored well didn't even cram SAT words nor studied for the exam for that matter.

Besides if you define an exam as a joke simply because people study and cram for it, then A-levels has to be the epitome of a "joke" exam. Isn't it 80-90% hard work and 10 to 20% natural ability?

Ahh nothing like putting things in perspective...i'm off to return my degree

Well I didn't actually try to defend A-levels, but at least with a-levels you're actually learning a subject while trying to demonstrate your ability. A-levels have their own pretty serious problems, it is much too easy to score As and there is little room for distinction for top students, but at least you come out having learned something about something rather than just having expanded your vocab or improved your word analogy skills.

The SAT is just so heavily biased toward people who are good at maths and already have a strong vocabulary. If you must know I've taken the SAT and the GRE in the high 90th percentiles. But then that just reinforces my point because I'm just good at taking those kind of tests, but not nearly as good at taking in exams in the subjects I study at university.

Well after perusing the other threads you're an exception. Everyone thinks SATs are so much easier than A-levels, yet they can barely pull the 90th percentile.

To the other poster, it doesn't require much work because it's supposed to test your natural intelligence, kind of like an IQ test. Apparently A-levels don't require as much natural intelligence then?

Well you're probably not putting as much work into it as others are. If you are a good test-taker, with the right amount of work, you should be able to pull all As at A-level.

The closest analogy I have to A levels are AP exams (and I'm not even sure if they are comparable since AP exams are for one-year courses). However all I can say is the classes that I put more work into--when the teacher was pushier-- I did better in. I didn't self-study outside of class though, so it's probably not as intense as A-levels.

I agree, you learn stuff in A-levels, but if they are anything like AP exams (or even the subject based SAT II), university rarely uses the knowledge you learned in these courses so in the end it's all pretty useless. The only test I found useful was the Calculus exam, and I took over 10 AP exams.

i think you're slightly missing the bigger picture. one of the main reasons we have examinations of any kind all over the world is for employers to guage how suitable you would be for a job. this would include the extent of your work ethic (i.e. how hard you can work) which means you cant dismiss A-levels as opposed to SATs, on the basis that SAT's are more of an assessment of natural intelligence

I was talking about university exams, ie exams taken AT university (college). My A-levels (IB actually) were fine thanks, but my point is that being good at taking tests like the SAT does in my view not correlate particularly well with being good at studying for and accumulating knowledge in a particular subject. A-levels might be easy and largely useless intellectually, but they are a much closer reflection of the kind of learning you have to do pass university exams. No university I've heard of bases it's GPA on SAT-type tests. I'll admit that the SAT subject tests remedy this to some extent though.

Also if you don't already know, the stuff you learn at university is also mostly useless with a few important exceptions.

Yes, yet what 20 to 25% of people get As at A-level? I read an article how Oxbridge is considering having their own entrance exam because there are too many people with A and A* results.

This isn't the original article I read, but here is another. Apparently A-levels aren't that revealing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4895176.stm

i think you're slightly missing the bigger picture. one of the main reasons we have examinations of any kind all over the world is for employers to guage how suitable you would be for a job. this would include the extent of your work ethic (i.e. how hard you can work) which means you cant dismiss A-levels as opposed to SATs, on the basis that SAT's are more of an assessment of natural intelligence