Deadpool wrote:
Again, that doesn't explain what was actually in it, you're just saying it was advanced.
Does sound sort of like AP courses here in the US, where you take college level courses in high school, and if you get a good result on the exam at the end of the year you get "placed out of" or get to skip the course in college.
Its broadly similar here then I guess - for example, the university course Im taking will include some of the stuff Ive done in Further Maths, in the first year of the course. (Not all schools offer Further Maths, so universities cant assume all taking the course will know it beforehand)
To give you an example, this year I'm taking 3 (really 4) AP courses, AP Chemistry, AP Calculus, AP Micro Economics, and AP Macro Economics (the economics courses are combined). I'm also going to take the AP exam for World History, which I'll study for myself. If I get a 5 (or depending on the college a 4) on the AP exam, I won't have to take that class in college. I've already gotten a good enough score on US History to place out of that, so if I got 4's and 5's on all the ones I'm taking this year I wouldn't have to take the basic course in Calculus, Economics, Chemistry, World History, and US History if I chose to pursue one or more of those in college.
SportingNonsense wrote:
A-level results day today in Britain
I got:
A* - Maths
A - Further Maths
A - Geography
A - History
And so off to university I go.
Amazing results SN - well done! From what I know getting an A* is incredibly rare
My results were (I only kept on with 3 subjects)...
A (History)
A (English literature)
C (Music)
I applied to study music at Bristol Uni and they offered me grades BBB, which was a very nice offer, having got AAB for AS level. Trouble was a combination of awful teaching and me messing up lost me my chance. I even got an E in the composition module and considering composition is the only talent I actually have in life, this has left me depressed to say the least.
So, I've now lost my chance of getting to Bristol and am now utterly confused about what to do.
lagetcher wrote:
So, I've now lost my chance of getting to Bristol and am now utterly confused about what to do.
Sounds bad, but try going through clearing - or even try giving the uni a ring?
The worst of the worst is that you can take a year out, do the exam again and re-apply for 2011.
Best of luck whatever you do, i'm sure you can get somewhere.
-- Also, I got into Uni today.
There's no point slapping a schleck - Sean Kelly on "Who needs a slap"
lagetcher wrote:
So, I've now lost my chance of getting to Bristol and am now utterly confused about what to do.
Sounds bad, but try going through clearing - or even try giving the uni a ring?
The worst of the worst is that you can take a year out, do the exam again and re-apply for 2011.
Best of luck whatever you do, i'm sure you can get somewhere.
-- Also, I got into Uni today.
Yeah, I've already tried ringing the Uni. It was a deferred entry so I was going to take a year out anyway, so I have time to assess some options. The thing is that the music mark has made me rethink where my life should be heading.
Okay, can someone tell me how high school/college application works in the UK? I'm getting more and more confused because of the Doddy-lagetcher conversation.
Deadpool wrote:
Okay, can someone tell me how high school/college application works in the UK? I'm getting more and more confused because of the Doddy-lagetcher conversation.
I can tell you how you get into a high school, and how your exams work, but I don't know much more than that.
Deadpool wrote:
Okay, can someone tell me how high school/college application works in the UK? I'm getting more and more confused because of the Doddy-lagetcher conversation.
I assume you mean university applications?
Well firstly a brief overview of the British school structure
Primary School (Ages 4-11) School years 1-6
Secondary/High School (Ages 11-16) School years 7-11; Ends with GCSE exams
Sixth Form/College (Sixth Form is often part of a secondary school) (Ages 17-18) School years 12-13; Ends with A-Levels
The process starts towards the end of year 12, with looking at different universities and courses, and setting up a UCAS account. (UCAS is the website in which you apply to universities through).
By January of your final school year you need to have sent off an application to UCAS with up to 5 university/course choices, along with a personal statement, reference from teacher, GCSE grades and other info.
The universities will then respond - usually either giving a conditional offer of a certain target - and an invitation to visit the department of your subject on a visit day for you and others who have received an offer - or by rejecting you.
Assuming you get at least one offer, you have until a deadline in around May time to select a firm choice and an insurance choice. The firm choice will guarantee you accomodation for the first year of university, the insurance choice may not.
So in June you finish the A-Level exams (they are modular, split into AS (done in year 12) and A2 (done in year 13), taken in January and June each year) and wait for the 3rd thursday in august - results day.
So you go to school and find out what you got.
