IT AS level.. what a pain!

I found IT extremley easy at GCSE. i don't know whether it's because i've gone to another sixth form, but now it's really annoying. I'm doing chemistry, biology and chemistry as well which are fairly hard subjects.. so I thought i'd take IT as a bit of a doddle I spose! But it's just the little annoying subject in the background that never goes away :mad:

It's really easy but the workload is hugeee... and I don't really have the time for it!

Does anyone else feel like this about the subject? I'm kind of wishing I hadn't taken it! Got a tonne of old coursework to re-do, and our teacher isn't exactly the best...

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Reply 1

decky1989

I have the exact same view as you i found gcse easy but for A-Level its a different story!good luck btw! :biggrin:

i need all the luck i can get! :frown:

Reply 2

tiger_vio

decky1989

I have the exact same view as you i found gcse easy but for A-Level its a different story!good luck btw! :biggrin:

i need all the luck i can get! :frown:

haha
what exam board are you with?
I came out of the OCR jan exam thinking I hadn't dropped a mark, to find i'd only just scraped a B :eek:

Maybe it's the fault of the teachers in our sixth form, even though its apparantly renowned for IT :/

Reply 3

decky1989

aqa. i was considering doing computing at uni but am gonna steer clear of them as much as possible for the rest of my life! :biggrin:

haha

Reply 4

kellywood_5

Know the feeling. I stupidly agreed to take single award AVCE ICT (equivalent to 1 A-level but with even more coursework) alongside my GCSEs instead of doing Applied GCSE double award, and I really wish I hadn't! My teacher was nice enough, but seemed more preoccupied with helping all the people that were messing about and didn't care what they got rather than the people who actually wanted to do well, so I was pretty much abandoned to get on with the work myself most lessons, which would have been fine if I'd always known what I had to do next, but I didn't and I couldn't ask anyone else in the class because they were all doing GCSE. The coursework was basically just ticking boxes, but it was extremely time consuming and there was no way I could have done it all in just 1 hour 45 minutes a week, so I had to loads of work at home and in the holidays. The exams were basically common sense and easy to pass, but difficult to get high marks in. I had a lesson after school for an hour a week for about a month and then a revision session the day before for the first one, no lessons at all but just a 'revision' session the day before for the second one and I got low Cs in both, which were somehow the highest marks :confused:

To cut a long story short, I decided my GCSEs were much more important and neglected ICT to focus on them, so I ended up with a D, 3 marks off a C :rolleyes:

So that's my rant about ICT :p:

My advice: drop it after AS!

Reply 5

Horatio Caine

I found ICT really easy at GCSE, I got A on all my coursework and a B on the exam so ended up with BB. I am currently doing BTEC ICT and the work load is horrible! It's just work, work and more work. I've got three different teachers, two of them are great and the other one may as well not turn up. He's ****, and hardly ever marks the work until the very last minute and never explains what to do in detail, but it's our fault when the work isn't as good as it should be. He also only gives us the details of the work for getting a Pass, when every single person in the class has a target grade of Merit or Distinction.

Reply 6

tiger_vio

I got A* at gcse with no problem at all!
But AS is something else. I'm definitely not taking it on for A-level, it's just a pain in the arse! I also find it hard to do work at home, because the pc with microsoft office on is the slowest machiene ever (despite being new). Ill be doing it in all my darn frees this week :angry:

Reply 7

no1topman

I did AS ict...i currently do A2 ict :frown:

. YES! it is a HUGE pain, in AS i got 200/300 (c) simply because there is so much work, my coursework was a B ( 84/120) but it was like 200 pages long...ridiculous! I have handed in my A2 coursework which somehow managed to be a U :frown:

So to get the B i require for uni i need to get 4 A's in the written modules ( im re sitting unit 1 and 2 aswell as doing units 4 + 5). My advice : DO NOT DO IT AT A2...The marks given are even more stringent and difficult to attain, its not worth it and its not even respected, people think its easy but gosh they are in for a HUUUGE suprise!

regards

Reply 8

cabeza_loca

Agreed. I thought it'd be relatively easy, how wrong was I. I quit in Feb.

