Are Durham GCSE Nazis?

Yeah you do
For what/??

I really want to go to Durham, but I've heard that they're really big on GCSEs when making offers and I'm worried because my GCSEs aren't that amazing! I got 2A*s, 5As, 1B 2Cs 1D.

However I think my school is planning to send an Extenuating Circumstances letter to them (I went to a really bad school when I did GCSEs before moving to a better one for my A Levels, plus I'm from a really poor background).

My A Level results are pretty good - I got over 90% in all my AS Levels and my predicted grades are A*A*A*. My teachers think my personal statement is really good too.

Do you think I still have a chance of getting in?? Thanks!

For the love of all that is holy don't get any of that put as extenuating circumstances. None of that is an excuse for how you did in your GCSEs.

Two of the smartest people I know are doing Maths at Oxford and Physics at Warwick and both of them attended a school that only managed to receive an Ofsted rating above Inadequate this year for the first time in its history. Over 80% of GCSE students at that school fail to achieve the government target of 5 GCSEs at grade C or above and every single year it rated very near the bottom for all the schools in Bristol in pretty much every metric.

These two both received 8 or more A* grades at GCSE and both got straight A grades in their AS and A levels.

If you go to a poor school and get bad grades then the only thing you have to blame is yourself, if you had worked harder you could have got better grades. It's not difficult to recognise when a school is failing to teach you properly and if you have any motivation at all it's not difficult to take matters into your own hands and do something about it.

I jumped from a pretty mediocre set of GCSEs to 90%+ to A Level as soon as I changed schools, so actually I think I have a pretty strong case. But my question regarded whether or not I could get in so please don't waste your time in being nasty and pathetic enough to write me an essay on why I lack motivation lmao

I was simply pointing out that "I went to a bad school" is not a valid excuse for crap results. There are thousands upon thousands of students who get top grades from bad schools because they work hard for them, they don't expect everything to be spoon fed everything that they need to know.

Unlikely, Economics is a popular course and many will be applying with all A's at AS

Posted from TSR Mobile

Might be worth a shot as long as your other 4 are a little more realistic

I was simply pointing out that "I went to a bad school" is not a valid excuse for crap results. There are thousands upon thousands of students who get top grades from bad schools because they work hard for them, they don't expect everything to be spoon fed everything that they need to know.

I really want to go to Durham, but I've heard that they're really big on GCSEs when making offers and I'm worried because my GCSEs aren't that amazing! I got 2A*s, 5As, 1B 2Cs 1D.

However I think my school is planning to send an Extenuating Circumstances letter to them (I went to a really bad school when I did GCSEs before moving to a better one for my A Levels, plus I'm from a really poor background).

My A Level results are pretty good - I got over 90% in all my AS Levels and my predicted grades are A*A*A*. My teachers think my personal statement is really good too.

Do you think I still have a chance of getting in?? Thanks!

I agree. I went to an awful secondary school. 30% pass rate for 5 A* - C. Worked hard and got excellent GCSE grades. Bad excuse, but it'll either benefit him or have no effect, it won't make his application worse, so still worth a shot.

Well, I would imagine that it may well do harm if you try and use an excuse like that on your application.

Having spoken to three different heads of admissions for three different departments split across both of the Universities I have attended they would all tell you that they would rather see an applicant be honest, admit that they know they didn't work as hard as they did when they were younger but that once they reached AS level they turned it around and made the choice to work harder, than for an applicant to try and put the blame for their mediocre results on somebody else.