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Change in performance from GCSE to AS-Level by subject

Poll

What was your average UMS difference between GCSE and AS?

It is pointless comparing all your GCSE results to all your AS-Level Results because it is your GCSE results in the subjects you took your AS-Levels in that matter.So I want the UMS results for your GCSEs in the subjects you did your AS-Levels in and your AS UMS for those AS Levels for comparison converting the difference between them to a percentage-comparing simply grades it is very hard to determine the difference in difficulty of GCSE and AS-Level. This may be tricky for subjects you didn't do that subject in so you will have to exclude them and also for Additional Science average your results in the Science you took to A-Level and add it on to count for Unit 3 and add your Additional Science ISA on.Students who are awaiting AS Level results please feel free to add your UMS predictions.For Linear GCSEs, please apply the UMS rules to your raw mark.

I will give my GCSE UMS and AS UMS predictions as an example:
GCSE Maths A*(295/300) AS Maths Prediction-A (292/300) -3 UMS=-1%
IGCSE Further Maths A^(174/175 raw mark),A^ is generally worth 100% GCSE UMS applying UMS rules so (300/300) AS Further Maths Prediction-A (283/300) -17 UMS=-5.67%
GCSE Physics Unit 1-A(84/100),GCSE Physics Unit 2-A*(90/100) and GCSE Additional Science ISA-A*(95/100)-this was actually the same ISA as for Physics so is good to use for this calculation average of Unit 1 and 2=A(87/100) so for this gives GCSE Physics-A(356/400) and AS Physics Prediction- A(249/300)=-6%
GCSE Geography A(350/400) AS Geography Prediction B(156/200)=-9.5%
average UMS difference=-5.54%(as said before exclude any subjects in this average where you can't account for GCSE UMS).
(edited 9 years ago)

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I'll do the ones I can remember, not sure of my UMS for science GCSEs.

GCSE History: 190/200
AS: 165/200

GCSE English Literature: 174/200
AS English Literature: 160/200

:tongue:



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Reply 2
Original post by Changing Skies
I'll do the ones I can remember, not sure of my UMS for science GCSEs.

GCSE History: 190/200
AS: 165/200

GCSE English Literature: 174/200
AS English Literature: 160/200

:tongue:
Posted from TSR Mobile

You shouldn't have lost such important information.I have all my exam results on TSR for all units(I deleted lower marked resits though).
I can't remember my exact ums for gcse anymore, but I know at AS I improved quite a lot on all of them. Got 297 in maths, 287 in further maths and 293 in physics. At gcse I was closer to 90% than 100% for all three of them
Reply 4
Original post by nmanvi
a


How could you improve by 80-100% thats incredible that means that you must have either failed/just passed at Grade G your GCSEs and then gone on and got an A in your AS subjects.Were you a private candidate?
(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 5
Original post by Dalek1099
You shouldn't have lost such important information.I have all my exam results on TSR for all units(I deleted lower marked resits though).

Curious to know why you think having UMS information is of such importance ?

(Mainly on gcses...)
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by Dalek1099
You shouldn't have lost such important information.I have all my exam results on TSR for all units(I deleted lower marked resits though).


It's really not important :tongue: and I have it somewhere, just can't be bothered looking for my sheet :tongue:
Reply 7
Original post by Jkizer
Curious to know why you think having UMS information is of such importance ?

(Mainly on gcses...)


It determines exactly how well you did at your GCSEs, grades don't tell even half the story.
Reply 8
Original post by Dalek1099
It determines exactly how well you did at your GCSEs, grades don't tell even half the story.

Mhmmm because employers & unis will really care about that.....
Reply 9
Original post by Jkizer
Mhmmm because employers & unis will really care about that.....


I think they should do I know that university performance is correlated with A Level UMS not really A Level grades and I wouldn't be surprised to see a stronger correlation with GCSE UMS than GCSE grades-it could be awkward for linear GCSEs, the school would have to find out all the raw marks and not all schools bother so that universities can convert it to UMS using UMS rules.

What if a university wanted 7 A* for Medicine like Birmingham use to(I'm not sure if it still does) and found a candidate with 6A*(safely into A*) and 5As(each 1 UMS off an A*) and then also had a candidate with 7A*(each just an A*)and 4As(all just an A)-the one who got 6A* is really the better candidate by far but the grades hide this.

Fortunately,I will benefit from the lack of care for UMS because I have been very lucky in the past achieving GCSE grades by very small margins(GCSE English Language(0 from grade below),GCSE English Literature(2 from grade below),GCSE German(2 from grade below) and GCSE French(1 from grade below)) whilst the most unluckiest I got was being 10 away from the next grade in GCSE Geography-is this the same for other people did they generally just get the grades?or am I really lucky? and might my luck run out for AS?-to be fair I cruised away with Maths and Further Maths in terms of UMS and raw marks for Further Maths.
Reply 10
I don't even know my UMS marks nor do I care about them. If they can't be comparable due to that gap in difficulty, what is the point?
I think you're reading way, way too far into this...

