Nice people thread 2 - now even nicer

John_Pierpoint

There are two Oxfords or over a dozen as each college is independent. Or three if you count the college that John "thumper" Prescott attended?
Or four if you include the college that a Tory jail bird novelist attended.?
Anyone with ambition to write another Hobbit ?
Beware of the drugs problem?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien

LydiaJ

Huge congratulations to Sue's eldest, silvercar's youngest, and anyone else's kids who've got their GCSEs today.

I got "my" GCSE results today too - the ones for the GCSE class I had this year. We get judged on "value added". The kids' results are predicted from their baseline aptitude data, and then you get 0 if they do as predicted, +1 if they get one grade better, -1 if they get one grade worse, etc.

I got one girl with -2 (but she's going through a very rocky adolescent phase, didn't do much work and hasn't lived up to her potential in any of her other subjects either), one with -1, four with 0 and six with +1. This will be the last year I teach GCSE for a while, so I'm really pleased to go out on a high note.

ETA Just in case anyone wonders what's going on, I'm not giving up teaching. My HoD thinks it would be better for me to do more A-level and more of yrs 7-9 but no GCSE for the foreseeable future and I've agreed. It's for practical reasons to do with timetabling me as a part-timer, not any reflection on my teaching performance.

PasturesNew

I've got one of those annoying things that I always manage to c0ck up - job interview. 100 miles away, so that's a nice 4 hour round trip and 200 miles on the clock. And, apparently, they do a two-stage interview, meaning a 2nd trip if I don't c0ck up the first one. So two chances of making an idiot of myself

It's later this week, but will obviously play out over a couple of weeks.

Scared of going really though ... bound to make a b4lls up and give an aspie answer

Pay's not too shabby ... closer to average household income than average person income. So I guess I have to grit my teeth and go through the torture, just in case.

LydiaJ

Wish I could make it easier for you PN.
Hope you get the job to make the agony worthwhile.

carolt

GDB2222 wrote: »

He's going to apply to Oxford this autumn, but he thinks that 1 x A* is not enough to have a decent chance of success. As MissKool says, there are so many people applying with top grades that the exams are not much help for the universities in sorting out academic merit. And one approach must be for them to apply a very high barrier, just to avoid having to process so many applications.

It is silly, isn't it?

When I went to Oxford, I got the standard 2 E's offer - needless to say I didn't get 2 E's, but it took the pressure off one rather. That was normal practice at the time - didn't mean the average real A Level scores were that low - but none of this panicking about missing a grade, let alone a starred grade.

TBH, a close friend got the same offer as me, and deliberately !!!!!!ed up her 3rd A Level - the subject wasn't relevant to her course and she found it boring. She wanted to fail so it didn't appear on her A Level Cert so no-one would ever know - IIRC, she just missed and got an E. Ooops.

But it didn't stop her getting a 2:1 and a good accountancy job afterwards, so the 2 E's offer was right, really. She was the type they wanted and the A Level grades were immaterial.

I suppose they can weed out a fair bit at interview, too - levels of maturity and wider thinking vary a lot at that age. Plus some courses are more competitive than others - if your DS wants to apply to Oxford, picking a course/college that is a bit less competitive is eminently sensible - it's certainly what I did. Well, I chose the course I wanted, but it turned out to be (I think) slightly easier to get in on, than the mainstream courses it was a subsection of, because so few people did it a year, so you were treated more as an individual.

Anyway, good luck to your DS. From my experience, I'd say Oxford has its merits, but then so do many other universities - friends elsewhere generally had a better time and less work (which facts are entirely connected). Depending on subject, Oxford may well not be the best for what your DS wants to study, anyway.

carolt

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've got one of those annoying things that I always manage to c0ck up - job interview. 100 miles away, so that's a nice 4 hour round trip and 200 miles on the clock. And, apparently, they do a two-stage interview, meaning a 2nd trip if I don't c0ck up the first one. So two chances of making an idiot of myself

It's later this week, but will obviously play out over a couple of weeks.

Scared of going really though ... bound to make a b4lls up and give an aspie answer

Pay's not too shabby ... closer to average household income than average person income. So I guess I have to grit my teeth and go through the torture, just in case.

