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My A-level results come in tomorrow, and I was wondering if there were any other people out there who were in a similar position...maybe we can tell each other funny stories and somehow manage to cope Or if there are people who managed to fail every exam they ever took, and are now happily engaged to a directorship of the Bank of England and earning a million £ a year, feel free to tell your story and make me feel better C'mon, I know you're out there...

Also here will be my jubilation/suicide note (joking, ppl) tomorrow when I get the results...hope for your sakes they're good, or a SPAMfest may come about the likes of have not been seen since Aegis' rise to SPAM Queenhood in a month of all-nighters

Nope, but I am applying for University entrance pretty soon.

Good luck Kam.

Obviously it was many years ago I took an exam, but good luck to you Kam, I hope you get results good enough to apply to uni you want. If not, good luck with you career as a McDonald's drone!

Well thanks a lot , obviously University application works very differently where you're from - we have to apply for Uni during our final year, months before results and exams and all that...

Best of luck on the results from me too, Kam
(note: I think it's obvious I won't get my results in the near future, but I still get "rated" at the Helldesk )

Helldesk huh? Sounds nasty

I am collecting AS-Levels tomorrow and I am really worried about them. I don't think I've failed by a long shot, but I don't think there as good as I hope/thought...

Originally posted by Nippy
I am collecting AS-Levels tomorrow and I am really worried about them. I don't think I've failed by a long shot, but I don't think there as good as I hope/thought...

Woohoo! A fellow inmate Good luck

What are your subjects? Mine are Maths, Chemistry, Latin and Greek...beat that

I'm really worried about mine too...I only need BBC to get into Bristol, and after the exams I thought I'd got ABBB, but still I'm very scared about what happens if I don't get those grades...

We have to apply for uni and faculty months in advance in Oz. Once the results are out they tell you which choices on your "wish list" you qualify for - "sorry you missed on medicine, engineering and arts/law; we can offer you a diploma course in basic assembly line operations...."

Good luck with your results.

Originally posted by Kameleon
Well thanks a lot , obviously University application works very differently where you're from - we have to apply for Uni during our final year, months before results and exams and all that...

It is totally different, we don't really have an equvalent to A-levels. After primary school, there is 3-4 years of secondary education (like college, I think) where you get grades for you coursework and exams, you get one grade per subject each year. In the final year, you use those grades to apply to Uni. If your grades is not high enough, you have the option of taking a special test where your language (Swedish and English), logics, maths and information processing skills are assessed. You can apply with this test score as well. If you still fail to achieve high enough grades, you can retake exams for the necessary subjects next year as a "privatist" (ie you don't need to attend to classes every day, you just do the exam assignments, usually an oral oral and a written assignment + a couple of essays), or you can take evening classes.

I hope you get to Bristol, Kammy (If you do, I'll come by and say hello to you next time I visit the professor I know there who we are collaborating with.)
Good luck to you too, Nippy!

Good luck to you Kam. If the Jeopardy game was any indication of how smart you are, you are likely to get into any college. Im sure there are no worries. But I think Ill abstain in saying what my final exam grades were . I kind of didnt try, because I already got into college before the exams were given, so there was no motivation.

Originally posted by C Elegans
I hope you get to Bristol, Kammy (If you do, I'll come by and say hello to you next time I visit the professor I know there who we are collaborating with.)

Thanks That would be cool

@Tyb - the Jeopardy is a test of how much useless knowledge I soak up and can bring back when I need to, requiring little effort. Exams however require a great deal of effort, which is where I'm lacking, and when my idea of revising is SYM then my exam results are skating on thin ice (if results can skate. What a strange mental image )

Hehe, thanks. My subjects are English Literature, History, ICT and Physics. I'm dropping Physics. If I join the RAF I only need two A-Levels and GCSE's (already got good GCSE's) and I know that I should do well in History and English Literature (I hope! ). I'm finding English Lit droll at the moment though. ICT should be a good grade. I would like to go to Durham with the RAF though. (I doubt I'll even get near Durham. The grades are ridiculous: AAB. On the other hand, my sporting stuff might get me a foot in the door. They might moderate the grades... I hope )

Good luck guys!