Posted from TSR Mobile
Here's mine - my average is +3.38%

GCSE history 100% UMS -> AS history 100% UMS

GCSE French 91% UMS -> AS French 92% UMS

GCSE English lit 90% UMS -> AS English lit 100% UMS

GCSE geography 95% UMS -> AS geography 97.5% UMS
Reply 13
Original post by smile:D
Here's mine - my average is +3.38%

GCSE history 100% UMS -> AS history 100% UMS

GCSE French 91% UMS -> AS French 92% UMS

GCSE English lit 90% UMS -> AS English lit 100% UMS

GCSE geography 95% UMS -> AS geography 97.5% UMS


You are an inspiration keeping your 100 UMS in History and improving dramatically in French and English Lit.I was awful at French and had to work very hard at GCSE to get an A* which I just got and I really doubt I would have got such good UMS because you have to be really good at languages for A-Level-if you get a B in a language you are allowed by Durham University to study in that language Maths living in the country with that language so you have to be really good.
Reply 14
Original post by Ndella
I don't even know my UMS marks nor do I care about them. If they can't be comparable due to that gap in difficulty, what is the point?


The point is that you can't really compare how hard GCSE and AS are by grades alone, comparing UMS should show an accurate representation of the difference in difficulty.If someone gets an A at GCSE and a B at AS AS might only be fractionally harder, if you include UMS then you can average out the difference in difficulty to see whether AS is much harder than GCSE, as most people think.
Original post by Dalek1099
You are an inspiration keeping your 100 UMS in History and improving dramatically in French and English Lit.I was awful at French and had to work very hard at GCSE to get an A* which I just got and I really doubt I would have got such good UMS because you have to be really good at languages for A-Level-if you get a B in a language you are allowed by Durham University to study in that language Maths living in the country with that language so you have to be really good.


Thanks :colondollar:, I think I was able to do so well because I had obvious strengths and weaknesses and so I spent a lot of time at GCSE focusing on my weak subjects, like maths, chemistry etc. which I think ended up compromising my UMS - not that anyone would take any notice of it anyway :lol:. I actually found A-level easier in that respect and was much more motivated to revise :smile:
gcse's have no bearing whatsoever on AS levels or a levels. there are people who beat me in GCSE maths etc but are nowhere near my skill level in AS level and other maths related things. GCSE's honestly just show how well you can handle a workload or performance of memory and recalling methods. I think many people will agree that the predictions these systems give on point scores are crazy. Ive been predicted a C in further maths and D in normal maths. Yet ive been getting 100's in every exam and mock ive done since gcse's. The gap between gcse's and A level is so big it just happens to be most people who do well in gcse's end up not performing in a levels. On the other end some people who didnt do as well in gcse's flourish in a levels. Weird this education system is. Proper weird.


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Reply 17
Original post by physicsmaths
gcse's have no bearing whatsoever on AS levels or a levels. there are people who beat me in GCSE maths etc but are nowhere near my skill level in AS level and other maths related things. GCSE's honestly just show how well you can handle a workload or performance of memory and recalling methods. I think many people will agree that the predictions these systems give on point scores are crazy. Ive been predicted a C in further maths and D in normal maths. Yet ive been getting 100's in every exam and mock ive done since gcse's. The gap between gcse's and A level is so big it just happens to be most people who do well in gcse's end up not performing in a levels. On the other end some people who didnt do as well in gcse's flourish in a levels. Weird this education system is. Proper weird.


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Those who did well at GCSE and can't do A-Level are outliers in general those at my school who got A*s have done great in the mocks like me, the only exception was someone who didn't turn up on time on lessons and was unprepared and basically didn't have much work ethic and even though he struggled there was some feeling at the college that He was starting to work hard near the end after struggling and getting Es/Us in the mock , so we will have to see whether He will be one of those outliers who fail AS despite easing through GCSE.

If you are prepared to actually do the lesson and come properly prepared and do the homework then you should find AS easy if you found GCSE Maths easy because the statement that the gap between GCSE and AS is huge couldn't be more of an exaggeration the gap is very small, hence why so many students on here will post how they covered a module in a couple of weeks.In Y11 I covered C2 up to an A grade standard in a couple of weeks if I remember and didn't find it harder than what I was studying at GCSE at the time-to get good UMS though you do have to do a lot of past papers, to avoid silly mistakes/falling victim to unusual questions.

I feel as though the gap between GCSE Further Maths/Additional Maths and AS Further Maths can be very large though because GCSE Further Maths is pretty much as difficult as AS Maths, which isn't much harder than GCSE Maths where as Further Maths has a lot more new concepts to deal with-it was the mechanics modules that I found really hard at first and had to work on because you didn't do them at GCSE and I did M1 and M2 at AS.
Reply 18
Original post by physicsmaths
gcse's have no bearing whatsoever on AS levels or a levels. there are people who beat me in GCSE maths etc but are nowhere near my skill level in AS level and other maths related things. GCSE's honestly just show how well you can handle a workload or performance of memory and recalling methods. I think many people will agree that the predictions these systems give on point scores are crazy. Ive been predicted a C in further maths and D in normal maths. Yet ive been getting 100's in every exam and mock ive done since gcse's. The gap between gcse's and A level is so big it just happens to be most people who do well in gcse's end up not performing in a levels. On the other end some people who didnt do as well in gcse's flourish in a levels. Weird this education system is. Proper weird.


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Loool exact same story with me. Everyone seemed to better better than me at GCSE but come A level i rocketed to 3rd best in the entire school with alot hard work (the top 2 were genius'....)
Reply 19
I cant remember my GCSE ums but i do know i scrapped an A* (got 160/200 but 158 was an A*)
I went on to the A level maths in just a year and ended up with an A* overall (550/600 ums)
So in GCSE i was 2 marks into an A* but in a level i was 10 marks into an A* with much much higher performance in all my modules

I personally found it much easier to get full marks in A level papers than GCSE... well after GCSE i did revise 24/7 loool

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