Feeling like a failure as i'm not going to a Russell group university.

How does that work? And seriously...telling people not to go somewhere which will improve their job prospects and has much better student satisfaction on average. What a dickmove. I'm sure there are a lot of nice people at RGs and a lot of horrible people at non-RGs, it works both ways. Your inverse snobbery is really showing here.

I feel for u man, I went through the same stage where I was surrounded by friends that didn't care about school , I was near the bottom set for most subjects

I then found TSR and realised that if I wanted to.become a doctor Cs and Bs wouldn't cut it so I tried harder at school just before GCSES and I got ok grades not all.As but I meet the requirements for most med schools

However due to prior laziness I got a D in core science so I have to retake that this year and the D also meant I couldn't take chem at A lvl, so I'm teaching myself a lvl chem it's going well and I might even get a B for AS so im turning things around now

What I'm trynna say is we put in the work at the vital stages of our education your going to uni due to a change of environment and hard work and I might get the grades I need due to hard work and a reality check

You shouldn't compare yourself to your friends at your new college because they've had a different environment to you and if you compare yourself to others you'll never be happy as they'll always be someone above you.You should compare your situation to that if the people from your bad school you could have easily failed your gcses and have ended up in a very bad condition relative to the one that your in now

Well done on the offer

Posted from TSR Mobile

I feel embarrassed when I tell people that i'm going to Portsmouth in September. I know it's a good university and at the end of the day it is an university so I should feel proud but I really really don't.

I've always been an average student- I got normal year 6 SATs, middle set in school and C's at GCSE. I went to a rough secondary where being 'clever' was seen as a bad thing. I was surrounded by people who set fire to exercise books and where getting kicked out of lessons was a good thing. I never revised for my GCSEs; I attempted to revise for the lessons I enjoyed but I didn't know about the different exam boards and modules so I revised the wrong things. The first time I read the poems for my English exam was in the exam. I ended up getting an A in short course RE (the only reason I got that was because I was get out of lessons and only had a RE revision guide for the day), 7 C's and 4 D's including Maths, additional science, Geography and English Lit. I was really proud of myself as I got my 5 A-C's where as most of my friends got E's- I was the only person to get a C at GCSE science in my class and I was 3rd set out of 6!

I ended up going to my local regional college to study Btec media production. I hated it, my course was full of dumb asses with mental problems or stoners (not all of them, but most!). I decided that it wasn't for me as I thought I could do better. I missed science, I wanted to be changed so I resat my GCSEs in Math, Science and additional science. I came out with an B in science, and C's in the other two. It wasn't brilliant as I wasn't able to study sciences at 6th form but it wasn't bad as I just resat and attempted to home educate myself.

Now, at 6th form i've realised that the reason I done badly before was because of the type of people I surrounded myself with. So I decided to hang out with clever/middle class kids at school. I go to the school orchestra and most of my friends outside of school either are at russell groups or they're going to a russell group.

I wasn't able to do academic a-levels due to my poor GCSE's even tho my mum explained to my head of 6th form that I had a lot of time off due to my fathers death in year 10 and the bad school. I was allowed to do Music, Geography, Psychology and Media.

I was already disadvantaged at A-level music as I didn't take GCSE music as my old school didn't offer it as I was the only student who played an instrument (excluding the odd kid who can play a 4 chord song on guitar). Psychology I got a D at AS (I hate psychology so much as I disagree with the majority of it!) I achieved a B in media and I got the highest in the class in coursework and exam. Then I come to Geography, my new passion in life, I got a D at GCSE and just missed out on a B by a couple of marks in As. I was the only student in As to get a grade as everyone else got U's. The others got A/B at GCSE all got U's because they were machined through GCSE. This is where I wonder what would of I got if I went to this school before A-levels for GCSE. I mean, I should feel proud? I didn't put lots of effort into As, some of the other students put way more effort into extra case studies or done more past papers and got a worse grade than me.

This comes to my final point about me being so ashamed of not going to a Russell Group university as many people within my year seem to be stupid but getting through A-levels/Btec and going to university. Someone in my psychology/media class thought that Glasgow was the capital of Wales and she's going to a Russel group as she's predicted ABB. Another person is going to university who bit into a candle on the joint business/geography trip as he believed it to be edible. Who the hell doesn't know that a candle isn't edible, like a bog standard birthday candle. His argument was that it was on a cake so he thought it would of been edible.

I have this image of being in my accommodation surrounded by fools. No, i'm not the cleverest person in the world but all the real fake and people lacking common sense seems to be going to university.

I've kinda gone on a massive ramble and lost the point I was trying to make but yeah.

When I was younger (about 11-14) my Dad used to take me to Cambridge a few times a year to the music shop. My parents brought me my flute from Ken Stevens so we used to wonder around Cambridge university walking between colleges. I fell in love with the old buildings, the city and everything about it really. I have this image of university being full of intelligent people who know who the prime mister is and understand what is meant by the coalition. An old library full of potential lawyers and doctors. Going to orchestra in the evening and going to the pub afterwards. I know that Portsmouth has an orchestra (one of the reasons I picked that university) but it doesn't have the right feel. I'm so embarrassed that i'm not going to a red brick, I don't have a list of A*'s and my A-levels aren't looking much better either. All I need to get into university is CCDD and i've already got my C in Geography (I just need to get an E in the summer exam) and my coursework/last years grade has made my media exam an B already.

I have no motivation to go to school or do my exams because A) I'm pretty much into university. B) I don't like my subjects except Geography because I wasn't able to pick ones I wanted. C) Even if I got A's in the summer no decent university will accept me next year for physical Geography because of my choice of A-levels. D) I some times find i'm surrounded by baboons. E) I'm not really fond of my university because I find my course wishy washy.

I'm going to stop rambling.

Is anyone else in the same boat?

I was very emotional writing this and some how turned into a massive rant.

The point I was trying to make was I've really turned my life around, i've done better than most was expecting yet I feel like a failure for not going to a RG university.

Sometimes I feel like going to university isn't an achievement it's more of the next step but going to an RG is an achievement. I've had many comments like 'I wish I was going to a party university' and 'Shouldn't you be looking a proper universities'.

I feel ashamed that i've came across as big headed as that's not what I was getting at. Everyone has to work hard to get into university and i'm not trying to say that Portsmouth is a bad university. Maybe I've spent too much time on the TSR where the majority of people seem to have a long list of A*'s at GCSE and A's at A-level. I kinda felt like an glass ceiling was above me as I wasn't doing academic a-levels.

I would like to apologise if I have cause offence to anyone. I'm not coming up with excuses but reasons why I haven't achieved my full potential. I feel like a right tool for acting like a stuck up moron! Sorry

Thank-you for all of the posters who have been supportive and trust me you've really motivated me to aim higher and feel satisfied with Portsmouth. I thought there was 4 rings of universities: Oxbridge, RG, Other good universities such as St. Andrews/ UEA then modern universities like Portsmouth.

But, at the end of the day it doesn't matter where you start in life it's where you end up

can you get into med school with core and additional science because most of them just say gcse biology and chemistry?

They want the overall core and additional science grades not just biology and chemistry because those of just two sections of your grade

ie. A B in physics with two C's in bio and chem might equate to a grade C overall in core science

[...] The point I was trying to make was I've really turned my life around, i've done better than most was expecting yet I feel like a failure for not going to a RG university. [...]

Oh ok because Ive nearly completed the core science course and I'm predicted to get a* on all four sections of it,so do you think this would be enough ?