The real truth about BTEC
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Original post by marcus2001
Stopped reading here. 99% of people that get A's in academic subjects at A Level could pass a BTEC. 99% of people that get a distinction in their BTEC couldn't get an A in an academic A Level.
Stopped reading here. 99% of people that get A's in academic subjects at A Level could pass a BTEC. 99% of people that get a distinction in their BTEC couldn't get an A in an academic A Level.
Well you should have read on but instead you chose to make a fool of yourself. I got a Merit in BTEC in my first year of 6th form but and got AA in history and economics, which ums in 90-100 bracket in a couple of modules. The rest of my class also did considerable better in their AS-level subjects than in the BTEC. So your 99% conjecture is already blown out of the water.
However for arguments sake I'll expand on what you said.
The thing with BTEC is that it involves work throughout the year, as deadlines are essentially every other week, while A-levels, today now involve one huge spike of input at the end of the year.
I find the people who do BTEC are not incapable of A-levels as your insecurities would like to believe, but they tend to be less motivated therefore will not put in as much work as those doing A-levels. When it comes to A-level exam periods, they will more than likely do much less work to prepare than others. So yes, a large number could end up getting below a grade A.
However, if you were to take the countless hours that a Distinction level student would have spent doing coursework throughout the year, and had that student spend that time in March-June revising for A-levels instead of doing BTEC coursework, then I would be surprised if the student didn't get an A grade.
In short you can get a distinction by working consistently during the year, spreading the workload over the 8-9 months of the year. To get an A grade you can get away with 2-3 months of solid revision before the exam, something that someone who hated school and isn't motivated is unlikely to do, hence they don't do it and don't get an A grade.
Original post by bestofyou
Well you should have read on but instead you chose to make a fool of yourself. I got a Merit in BTEC in my first year of 6th form but and got AA in history and economics, which ums in 90-100 bracket in a couple of modules. The rest of my class also did considerable better in their AS-level subjects than in the BTEC. So your 99% conjecture is already blown out of the water.
However for arguments sake I'll expand on what you said.
The thing with BTEC is that it involves work throughout the year, as deadlines are essentially every other week, while A-levels, today now involve one huge spike of input at the end of the year.
I find the people who do BTEC are not incapable of A-levels as your insecurities would like to believe, but they tend to be less motivated therefore will not put in as much work as those doing A-levels. When it comes to A-level exam periods, they will more than likely do much less work to prepare than others. So yes, a large number could end up getting below a grade A.
However, if you were to take the countless hours that a Distinction level student would have spent doing coursework throughout the year, and had that student spend that time in March-June revising for A-levels instead of doing BTEC coursework, then I would be surprised if the student didn't get an A grade.
In short you can get a distinction by working consistently during the year, spreading the workload over the 8-9 months of the year. To get an A grade you can get away with 2-3 months of solid revision before the exam, something that someone who hated school and isn't motivated is unlikely to do, hence they don't do it and don't get an A grade.
However for arguments sake I'll expand on what you said.
The thing with BTEC is that it involves work throughout the year, as deadlines are essentially every other week, while A-levels, today now involve one huge spike of input at the end of the year.
I find the people who do BTEC are not incapable of A-levels as your insecurities would like to believe, but they tend to be less motivated therefore will not put in as much work as those doing A-levels. When it comes to A-level exam periods, they will more than likely do much less work to prepare than others. So yes, a large number could end up getting below a grade A.
However, if you were to take the countless hours that a Distinction level student would have spent doing coursework throughout the year, and had that student spend that time in March-June revising for A-levels instead of doing BTEC coursework, then I would be surprised if the student didn't get an A grade.
In short you can get a distinction by working consistently during the year, spreading the workload over the 8-9 months of the year. To get an A grade you can get away with 2-3 months of solid revision before the exam, something that someone who hated school and isn't motivated is unlikely to do, hence they don't do it and don't get an A grade.
Fact of the matter is when people at my sixth form (and others I know) struggled with their AS levels and failed in first year they all restarted sixth form and downgraded to BTECs, which they all passed with ease. There are literally dribbling degenerates that can't even read passing BTECs, I know people that miss numerous deadlines submit piss poor work with the technical aptitude for their subject of a watermelon and come away with Distinctions because they ticked a couple of boxes. The funniest thing is when they come along and insist their double distinction in BTEC health & social care or BTEC makeup or BTEC cleaning is equivalent to my A* in Further Maths and A* in Physics, they couldn't even begin to comprehend the work that goes into achieving that. I've literally read some of the stuff they submit and it isn't even coherent, they start the sentence on one subject and have forgotten what they are talking about mid-sentence..
Original post by marcus2001
Fact of the matter is when people at my sixth form (and others I know) struggled with their AS levels and failed in first year they all restarted sixth form and downgraded to BTECs, which they all passed with ease. There are literally dribbling degenerates that can't even read passing BTECs, I know people that miss numerous deadlines submit piss poor work with the technical aptitude for their subject of a watermelon and come away with Distinctions because they ticked a couple of boxes. The funniest thing is when they come along and insist their double distinction in BTEC health & social care or BTEC makeup or BTEC cleaning is equivalent to my A* in Further Maths and A* in Physics, they couldn't even begin to comprehend the work that goes into achieving that. I've literally read some of the stuff they submit and it isn't even coherent, they start the sentence on one subject and have forgotten what they are talking about mid-sentence..
