August 13, 200817 yr Good luck everyone! In case things don't turn out as you planned, let me just tell you I didn't get the results I need for my first choice Uni when I went through A levels. I had to beg my 2nd choice over the phone, but they did say yes. I met my best friend there, had three fabulous years and never looked back - things have a funny way of working out! :)
August 13, 200817 yr I got mine this time last year. Scary stuff. Good luck guys. Hope you all did well enough for what you wanna do in the future.
August 14, 200817 yr A level students achieve record results © ITN 2008 A level students achieved record results this year as the national pass rate soared above 97 per cent for the first time. The proportion of pupils awarded A grades also rose again with more than one in four gaining the top marks. Figures from the exam boards show traditional subjects are still firm favourites with English and maths the top choices. And pupils are once again taking greater interest in science with increased entries in all three areas - biology, chemistry and physics. Chemistry was the favourite science - the eighth most popular choice of subjects amongst sixth-formers. Jim Sinclair, director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, which published the results, said they were excellent and congratulated students on their achievements. He said: "The results show not only an improvement in the grades achieved but also an increased entry to mathematics, sciences and languages, which are positive and encouraging developments all round. "This has to be a day for celebration." Schools minister Jim Knight also dismissed any suggestion that another set of record results showed that A-levels were being dumbed down. Fears that languages would see a slump in popularity proved unfounded as the numbers taking French and Spanish rose. But there was a decrease in German. Overall 97.2 per cent of candidates taking A-levels this summer achieved A to E passes, up from 96.9 per cent last year. Girls continued to score better grades than boys although boys are continuing to close the gap at grade A. Professor Alan Smithers from the University of Buckingham said the increase in popularity in science was not unexpected. He said: "There has been a big attempt to reverse the decline in science, and we may begin to see the fruits of that this year." Teachers have appealed for students to be allowed to enjoy their day of success without the inevitable complaints about the exams being "too easy". Well done to everyone!! http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=9223389
August 22, 200817 yr Well done to everybody on getting good grades. I don't believe the exams are getting easier, however I do believe the grade boundaries are slowly coming down (when they turn the raw marks from the paper into the uniformed score, so one year a '80' could require a raw score of 75%, but the next year it could be 74%), nothing on the students, they can only complete what is given, but sadly Lord Brown's current method of trying to increase pass rates is backfiring with record numbers of passes, watering down the value of the a-level. I saw this in the press, imagine there are 10 people, but with 4 eggs, the eggs have a premium of X because there is more demand than supply, however increase the number of eggs to 9, the value of the premium goes down because supply is almost equal demand, and when the number of eggs reaches 10 where supply = demand, the "premium" doesn't exist and the value decreases, forcing people to go to university to try and get ahead of the rest of their peers. But again, the students can only do the paper which is presented before then, they have no control over the background stuff, so well done for people for scoring high marks :D David 'Watty' Sheppard MATT
August 22, 200817 yr congrats, jake! i hope everyone else did well too. not that i know much about A-levels, but sometimes i think it's a better way of doing college admissions than we do in america, and sometimes i don't. i think it's definitely scarier, because it seems like you don't know where you're going until the last minute! and our college admissions process is SO fucked up that i think pretty much everything must be better than the way it runs here. at least with A-levels, it seems like you're judged much more on your academic ability with college admissions than you are about your race/ethnicity, financial background, and geographic location :dozey:.
August 22, 200817 yr Another problem is the gap in which you could score an A. In theory if you have 2 people with an A in the same subjects, you have no way to telling them apart, where in practise person A could have managed a 590+ (out of 600), where the 2nd person could have just scraped into the A band with a 480. How do you spilt the 2 people up, both have A's yet one is a lot smarter than the other getting 100+ points more over the course of the 2 years. No wonder why university's are bringing back entrance exams
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