@Kam you can get into Bristol with the BBC? I thought they were based in White City. Anyway, AltaVista is much quicker to use than the BBC

@You Brits: I am not familiar with the grading system, Georgi tried to explain it to me once, so I understand that A to B is quite good, wheres C is not so good. What does this AAB and BBC (I thought that was the Beeb?) mean? Is that an overall grade for all your A-level exams? What is the best possible grade, what is the worst, and how many intermediate steps are there?

@CE - A is the best grade, then B and C and so on Different universities demand different grades, depending on the courses you take. What Kam was saying was that he only needed to grade two subjects at B and one at C to get into Bristol Uni, it appears he has his fingers crossed for an A and 3 Bs (good luck again Kam! )

Grades A to C are all acceptable passes, though some Uni's demand more than a C.

Originally posted by C Elegans
@You Brits: I am not familiar with the grading system, Georgi tried to explain it to me once, so I understand that A to B is quite good, wheres C is not so good. What does this AAB and BBC (I thought that was the Beeb?) mean? Is that an overall grade for all your A-level exams? What is the best possible grade, what is the worst, and how many intermediate steps are there?

Ysh covered most of this - I need two B's and a C tomorrow otherwise I go into the horrible Clearing process (don't ask, it basically involves phoning up every university on a massive list and begging them to save your soul, before ending up in Aberystwyth Polytechnic). Grades for GCSE (age 16) are A* through to some horrible low letter like F, and then U (stands for "u don't deserve me even looking over your paper, you moron who can't even spell your name) and then A-levels, which are what I'm doing, grade from A to E, and then U (stands for "u fool, why aren't you a garbage-truck driver yet? Apply quickly, you could still get the minimum wage!)

Thanks Ysh and Kam, I have never really understood your confusing system

So, a good university like Bristol obviously demands higher grades - is that because the educations are more popular there? Are the requirements fix, or do they change from term to term depending on how many applicants there are for a certain education? Let's say 500 people apply for 50 places, do the Uni's set a cut off to allow the 50 best students a place?

Also, do different educations have different requirements? Are there any educations that would require AAA? Which educations have the highest requirements? And do you choose what subjects you do your A-levels in depending on what education you plan you take at uni?

Although we use letters, we do not use all the letters.
In descending order of achievement the results you can get are (IIRC) -
A*
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
U

Although I don't know if you can get G's at A-Level. You can certainly get them at GCSE.
As for getting into university, I don't believe that there are any unis which require three A's (Oxford, Cambridge, UCL etc require AAB). To cut off students, the universities interview people, look at what they have done with their lives (helping grannies across roads, charity work, useful extra-curricular activities etc). I am not sure if they look at actual exam results...

Originally posted by C Elegans
Thanks Ysh and Kam, I have never really understood your confusing system

So, a good university like Bristol obviously demands higher grades - is that because the educations are more popular there? Are the requirements fix, or do they change from term to term depending on how many applicants there are for a certain education? Let's say 500 people apply for 50 places, do the Uni's set a cut off to allow the 50 best students a place?

Also, do different educations have different requirements? Are there any educations that would require AAA? Which educations have the highest requirements? And do you choose what subjects you do your A-levels in depending on what education you plan you take at uni?

Nor do we half the time, we just bluff

Yes, every institution has different entry requirements, and often different requirements in different subjects. For example, I applied to six universities, including Oxford and Bristol. While I didn't get an offer from Oxford - I failed at the interview stage - if I had succeeded I would likely have gotten an offer of AAA. Almost all Oxford offers are AAA or AAB, Cambridge offers are likewise high, almost always AAB. At Bristol, they had about 500 applicants for the 80 or so places - I don't know how many offers they would have given out, but it was probably in the range of 80-90 offers, which most likely would have been all the same, though I have heard of some people who had considerably higher offers for my course - probably decided through the recommendations and performance at interview. But in different subjects, there are not necessarily corresponding offers; a couple of friends who applied to Bristol for CompSci got ABB offers, for what reason I am not entirely sure. The universities will overbook their courses slightly, in the knowledge that not everyone will get the grades, and if an applicant doesn't meet the requirements, if they phone up the University, there is a chance that the university will take the candidate anyway. If the University still doesn't have enough people to fill their places, they will submit to UCAS (the University and College Admissions Service) to tell them that they have places available for clearing. Then these places will go on a Clearing list, and anyone who is interested in that course at that University, who failed to get into their chosen University, can apply to other Universities to see if they meet the standards there.

Hope that helps, however long and dense it was