What is your point? Why can the explanation which I stated in the above post not be applied in this case? I have explained one main reason why people will do better at BTEC than in A-levels, however you completely ignored it and continued down your path of bitterness to look down on other people.
I think I see the issue here. You are/were either jealous of or get/got bullied by some of these people, you were over the moon when you heard that they failed their AS-levels and when you heard that they are now doing BTEC and will likely get into university you can't accept it and you had to find a way in which you can belittle their education to make yourself feel superior to them. You'll deny it, all I am saying is from the language you used I am sensing a strong hatred towards the people studying BTEC at your school as opposed to the qualification itself.
Also, I'm sorry to tell you, but on paper a Distinction in any BTEC subject is equivalent to an A* in any A-level subject, including your maths and physics. I don't think anyone denies you need to put in more work for good grades in sciences, however that gives you no right to say that any other subject is below yours. If that was the case then the science subjects would be given special treatment, eg a AAA course will ask for BBB is studying 3 sciences. However they are not and are treated exactly the same as A-levels in history, English or geography.
The hatred and bitterness in this post disturbs me and I don't particularly wish to communicate with such a person. So I am going to block you and thus will not be responding to anything you may reply with.
Bye
Ha! Bestofyou thinks he/she can go and do maths at cambridge because she/ he has a Btec in media or whatever, and they are "equal" to maths and physics A level. How naive.
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(edited 10 years ago)
Original post by bestofyou
There is a reason why BTEC is so unpopular on TSR, granted it is looked down upon by top universities, though not to the extent that this website seems to despise it.
BTEC, if done correctly I would say is actually harder than AS-levels and some A2 level subjects. Done correctly means that you get two drafts, and after the first draft you can only pull the grade up my one mark, so if you failed the first draft, you can only get a pass, not merit or distinction.We had a strict deadline, if we missed it we only got one draft and that was that, pretty much the same as university.
I did a BTEC and A-levels and this was how my school did it, personally I found the BTEC much harder than A-levels. A-levels, I would repeat the **** out of past papers and vomit all that crap back up over an exam paper each winter/summer.
With BTEC though there were no past papers or chances for uncapped resits, only one shot to get a good grade really and you were on your own after stepping outside of the class room. Much more like university, and the experience of the subject prepared me for uni way more than my A-levels.
The problem is most places that offer BTEC will allow their students as many drafts as the wish, won't cap the redrafts and are lenient with deadlines. This is the main reason why universities do not like BTEC, it isn't so much the content of the course, but how it is run. It is the same with applied A-levels (which are 2/3 coursework). It isn't that applied A-levels are easier than normal A-levels, it is just the universities have no idea how hard the student had to work in order to get that grade.
However the reason why BTECs are hated on this site is not due to anything related to how the course is moderated. No, indeed it seems there is much more bitterness involved.
A lot of users on this site a victims of bullies. From recent threads it seems most of these bullies are meatheads who have few aspirations in life. One way their victims find comfort is by looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. They will think to themselves in a few years I'll be at a top ten university, fast tracked for investment banking while they didn't get back into sixth form and will be serving me McDonalds.
It isn't always just bullies, often it will be people in school who just had it easy, people who these people would think 'he isn't any better looking than me, yet gets all these friends and girls, just wait till he/she is working construction and I'm at Durham, bitches will love me then'.
However they get a nasty surprise when they see that these people they hated at school didn't actually go to McDonald's or apprenticeships, instead they went to college, did a BTEC and maybe even got a decent grade and got into a Russell Group university.
The sheer bitterness that these people are doing well is more than they can bare and something has to be done to belittle these people behind their backs, and by essentially making their route to university into a mockery, something made for people who can't hack it elsewhere in life, these bitter folk will feel slightly better.
All I have to say is, don't worry about what other people are doing, just focus on your own goals in life and ignore all else. Plus ****ting on people you perceive as below you isn't a great look and certainly not one that will get you into an investment bank.
Thanks for reading. Bye!
BTEC, if done correctly I would say is actually harder than AS-levels and some A2 level subjects. Done correctly means that you get two drafts, and after the first draft you can only pull the grade up my one mark, so if you failed the first draft, you can only get a pass, not merit or distinction.We had a strict deadline, if we missed it we only got one draft and that was that, pretty much the same as university.
I did a BTEC and A-levels and this was how my school did it, personally I found the BTEC much harder than A-levels. A-levels, I would repeat the **** out of past papers and vomit all that crap back up over an exam paper each winter/summer.
With BTEC though there were no past papers or chances for uncapped resits, only one shot to get a good grade really and you were on your own after stepping outside of the class room. Much more like university, and the experience of the subject prepared me for uni way more than my A-levels.
