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Statistics A level advice - please help out an old person

Hello,

I remember this forum from when I took my A levels the first time in 2005-7 and was hoping for some advice as am now completely out of touch with how it all works.

I am 34 and long story short looking for a career change - I have 2 BScs and an MSc and am hoping to do statistics A level which could open some doors for me to try something different (more than happy to share what all of this is if anyone is actually interested...)

I want to do this as a private candidate i.e. self taught and then go to an exam centre to be able to take the exams.

My questions are:

- do you have to complete the AS level before you can complete the A2? How does the structure of that work now? Or have they changed it so you sit one giant lot of exams at the end of the 2 years?

- I have tried finding exam centres as a private candidate but got absolutely nowhere

- It looks like statistics is a really unpopular A level so I can't seem to find much online about it other than Pearson do the course?

Any advice at all is really appreciated - thank you!

TL/DR - any advice on how to take statistics A level as a private candidate please

Reply 1

coolcat24

Original post by helpwithstats

I am an A-level student and whilst I can't help with the statistics qualification specifically (I don't take it, but take A-level Maths which includes some statistics), I'll try to help with your first question.

I'm pretty sure all A-level qualifications are now linear meaning you take one lot of exams at the end of 2 years which assess you on everything. You don't have to sit the AS exam first before progressing onto A2 (but practising AS skills might help). My school does allow people to sit the AS if they want to, but not many people do and I'm not sure how much an AS is 'worth' in terms of tariff points, etc.

Also, with your exam centre issue... again this might not help at all but it might be worth checking out your local college - they might let you sit in as a private candidate? I don't know.