University Applications and GCSE Results.

Universities (excluding Oxford who use them alongside their own tests to see who is suitable for an interview) do not really look at your GCSEs beyond the required pass/B grade in English language and maths. Also graphics is in no way related to law, don't worry! Your GCSEs are good and if you get good A Level results you'll be able to get into a good uni (A Levels are infinitely more important than GCSEs when it comes to university). Good luck

So technically I do not have a chance of getting into Oxford or Cambridge? xx

I didn't say that. You absolutely do, depending of course on how you do in your A Levels. Oxford pay more attention to GCSE results than Cambridge do. Cambridge quite like high UMS averages in A Levels.

I undertand now, but what I don't get is what UMS is? I researched it but you couldn't quite grasp what it is really all about.

Well basically grade boundaries (how many raw marks you need for a grade) change every year depending on how students perform on the paper. But UMS points always stay the same. For a paper worth 100 UMS, 80 UMS will always be an A, 70 a B, 60 a C and so on. They do this to make it fair since the difficulty of papers varies every year. So one year person A might get 80 UMS with for example 74/100 raw marks and the next year person B might also get 80 UMS but with 70/100 raw marks because the paper they sat was more difficult. Cambridge will automatically interview you if your UMS average in 3 most relevant subjects is something like 93%. I hope this makes sense.


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Yes, it does thank you but does this just applied to A-levels or GCSE's as well?

It's the same with GCSEs


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so then how do we work out our avarage UMS point as overall?

I may have misunderstood your previous question- Cambridge don't look at your average GCSE UMS %. However, if you want to work it out for the sake of knowing it - you need to divide your UMS score by the total UMS score you could've attained. So if someone achieved 275 UMS in a subject worth an overall 300 (e.g. a science with AQA) that's equivalent to 275/300 x 100 = 91.7% (approximately 92). You can do this for all your subjects and work out an average percentage by adding them all up and dividing by how many there are.