The problem is most places that offer BTEC will allow their students as many drafts as the wish, won't cap the redrafts and are lenient with deadlines. This is the main reason why universities do not like BTEC, it isn't so much the content of the course, but how it is run. It is the same with applied A-levels (which are 2/3 coursework). It isn't that applied A-levels are easier than normal A-levels, it is just the universities have no idea how hard the student had to work in order to get that grade.
However the reason why BTECs are hated on this site is not due to anything related to how the course is moderated. No, indeed it seems there is much more bitterness involved.
A lot of users on this site a victims of bullies. From recent threads it seems most of these bullies are meatheads who have few aspirations in life. One way their victims find comfort is by looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. They will think to themselves in a few years I'll be at a top ten university, fast tracked for investment banking while they didn't get back into sixth form and will be serving me McDonalds.
It isn't always just bullies, often it will be people in school who just had it easy, people who these people would think 'he isn't any better looking than me, yet gets all these friends and girls, just wait till he/she is working construction and I'm at Durham, bitches will love me then'.
However they get a nasty surprise when they see that these people they hated at school didn't actually go to McDonald's or apprenticeships, instead they went to college, did a BTEC and maybe even got a decent grade and got into a Russell Group university.
The sheer bitterness that these people are doing well is more than they can bare and something has to be done to belittle these people behind their backs, and by essentially making their route to university into a mockery, something made for people who can't hack it elsewhere in life, these bitter folk will feel slightly better.
All I have to say is, don't worry about what other people are doing, just focus on your own goals in life and ignore all else. Plus ****ting on people you perceive as below you isn't a great look and certainly not one that will get you into an investment bank.
Thanks for reading. Bye!
not sure why you think investment bankers are such marvellous people ?
(edited 10 years ago)
Original post by the bear
not sure why you think investment bankers are such marvellous people ?
What do you mean? I don't...
Original post by bestofyou
What do you mean? I don't...
your post was an investment bank love-in
Original post by the bear
your post was an investment bank love-in
OMG was it? LOL
I don't think I mentioned it too much, all I was getting at was it seems to be a target career for so many but if the interviewers picked up on their bitterness they likely wouldn't get a job there. That is all I meant.
I certainly don't think bankers are marvellous people LOL
Original post by bestofyou
OMG was it? LOL
I don't think I mentioned it too much, all I was getting at was it seems to be a target career for so many but if the interviewers picked up on their bitterness they likely wouldn't get a job there. That is all I meant.
I certainly don't think bankers are marvellous people LOL
I don't think I mentioned it too much, all I was getting at was it seems to be a target career for so many but if the interviewers picked up on their bitterness they likely wouldn't get a job there. That is all I meant.
I certainly don't think bankers are marvellous people LOL
Have you met a banker? No?
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Original post by the mezzil
omg no LOL
Original post by bestofyou
omg no LOL
No, so shut up and dont stereotype. I can stereotype that BTEC students are meat headed retards, who cant count to ten but I dont.
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Original post by the mezzil
No, so shut up and dont stereotype. I can stereotype that BTEC students are meat headed retards, who cant count to ten but I dont.
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LOL
I agree with some of the stuff you said as I do a BTEC my self, and it's mostly researching yourself, much like university.
But my tutors are awful and most are not even professional, and a lot of the students (including friends) are unmotivated people who will most likely be in a crap job.
But my tutors are awful and most are not even professional, and a lot of the students (including friends) are unmotivated people who will most likely be in a crap job.
Original post by bestofyou
LOL
Lol? That type of word just reinforces my view of BTEC students if you use that type of language.
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Original post by the mezzil
Lol? That type of word just reinforces my view of BTEC students if you use that type of language.
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OMG LOL
Original post by de_monies
Just as a side note I did a BTEC and I'm now working at a blue chip in my placement year
another mod did a BTEC and is also working (permanently) for a blue chip
I find with BTEC's you REALLY need to know exactly what sector you want to go in at the age of 16 because they're pretty specific. Otherwise it can be hard to diversify until you get a job
another mod did a BTEC and is also working (permanently) for a blue chip
I find with BTEC's you REALLY need to know exactly what sector you want to go in at the age of 16 because they're pretty specific. Otherwise it can be hard to diversify until you get a job
agreed, I did a btec in software and those and similar/related jobs are all I can go for, but I'm fairly comfortable with that so its ok lol.
I find the btec was great tbh gave me software development and networking skills (a+/ccna) my a-level counterparts didnt gain until their first year in university
Original post by the mezzil
Lol? That type of word just reinforces my view of BTEC students if you use that type of language.
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Lol. I do A levels and say lol what's your problem.
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Original post by qr95
Whats yours?
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Wow, the Encyclopedia Dramatica page for this forum hit the nail on the head when they talk about the academic snobbery that goes on. Taking the mick out of BTEC students' intelligence just because they do something different to you and want to go down a different path? Education isn't one-size-fits-all, as much as the government would like you to think. I'd much rather talk to someone doing a vocation that requires skills to progress than an entitled A-level student who thinks they are better than everyone else because they can sit in a classroom and regurgitate information a teacher gave them - and I did A-levels. I resent this BTEC vs A-level snobbery, it helps noone.
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