Current Year 11 Thread Mark I (2014-2015)

Ahaha, careful what you wish for...

Still, I see what you mean. I suck at motivating myself. But then there is just a point where it's just a bit too much and I don't want to do anything anymore...

Drat, I'd forgotten about past papers. The thing is though, even if Labour reverse the changes our year might still have to do the new ones because May is a bit late to change.

Question: are the changes in all subjects or just the facilitating subjects minus languages? The A levels I'm thinking of taking aren't facilitating subjects (Government and Politics, Philosophy, Chinese and Music - unsure of whether to wholly drop core though) so I'm wondering if I'll have the changes.

btw, I'm on page 2 of Harry Potter. Be proud

No past papers... This will be the death of me.

Yeah, it's only gonna be 20%. I wanna do English Lit for A-level and the coursework section is going to be a massive help. What books are you studying this year for English Lit?

Ughh, they really need to stop messing around with the education system
The new changes that are coming in is similar to what it was like when the O-levels where in place..

Drat, I'd forgotten about past papers. The thing is though, even if Labour reverse the changes our year might still have to do the new ones because May is a bit late to change.

Question: are the changes in all subjects or just the facilitating subjects minus languages? The A levels I'm thinking of taking aren't facilitating subjects (Government and Politics, Philosophy, Chinese and Music - unsure of whether to wholly drop core though) so I'm wondering if I'll have the changes.

For Eng Lit we're rather unoriginally doing OMAM and An Inspector Calls. Yeah, I seem to be rather good at coursework, having got 100% on all my CATs in both Lit and Lang. I don't seem to do quite as well in exams, but I'm still confident for A*s especially in Language seeing as I only have to get a low-ish A in the exam for an A* overall, and the grade boundaries are generally quite low.



Ones affected by the changes:
Art & Design
Biology
Business Studies
Chemistry
Computing
Economics
English Language
English Literature
History
Physics
Psychology
Sociology
Ones that aren't:
Design Technology
Drama & Theatre Studies
French
Geography
German
Government & Politics
ICT
Mathematics & Further Mathematics
Music
Religious Studies
Physical Education
Spanish

So I think you'll be alright?

I'm doing An Inspector Calls too.. I quite enjoy that book. Were also doing TKAMB , had to read it over the summer as it was such a long book :3

Have you studied any Shakespeare books?

Ugh, just my luck. All the subjects that I want to do for A-levels have been affected by the change

We did TKAMB in Y9, I know most people like it but I found it slightly patronising if I'm honest.
Yeah, we did Macbeth for our CAT. Quite liked it as it was very gory and violent
All my A-Levels have except from French which I'll probably drop at AS and therefore won't really benefit from it not being changed...

Yeah they're really long This will be the first ICT exam we've done though because for some reason we didn't do one during the end of Year 10 exams.

We're doing our actual ICT GCSE in January but it's split over two days since it has to take place during an ICT lesson and our lessons are only an hour and 20 minutes.

Thanks, I really hate long exams though haha!

Good luck art is even worse, it's 10 hours so 5 hours one day and 5 the next. It's going to be awful.

Posted from TSR Mobile

In what way was it patronising? Yeah.. I didn't quite like the book. Others love it o_o

Lucky you, would have loved to have done that book. I'm doing Othello which is quite good and were comparing it to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Which other A-levels would you be doing?

I just thought it was very "preachy" at times. I don't know, I don't hate it and think it was pretty well written but, you know when you just don't get on with a book? It also might have had something to do with the terrible teacher I had in Y9. Thankfully my English teacher is much better now.

Well, this is definitely subject to change but at the moment I'm thinking Chem, Bio, Lit and French. How about you?

Ahh, I see what you mean. Just askin' casue I'm literally the only one in my class that doesn't like that book... Even the people in my class that don't like reading like it

I'm thinking of English Lit, History, Economics and Chemistry. As you can assume I have no clue what I want to be

Do you know what you want to go into?

Yeah, most people in my class seemed to like it too.
I'm not really sure either, but I figured taking Chem and Bio opens up most science routes. If I get brill GCSE results then maybe medicine, if not I've thought about all sorts of things, from Biochemistry to Dietetics. I'm best at Lit and French really but I just don't know if they'll get me anywhere careers-wise? I feel like I should take Maths but it's probably my weakest subject (though I'm still on an A* in it), and I don't know if I'd do well in it at A-Level.

x

I guess your lucky that your not going to do it for GCSE. What was your CA for English Lit about?

Ahh, yes that makes sense. I'm the worst person about knowing what subjects are what for careers. I've just picked random ones. Most people that want to go in to Medicine usually do Bio, Chem, Maths and one other. Would you be interested in Law?

Fourteen.
I know, I can hardly wait! Then we've got the fun of real GCSEs, and then the fun of starting the hell that are A-Levels. Oh, wait, the new A-Levels that no-one's done before, and will have the benefit of having zero past papers apart from a couple of specimens!
I'm feeling really optimistic about my academic future, as you can tell...

The CA was basically comparing Macbeth with some poems. I really liked it actually... well, at first I thought it was awful because I thought I couldn't understand Shakespeare and couldn't analyse poems, but I just did a lot of work for it and it turned out good!

Have you got much careers advice yet? We've had the careers people coming to talk to us and I had my careers interview the other week, but none of it has been very useful. People doing Medicine generally do, yeah, but unless you want to go to, as far as I know, Cambridge or Keele, then Chemistry and Biology will do. UCL actually give some degree of preference to people with Chem, Bio and a contrasting subject. I've looked into Law but the job prospects scare me; i.e. it's ridiculously hard to get a job because there's too many graduates. Besides, I'm not sure if I'd find the degree particularly interesting.

Apparently, new A-levels are being phased in. There are two phases, so you may being doing a combination of new and old A-levels...


Posted from TSR Mobile

Ah okay, I guess it's nicer comparing it to a poem. I'm having to compare it to another book. Got my CA this week actually

Nope, none at all! Schools been useless in giving us advice as were having to start applying to 6-forms soon. Hmm that's interesting. I had a thought of going into Law as I randomly picked these subjects and then later on found out that it went with Law but I've decided against it now. Aaaand now I'm back to square one with no clue on what to do. You've done your research

Do you want to move to a different 6-form or stay at your current school?

Oh wow.

Only 1hr 20 mins? Mine are an hour. What kind of things are you expected to do in the exam?

You're welcome, I'm sure you'll do just fine!



Oh yeah! I forgot about the Art exam. Good luck with yours. 10 hours... Wow. O_o I'm sure you'll create a great piece anyway!

Do you have Art mocks at school?

Posted from TSR Mobile