Do I have a shot with these gcse grades?

Your gcses are similar to mine and I got all my offers for economics from unis similar to yours. I got AAB at AS level.


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Sure. As long as you write a great personal statement and have excellent predictions, you should get an offer.

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That makes me feel better and are my predictions basically my as-level grades or?


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Well, your teachers base your predictions on what you achieved in AS. So the better you do in AS, the higher your predictions for A2.

Some teachers are lenient and will predict some students B/A grades if they ended up getting a C (based on what they think a student's potential is).

However, some teachers may not predict higher than what you got in AS levels.





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Ahh kinda stupid how teachers have so much control like you could just bumlick them all year and they're more probably to predict you higher but oh well hopefully I'll do good


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Which unis did u apply for? I also have 2 extra AS's in economics and chemistry but at E grade so don't really count
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You probably will
Good luck on results day.

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In the end, Southampton, Exeter, Bristol, Surrey, Royal Holloway.

Chose Southampton and Surrey as my firm and insurance.

Since Econ is a popular course, majority of unis will make a lot more offers than they have places which can obviously help.

Thanks shall I try to get any work experience?? Like it's so hard for economics I've experience in retail and I worked in a surgery too but nothing else, I'm not really sure how my teachers would be in predicting grades like can you talk them into predicting you higher? Or by saying you'll resit?


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Ahh we've almost the same choices! What did you get predicted? And what about experience/activities? And what subjects?


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I got predicted A*AA (somehow, 0% chance that i was ever going to meet it)

I did economics, psychology & maths.

Regarding my statement, i think in my intro paragraph i mentioned 1 lecture (online). Second paragraph i mentioned my epq and an essay competition that i got mentioned in (somehow, that essay was trash). Third paragraph i mentioned 2 books which i tried to criticise and linked one to an essay that i wrote for another competition.

Extra curricular paragraph included a JPMorgan open day that i stumbled in, some economics club (which dissolved after a term - even i didnt want to go after the second session) and a gardening like club i was associated with (Hadnt been to a meeting since year 11)

Dont worry about work experience. Your not expected to have any.

Books / Online courses / Essays comp are your friend. You can do them at home without too much effort.

When I was doing my PS, I didn't mention any work experience so, no, you don't need to.

However, only mention work experience if you know you can relate it really well to an economics course.
I.e. what skills did you learn from retail/surgery work and how those skills will help you in studying an economics degree.

Don't just shove work experience in the PS for the sake of it.

Yeah. Go and talk to your teachers about predicting you higher if you need to meet the course entry requirements.

Unfortunately, with January retakes being scrapped, you won't be able to rely on saying you'll do retakes to boost your predicted grades as many students did in the past. The teachers won't be too convinced you'll be able to handle balancing retake exams with A2 exams in the summer.


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I got predicted A*AA (somehow, 0% chance that i was ever going to meet it)

I did economics, psychology & maths.

Regarding my statement, i think in my intro paragraph i mentioned 1 lecture (online). Second paragraph i mentioned my epq and an essay competition that i got mentioned in (somehow, that essay was trash). Third paragraph i mentioned 2 books which i tried to criticise and linked one to an essay that i wrote for another competition.

Extra curricular paragraph included a JPMorgan open day that i stumbled in, some economics club (which dissolved after a term - even i didnt want to go after the second session) and a gardening like club i was associated with (Hadnt been to a meeting since year 11)

Dont worry about work experience. Your not expected to have any.

Books / Online courses / Essays comp are your friend. You can do them at home without too much effort.

I really wanted to go to that JPMorgan thing but missed out, any books you could recommend me?? & how i could say they link in to daily life? I've a similar structure too


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I would just look around your school / local library for any interesting economic books. Obviously try to refrain from the very common ones such as the rational optimist. If your wondering i picked the 'Darwin economy' (extremely tedious i found) and 'Bad Money' which was by coincidence, about the US financial crisis - wrote an essay on this topic, so i could just say that reading this book kinda 'inspired' me to write the essay lol.

I just picked my books out my quick skims and the blurb.

There isnt really a correct/incorrect book you can go for. Try not go overboard with a really complex book, rather something fairly straight forward.

The main thing you probably need to do in your statement is to point out what the book was about ever so briefly and try find weaknesses in it.

Economics is everywhere, so pointing out how a book relates to xxx usually isnt tooooo difficult. You'll find loads of books writing on China, US, UK etc. You could also look for articles on newspapers/economist and try link it with books. I recall someone reading Soccernomics then relating it to an economist article, questioning whether Brazils huge public spending on the world cup will be sustainable or may end up like a Greece - that was really good!