Should I retake A levels/ do a gap year?
I was predicted A*A*A*A in my predicted grades and an average GCSE 8, however I did far worse in my exams than I felt I could have got BBCD. This was mostly due to some serious issues I needed to deal with during exams and for a few months before (I wasn't given any grade adjustment due to lack of formal evidence). I planned on going to a university for CS which was close to London (so close to home), had a good reputation/course and a good placement program. I have got into a few universities with most of these requirements Surrey, Exeter and Lancaster but I'm stuck in a bit of an impossible trinity scenario where none of them fully meets my requirements, meaning I would have to sacrifice at least one mostly leaning on doing Surrey currently.
My plan was that if I underperformed I could just take a gap year and resit to hopefully still have a chance of getting into A uni in London like Imperial/UCL/Kings though I have learned that Imperial does hold doing resits against you so I would need to go for the other 2. A gap year would also help me decide on a course a bit because I was divided between CS and EE for a long time and I think it would help me decide.
My plan was that if I underperformed I could just take a gap year and resit to hopefully still have a chance of getting into A uni in London like Imperial/UCL/Kings though I have learned that Imperial does hold doing resits against you so I would need to go for the other 2. A gap year would also help me decide on a course a bit because I was divided between CS and EE for a long time and I think it would help me decide.
Reply 1
Surrey, Exeter and Lancaster are all good unis. If you want to retake to get closer to your predicted grades and go to one of your preferred unis then do it. You know that with your existing grades you can still get into a decent uni next year. Hopefully your resit grades will be better than BBCD so you will have lots more unis to choose from.
(edited 1 month ago)
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