GCSE's affecting Universities

I am currently in Year 11 and have not done my GCSE's. According to the news, teachers are going to be giving assessments on each student based on their overall performance throughout the year. My current plan is to do Biology, Chemistry and History at A-levels and my future career plan is medicine or dentistry. However, my predicted grades for most subjects were 6's and obviously this would not be good enough for my future career plans (Biology and Chemistry I was predicted a 6 and in History an 8). After my mocks result I was revising non-stop and after doing past papers I was achieving some 7's and mostly 8's so this would have been my likely performance had I done my GCSE's. So I know I am able to get those grades, but I'm not sure if medicine or dentistry would accept me due to the 6's as my predictions. Would they even look at them as they know the current situation and would know how many students get amazing grades compared to their predicted grades in previous years? Surely they would know that this grading system is not fair. So if my predictions for GCSE's are all 6's and I get the requirements and A-levels and work experience etc would higher universities (like the Russell group universities) accept me?

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 1

Tredoltle

I'm not in school anymore but I believe that they plan on having in-person exams in September? If you do get given a 6, you will most likely have a chance to take an exam to meet the grades required.
Having 6s for your GCSEs would definitely not be good if you plan on doing medicine.

Reply 2

wemove

Original post by Tredoltle

Thank you!!! :smile:

But do you know what these in-person exams would entail? And as you said that 6s would not be good for medicine but would it be okay for dentistry? I agree that 6s wouldn't be acceptable for medicine, but would they understand that these were not based fairly like other years and maybe consider giving broader requirements for GCSE's given that my A-levels meet the requirements? Would it be the same for dentistry?

Reply 3

username5064508

Original post by wemove

Thank you!!! :smile:

If you resit in autumn, I presume that the exams will probably be the backup exam from the summer or maybe even the actual one (though unlikely).
Maybe for other softer subjects they would allow more leniency, but with a subject such as medicine I doubt they would be so lenient.
Medicine and dentistry are often lumped together for application purposes, so I'd imagine that if 6s aren't good enough for medicine, they won't be good enough for dentistry either.