Know it won't make you feel any better, but actually everyone worries about interviews and makes what you term 'aspie answers', ie saying slightly inappropriate things because they're nervous. Not saying you're not 'speshul', just that in this particular scenario, everybody tends to get a bit 'speshul', so you shouldn't view yourself as being at any disadvantage.

If that makes any sense.

Exocet

PasturesNew wrote: »

So I guess I have to grit my teeth and go through the torture, just in case.

Good luck PN. For interviews I sometimes get someone to practice with me, asking those horrible questions like "why do you want to work here" and "what can you offer us". Most of the questions they ask are the same as anywhere, but it helps to have someone else ask rather than just think them through.

misskool

GDB2222 wrote: »

He's going to apply to Oxford this autumn, but he thinks that 1 x A* is not enough to have a decent chance of success. As MissKool says, there are so many people applying with top grades that the exams are not much help for the universities in sorting out academic merit. And one approach must be for them to apply a very high barrier, just to avoid having to process so many applications.

Oh, and grats on the excellent GCSE results.

No offence, he won't get into Oxford with just one A* but he needs to show what makes him better than hundreds of other students wanting to study the same subject with better grades than he's got. The interview at Oxford is just as important (if not more) than the grades. What subject does he intend to read? Has he looked at the colleges?

An excellent way of ensuring he gets in is to gain relevant gap year experience in the subject he's interested to a point where he can say what he is going to gain from the degree. PM if you want to have a more detailed chat.

Congrats SS, silvercar for the GCSE's.

Good luck and fingers crossed for PN.

fc123

LydiaJ wrote: »

Huge congratulations to Sue's eldest, silvercar's youngest, and anyone else's kids who've got their GCSEs today.

I got "my" GCSE results today too - the ones for the GCSE class I had this year. We get judged on "value added". The kids' results are predicted from their baseline aptitude data, and then you get 0 if they do as predicted, +1 if they get one grade better, -1 if they get one grade worse, etc.

I got one girl with -2 (but she's going through a very rocky adolescent phase, didn't do much work and hasn't lived up to her potential in any of her other subjects either), one with -1, four with 0 and six with +1. This will be the last year I teach GCSE for a while, so I'm really pleased to go out on a high note.

ETA Just in case anyone wonders what's going on, I'm not giving up teaching. My HoD thinks it would be better for me to do more A-level and more of yrs 7-9 but no GCSE for the foreseeable future and I've agreed. It's for practical reasons to do with timetabling me as a part-timer, not any reflection on my teaching performance.

That's really interesting. DD mocks were really bad......so we were fretting ...then she came back with 1A 4 B 3 C...and 2D (chem and biology......so no future competition for Miss Kool in the sciences ) but she is a miffed as her mates (in diff schools) got to do new subjects like social sciences etc.
She had to do the basic ones (like the olden days) and even got a surprise C in physics.

Apparently D is a pass now? Is that so?

DD and the others have their grades omitted by 'special decree' from the schools score....seeing as they were from a non selective school....which then went bust.

The rocky adolescent phase? Yup we had that last year and the 1st year of GCSE coursework went down the pan in a waft of female teen/adolescent angst and drama.

Congrats to SSS, GBDSS and Silvercars kids too.

Well, she will only have to do 1 yr of her course now as the grades were higher ....still wish she would have done A's around the corner then the Pittmans up Chancery Lane...but never mind. Parents golden rule with teens....guide them, don't tell ...and be ready to catch them if things go awry.

As an aside, as all DD aquaintances are not from her school but others, loads of them seem to have gotten pregnant.....esp in SE London....I think we are up to about 5 at last count.
I was quite shocked TBH.

fc123

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've got one of those annoying things that I always manage to c0ck up - job interview. 100 miles away, so that's a nice 4 hour round trip and 200 miles on the clock. And, apparently, they do a two-stage interview, meaning a 2nd trip if I don't c0ck up the first one. So two chances of making an idiot of myself

It's later this week, but will obviously play out over a couple of weeks.

Scared of going really though ... bound to make a b4lls up and give an aspie answer

Pay's not too shabby ... closer to average household income than average person income. So I guess I have to grit my teeth and go through the torture, just in case.

Wishing you luck....can you do a practice session with anyone?