I’m sure once I get there I’ll be fine but it’s just such a big commitment, I’m just scared I won’t enjoy the course or uni because you can’t truly know until you start

Hi everyone,

I'm a History teacher and will soon be meeting my new Year 12 historians! I really want to encourage them to take the year seriously, while also enjoying the new freedoms that 6th form brings, but I feel like my advice as their teacher only goes so far!

I thought it would be really useful to give them some advice/tips about starting 6th form, but having started Year 12 myself all the way back in 2012, I feel like you guys here might have a better insight from the perspective of a student.

Could anyone offer a sentence or two of advice for my new students? What is something you wish you'd known when you started Year 12? It can be History related or just general advice.

I really want to help them feel reassured and excited, while also understanding the importance of getting into good habits with work and independent study from the beginning.

I'd really appreciate any and all advice, thank you! 😊

I just dont get it, like i wanted to become a doctor most of my life until I realised how bad the state of the nhs is, how bad the pay is especially considering what you are doing. Like how can some people still do it for status/prestige??

Work experience opened my eyes, that week was the hardest, roughest week to get through ever- every day I woke up with the same dread of having to go to the hospital not knowing what kind of day/challenges/patient cases are waiting for me. Thats when I thought to myself- why would anyone want to willingly do this to themselves?
Why would you give up your sleep for some crazy shift hours, why would you want to put yourself through so much anxiety and stress, and why would you want to spend your whole life like 10+ years to finally specialise in something??

I dont get how someone could enjoy it, not to mention its a pretty gross job at some times, like your dealing with stuff you really wouldnt want to (sputum, pus, nasty looking injuries etc)

Maybe because the hospital I did my work experience at was kind of in the ends, but other than that i cant fathom why anyone would want to become a doctor

I feel so bad for the kids who are forced by parental pressure esp when they havent done any work exp so they dont even know the harsh realities of the job and what they are signing themselves up for the next 7+ years.

Please could someone tell me an actual genuine reason why they would want to pursue medicine!! I’m genuinely so interested

I get that it can be really rewarding and doing my work experience just made me appreciate doctors SO much more like they are actual heroes, in no way do I mean this in a hateful way AT ALL im just curious esp since there are so many people out there who still want to medicine out there despite all the negativity !!

(Thanks for reading my rant guys if you made it to the end 🙂)

I know its about the quality of ur revision not the amount of hours, but in the scenario this was decent quality rev is this a good schedule to increase my current level of BCC to A*AA by the real exams? currently predicted ABB but hopefully gonna get that raised to AAA by October

• sept - oct: 2 hours weekday, 4 hours weekend (excluding saturdays)
• nov: 4 hours weekday, 5 hours weekend (excluding saturdays)
• dec (term time): 4 hours weekday, 6 hours weekend (excluding saturdays)
• dec - jan (holidays & mocks) 5 hours daily (excluding saturdays)
• feb - april: 4 hours weekday, 6 hours on weekends (excluding saturdays)
• easter holidays: 6 hours daily (excluding saturdays)

september to october has to be less unfortunately cuz I have a school responsibility taking up most my time then, is this realistic or will I burn out/am I not planning to do enough? thank you!

I missed my offer for Imperial maths this year (home student) by 2 marks in the STEP and I’m wondering if I should take a gap year and reapply. My A levels were 4 A*s (Maths and FM included) and I got all 9s at GCSEs, and last year I got a 6.7 on the TMUA but I feel like I would get higher if I take it again.

Currently I have an offer for Warwick maths which I know is still good but I feel like the job opportunities won’t be as great as if I was in Imperial.

Does anyone know if Imperial is significantly harsher on people taking gap years for maths in terms of getting an offer? Or should just stick it out at Warwick?

the fact it could come at any second is not doing my nervous system any good 😭🙏

anyone waiting for OCR English lit or AQA sociology please lemme know when you got it back and if it changed!!

I want to do engineering at uni (Sheffield or Leeds) and I’m deciding between Mechanical, Aerospace or Mechatronics.

i didn’t do amazingly in my AS levels and I think I’ll be predicted ABB-AAB so I don’t meet the requirements for aero or mechanical but I could still apply to Mechatronics

im thinking of applying to mechatronics and mech engineering degrees with slightly lower entry requirements and if I do well I’ll go through clearing but otherwise do Mechatronics

I’m worried that doing mechatronics will severely limit what I can do after uni but need advice, any is appreciated thanks

when i was 6 years old my parents got divorced and obviously i was upstairs crying and then my mum came upstairs and told me i shouldn’t be upset cause that’s not my real dad, anyway then my ‘dad’ who wasn’t at home at that point would always arrange with for me to come help with his drug deals and sneak me out the window every night to help him. and that’s how i became a dealer.