Reply 9

Mernard

Generally, ICT at AS/A-Level is a bad, bad move. I got an A at GCSE with little to no work. So how wrong I was when I thought it'd be an easy A-Level! Got a D at AS Level.

The exams are easy enough if you look into them. The same questions are asked each year in the different modules. Just learn the big mark ones.

As for coursework...yes, it is huge, yes it is very time-consuming, and yes, it will crush your soul. But repeat the AS Coursework with your A-Level coursework. It'll bump your AS grade up significantly. And do it well. Less pressure for the terribly irritating exams. Then you'll never have to touch it ever again.

Reply 10

AJ-1

tiger_vio

ahh mate, i hated ICT, i did gnvq ict in year 10 and 11, that was easy. Did ICT for AS, AQA exam board, absolutly hated the courseowrk, when i got it binded, i swer it was a thick as the lord of the rings book (all three together) lol. I got a B for it in AS. JUst practice the past papers there easy, especially unit 1 if your doing AQA, its CW that takes the piss. I continued it at A2 aswell, but i dropped it just after xmas just gone bcoz the cousework was absolutlely killing me, doing 3 a levels is hard enough, 4 is just rediculous! It is soo time consuming. My adivce is if you think you can do it and get the grade you want continue, if it really starts affecting your other subjects like it did for me, drop is ASAP thats what i did! and so far its worked wonders, and means i dont have to see that bitch of a useless teacher!

Reply 11

Dionysus

I'm retaking AS for the second time... It is possibly the worst-designed course on the curriculum. They might as well draw the grades out of a hat tbh.

Reply 12

Wildebeest

I took ICT AS in Year 11 and hated it. The common misconception (though I was aware of this) is that it is 'computer studies'; of course, you have to do the usual designing websites and such like, but there is a lot of data theory to learn which isn't particularly interesting.

The problem is with the subject, if you are seriously passionate about pursuing a Computing degree, it's Maths and Physics they are after and this knowledge confers no advantage whatsoever. There is a Computer Science A Level available, but not widely and it is by no means necessary.

Needless to say, I never endeavoured to carry it on to A2. Especially since I am applying for English :rolleyes:

Reply 13

mike101

Totally agree, the work is piss easy but theres just sooooo much, this week we had a deadline for our coursework weve been doing since September (2/3 of our AS is coursework) and it was just a huge rush, kinda wish i hadnt wasted the first few months on t'internet thinking i've got loads of time. Although i did manage to finish it with only one night of work out of lessons

Reply 14

flipshot

I didn't find it too bad but the exams were annoying to get the marks for. You could pass them OK but it was hard to get the higher grades. I got a D in my ASVCE and then the teacher left so I was going to have to drop it but I asked if I could carry it on and do the work in my own time and they let me.

I ended up doing all the coursework in about 2 weeks but it wasn't too bad because I just had to tweak my computing coursework and submit that and I had already designed a website for someone I just had to write it up. It didn't work out too bad in the end as I got a B and meant I have only had to do 2 subjects this year.

Reply 15

Wildebeest

I never knew that AVCE qualifications existed, but seem to be understanding it now...

Since I never mentioned it before, perhaps you should give up ICT for A2!

Reply 16

shirley7

It really is a tedious subject. The trick is to go over and over past papers because you have to have what's written down on the mark scheme otherwise you wont get good marks. I ended up with a D at AS, but this year I have gone over the mark schemes for A2 thoroughly, so hopefully i'll do better in these exams and i'll end up with a B/C overall.

Reply 17

tomkent

most of the material is straight forward and alot of just common sense. But the CW is huge mine this year (A2) was 95 pages :redface:

- i got a reasonably high A so im happy, but it was a bitch load of work.

Its not even that highly regarded :frown:

Reply 18

Rashid

I'm doing AS OCR ICT this year and I definitely feel what everyone's saying...I wanna do computer science at uni, but ICT might as well have NOTHING to do with computers...it just booring ****. The coursework is mostly about databases :rolleyes: