AS Level - Bad exam results

Hello,

I've had a very bad year with AS Levels, and the result is very disastrous for me.

Government & Politics - A
Law - B
Maths - U
Computer Science - U (dropping, so this is not an issue for me)

For context, I've had a very hard year with Maths. I went in with A* at GCSE and had a lot of difficulty making it click. I got into a sort of depression cycle with it in which not doing well made me not try, and not trying made me not do well. I got an E in a mock exam, which resulted in some intensive revision, which was very beneficial, I realised my issues were a mental block, and I started to push my grade back, getting an A and a B in the last mocks before the exam.

Unfortunately, I had an insanely bad eczema flare shortly after that, during the revision and exams, which stopped me from preparing for any of my exams, I was bedridden except for exams which I couldn't not attend. Luckily I could manage Politics and Law with some light reading and natural ability (I'm a politics nerd, so I could manage that), but preparing for Maths was just impossible in my state.

My maths teacher (who is also head of department and deals with this sort of thing) has said that he'll recommend I'm not dropped but can't guarantee anything. My worries are either that the college won't let me resit Maths in the next year, or they won't let me onto A2 at all. I'm also worried that the college telling universities about my illness won't be able to get me any good university places, or universities won't believe them, citing my Politics and Law results.

Anybody have any similar experiences and/or reassurance?

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 1

Kevin De Bruyne

Original post by 2112lemon

I would hope that universities would not 'not believe you' but I am not familiar with the processes.

You're clearly capable if you were able to get AB through light reading - perhaps one option is to continue forward with Maths, doing AS and A2, and then taking a gap year to apply (or if you can actually get predicted a good grade in it, then apply this year).for universities? The one thing I would say is that not trying is not something that will work in Maths if you want to do well - it requires hard work and lots of practice, but if you can change your way of working/thinking then there's no reason not to do well in 1 year for the whole A-level.