If you meet the offer for the Firm choice, you go to that university.
If you dont meet the offer for the Firm, but do meed the offer for the Insurance, you go to that university instead.
(Some universities will negotiate if you only just miss your offer)
If you dont meet either offer you can either redo Year 13, take a gap year, try to get a job, etc, or go through clearing - where any university in the country with free spaces may be able to take you, but often theres not a lot of choice, if any.
Oxbridge is a bit different in terms of earlier deadlines, and including an interview that counts, but most universities are as above.
Elementary school for grades K-5 (years 1-6) starting around 5 years old
Middle School (Jr. High) for 6-8 (years 7-9)
High School for 9-12 (years 10-13)
End of your 11th grade year (year 12), you begin looking at college/university (here a college is private, and an university is public, public colleges tend to be bigger, but no technical difference), and take your SAT's (and possibly ACT's), which are diagnostic tests for Reading, Writing, and Math then, with the ability to retake in the fall. In the fall of 12th grade (13th year) you apply to however many colleges you want, usually 5-15 though. Colleges look at grades (and course difficulty), SAT/ACT scores, extra-curriculurs (job, sports, etc.), interview (if you did one), and some other things to determine whether to accept you. You either get accepted (go if you want), denied (can't go), or waitlisted (you can go if other people decide not to, and they have open spots). Also, some people go to Jr. College, which is usually a 2-year open enrollment (no need to apply, you can sign up for classes) as a entry level college, with the ability to transfer to a normal 4 year college and complete a degree there.
Edited by Deadpool on 19-08-2010 19:23
"I love him, I think he's great. He's transformed the sport in so many ways. Every person in cycling has benefitted from Lance Armstrong, perhaps not financially but in some sense" - Bradley Wiggins on Lance Armstrong
issoisso wrote:
Both those are a bit too complicated for my taste
What's Portugal's? Do you just show up somewhere
Yes, we show up and whine until we get taught something. Then we go abroad and win the lottery.
Short version:
High school grade + entrance exam score = your entrance score. Highest scores gets the vacancies.
Long version:
You apply for up to 6 courses (regardless of what university each of them is at), and you indicate which is the order of your preference.
For each course you applied to, you get an entrance score that is composed partly of your high school grades and partly of the grades of your entrance exams for that particular course.
Then the X vacancies in each course (X varies according to the course) are filled with the X applicants that applied and have the highest entrance scores.
You get into the course that's highest on your preference list that you have an entrance score good enough for.
That's for public schools (over here they're the best ones, which will sound either perfectly normal or very odd depending on what country you're from). I have no idea about private schools, since I didn't have to resort to one.
The preceding post is ISSO 9001 certified
"I love him, I think he's great. He's transformed the sport in so many ways. Every person in cycling has benefitted from Lance Armstrong, perhaps not financially but in some sense" - Bradley Wiggins on Lance Armstrong
Age 3-12, Primary school.
Age 12-18, "Middle" school.
Age 18+: Got 4 choices now:
1. Find a job
2. Do a specialization year. This is mostly for people who followed more technical side of classes. (For example: The practical side of chemistry instead of all the theoretical about it.)
3. Go to "high" school.
4. Go to University.
High school and university are more or less the same, only the level at a university is higher. So you go there for the harder studies like engineering, doctor, ...
But it's not like you can really get refused at high school. For university, you do need to do an entrance exam, but i don't think you need to do anything to get in to high school.
So Big Bang theory beats the Big Crunch theory. Fascinating, how is not printed everywhere?
Because it's obviously a journalist that knows nothing about the topic taking an extremely focused and probably self-admittingly non-conclusive study and blowing it out of proportion for a cool sounding headline.
Hell, the article says that dark matter is "invisible" which is not what dark matter is in the slightest. Not to mention we don't conclusively know dark matter exists, as all we know as gravity shows there is a lot more matter in the universe than we can see, and dark matter is the best theory we've come up with yet.
However, what is most surprising is how this isn't being printed everywhere, this is the sort of "science" report the media loves.
EDIT: Sorry, the article apparently calls dark matter "dark energy." Which is funny, because dark energy is just the manifestation of dark matter as energy, i.e. the "dark" version of burning fuel, and so the researchers would have been looking at dark matter, or else would have had to have a time-lapse telescope over a few million years.
Edited by Deadpool on 19-08-2010 22:57
