Just out of interest, do you believe this was wrong?

Looking through an information booklet for a school I looked at for 6th form. It has a section entitled "Student Profiles."

One profile is of a boy with 2A's 9B's & 1 C at GCSE, and more importantly, abbc at AS. It states he considers his AS grades to be "good."
Yet he says his "teachers have given him the confidence to apply to Oxford." [For Chemistry]. Do you think his teachers gave him false hope, especially as he considered his AS grades to be good? (I'm not doubting they are, they just aren't good enough for Oxbridge, who don't like resits)
[He will have made his application in the last cycle & have left school now.]

Just to make things clear, he had already made the application when he was interviewed & his AS results were from Summer 2007.

Reply 1

Amy_J

12

He's probably talking *******s in an attempt to make the school look good.

Either that or he, and they, are idiots.

Reply 2

Nothos

14

Not necessarily... He'd be predicted AAA at A2, which is what they want...

The girl who applied to Oxford at my school with CCC predicted was stupid. Dumb bitch only did it because she's a pretentious stuck up cow.

Reply 3

missygeorgia

18

Bit off topic, but how much do oxbridge dislike resits? Enough for it to jeopardise your application?

The school just sounds a bit crap and he's probably one of their best students so they want to big him up.

Reply 4

one2three_abc

15

Ah, the teachers probably didn't explicitly say "Apply to Oxbridge" he probably developed those thoughts on his own.

Reply 5

User188463

17

Chemistry has a relatively low app/place ratio, however, unless there was some extreme handicap, he wouldnt even be invited for interview with those grades.

Reply 6

--Dan--

What a sad story, I hate it when people are led on, so mean :P

Reply 7

Mrs.X

Not necessarily. My biology teacher always says to my class not to assume we're too dumb to get in and just apply for the hell of it because we may surprise ourselves. My geography teacher got into Cambridge with ABB, I guess it depends on extra curricular stuff too

Reply 8

xxstace123xx

14

BruceTaylor

Not necessarily... He'd be predicted AAA at A2, which is what they want...

The girl who applied to Oxford at my school with CCC predicted was stupid. Dumb bitch only did it because she's a pretentious stuck up cow.

Someone got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning :p:

P.s - I like that sentence I have bolded

Reply 9

jelly1000

OP

21

missygeorgia

Bit off topic, but how much do oxbridge dislike resits? Enough for it to jeopardise your application?

The school just sounds a bit crap and he's probably one of their best students so they want to big him up.

I read something somewhere about Oxbridge and resits, unfortunatley I can't find it.

Reply 10

jelly1000

OP

21

Mrs.X

Not necessarily. My biology teacher always says to my class not to assume we're too dumb to get in and just apply for the hell of it because we may surprise ourselves. My geography teacher got into Cambridge with ABB, I guess it depends on extra curricular stuff too

Yes but when did your Geography teacher apply to Cambridge? Grade inflation has pushed up entry requirements and now you cannot get in with anything less than AAAb, and even that is pushing it. My mum got into Cambridge with something like DDE (she was ill) at A-Level & a D in GCSE Maths after passing a viva (spoken exam.), but that was a while ago now.

Reply 11

ACDC

18

missygeorgia

Bit off topic, but how much do oxbridge dislike resits? Enough for it to jeopardise your application?

I would like some more info on that too please!

Reply 12

Minerva

17

Why not check out the Oxbridge forum? There's bound to be extensive discussion on this over there!

Reply 13

mire

one2three_abc

Ah, the teachers probably didn't explicitly say "Apply to Oxbridge" he probably developed those thoughts on his own.

haha that's probably so true.

Reply 14

The_Lonely_Goatherd

20

jelly1000

Yes but when did your Geography teacher apply to Cambridge? Grade inflation has pushed up entry requirements and now you cannot get in with anything less than AAAb, and even that is pushing it. My mum got into Cambridge with something like DDE (she was ill) at A-Level & a D in GCSE Maths after passing a viva (spoken exam.), but that was a while ago now.

I got in with AABc! :eek:

So it's not impossible :wink:

Reply 15

necessarily benevolent

14

He was probably predicted AAAB, which is probably enough reason to have a crack. I think the only reason Oxford (not Cambridge) care so much about predicted A levels (and don't look at AS UMS) is so they're confident a candidate can fulfill their offer. Just so they don't waste their time assessing someone who won't get the grades.

Reply 16

camstudent123

jelly1000

Yes but when did your Geography teacher apply to Cambridge? Grade inflation has pushed up entry requirements and now you cannot get in with anything less than AAAb, and even that is pushing it. My mum got into Cambridge with something like DDE (she was ill) at A-Level & a D in GCSE Maths after passing a viva (spoken exam.), but that was a while ago now.

Whilst your point about grade inflation is correct it is far from true that AAAb is some kind of absolute minimum. There are a significant minority who get AAB offers or get AAB and are still let in or get AAAc

Reply 17

tinaturnerbunsenburner

1

BruceTaylor

Not necessarily... He'd be predicted AAA at A2, which is what they want...

The girl who applied to Oxford at my school with CCC predicted was stupid. Dumb bitch only did it because she's a pretentious stuck up cow.

I'm assuming she got rejected? Did she even make it to the interview stage?

Reply 18

shinyhappy

14

This might have been pre-resits grades, so he might have been hoping to bump up the grades a bit, perhaps? Or, as people have suggested, they might predict him AAA anyway. It always annoyed me at school, when people with rubbish AS were predicted much higher A2, but it generally seemed to be the case that it was the kids going to individual teachers, and begging them to bump their predicted grade up, rather than the school deliberately given them boosted grades. e.g. I saw one person who had BCD at AS and wanted to do medicine go to each subject teacher in turn and do the whole 'can you just predict me one or two grades higher, I'll work really hard, and it's only this subject that's letting me down' thing - and managed to be predicted AAB!! It didn't seem to be a deliberate attempt by the school to mislead her, quite the opposite in fact - and because the teachers didn't compare notes, they didn't realise that she was taking them all for a ride. After all things like the school's 'value added' points are calculated based on how much pupils over-achieve compared to their predicted grades, so it isn't really in the interest of the schools to give everyone vastly higher predictions than they're likely to actually get.

Reply 19

d123

17

Mrs.X

Not necessarily. My biology teacher always says to my class not to assume we're too dumb to get in and just apply for the hell of it because we may surprise ourselves. My geography teacher got into Cambridge with ABB, I guess it depends on extra curricular stuff too

I don't know how old your Geography teacher is but when my parents were applying to uni grade requirements were less strict, my dad got all A's and my mum got (I think) AAB, with the B in chemistry and she got into oxford to study chemistry. They knew other people there I think with lower grades. Basically, what I'm saying is that ABB twenty years ago wouldn't rule out cambridge, now it probably would

Just out of interest, do you believe this was wrong?

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