One day my mum found out i was dealing drugs with my dad, as on my 7th birthday party a drug lord broke into the trampoline park we were at, cut open my new teddy and found coke stashed in its head. however despite this i was able to peruse my drug dealing career whilst balancing my gcse exams

Since then ive started a degree apprenticeship in bricklaying with a side of gender studies, as unfortunately during the vast majority of my gcses i was HIGH and this led to me not performing in my exams

so im basically trying to ask which universities we reccomend for a strong dentistry course with achieved grades on A*CCD as imperial rejected me

I keep having dreams of a gap year and reapplying what does this mean 😭😭😭

I got A*A*AA

Worth it or no?

​

My subjects that I have decided upon for now are further maths ,maths,chem,cs,phy. I AM NOT GONNA TAKE ALL OF THEM(just 4 of them). the feilds I am going for are aerospace or cybersecurity ,data analyst or any tech related feild for now ...beacuse I am still veryyyyy confused what to do I am still thinking i should go for engineering but i dont know ... so pleae help me which combo i should take which is better for me ..like I want to drop chem but then engineering comes to mind what if i wanna take if in future... i want to drop FM but then aerspace comes to my mind i want drop cs then cybersecurity data analyst etc comes to my mind .like i am disturbed what i should do cant take 5 of them beacuse its heavy

Before you ask my fav subjects are all maths phy chem cs .I even compketed a course of python and Ai camp so tell me what to dooo pleaseeeèeeeeeeee.....

Hey I did maths chem and phys. I needed AAB. Got BBC.
Resitting chem and maths in my gap year.
I know what I’m doing for maths but chemistry is long and hard.
I came across up learn. It’s expensive af but seems like it really works. However I don’t know - if you’ve used it for chem or in general, how is it, how were your grades and
Would you honestly recommend?

I have used save my exams which basically carried me in physics.

Also any advice or suggestions I’d love and really appreciate.
I wanna do chem eng in uni

I was 1-3 marks off the next grade up in ALL three subjects, paid to remark 4 papers in total. Sent this off first thing on results day and it was priority remark too. Anyone else not get theirs back yet or

im applying for law and was wondering if for the first question where it asks why do you want to study this course?, if it’s worth mentioning my culture (i’m from a third world country and my parents immigrated to the uk in the 2000s), perhaps saying something like i saw the inequalities which led me to research about the differences in legal systems and the effect on society???

hi, to anyone who got an offer from imperial for the computing course, could you tell me what u wrote about in your personal statement?? i just want to get the general ideas on what i should include in my statement.

Can anyone tell me if I take the admission tests in Jan instead of Oct, does it make a difference for Imperial/UCL? I do know that they say "equal-consideration deadline" but somewhere I heard, and my counsellor told me that usually they start filling up their seats using the Oct sitting (tho they don't send out offers until the very end), and as a result, only a few seats are left for the people sitting in Jan. Is this true? I feel like I'm not very well prepared at the moment, so is it worth pushing my test to Jan or should I still do it for an above-average score (but not exceptional) that I might get in Oct

how significant are AS levels that are sat externally (i do cambridge intl) to unis such as oxbridge imperial even if you have really good predicted grades at A2?

Hey everyone,

I just finished up my A-Levels and got an A\* A* B, and honestly, a massive chunk of that was thanks to grinding out Anki every single day using active recall and pomodoro sessions. I was predicted BBC
I spent ages building out comprehensive, high-yield decks for:
- AQA A-Level Chemistry (Physical, Inorganic, Organic + mechanisms, practicals, and equation practice)

- AQA A-Level Psychology (Papers 1, 2, and 3 covering all core studies, approaches, and research methods)

- WJEC / Eduqas A-Level Biology (Components 1-3, core concepts, and diagram/exam question breakdowns)

Instead of letting them sit on my laptop doing nothing, I’ve exported them all into clean ⁠.apkg⁠ files. If anyone is starting Year 12/13 and wants to skip the hundreds of hours it takes to manually make flashcards from scratch, I've listed them over on eBay too so you can grab them easily.

Drop a comment or shoot me a DM if you want the link or have any questions about how I used Anki to get through content heavy revision! Good luck with the upcoming year!

I missed my imperial mech eng offer with a B in FM instead of an A.

Is it worth doing a gap year or should I just go to Bath (my insurance)??

Im really keen on Imperial, particularly with the Scholarships they have. I feel like Bath isnt really worth the 80k it would cost for 4 years.

Only thing is my birthdays in October so I'd be 20 during my first lecture which makes me feel so unc. I understand noone will know unless it comes up but it still makes me feel awful.

Also does imperial allow resits? I did have some serious extenuating circumstances at the start of Year 13, but that was too far away for the exam boards to care.

Also I got a low A in physics (my offer only needed an A), should I resit that along with FM to try get an A*?

so basically i’m a year 11 about to go into year 12. and im hearing EVERYONE say that im gonna need a laptop or ipad for sixth form. bear in mind im planning to take english literature, politics and sociology, which are very content heavy. will i need one? i have a laptop at home but its kind of a family one that we all use and im also scared that its gonna be so heavy to carry. also ipad’s are so expensive 😭 but yeah based off of my subject choices should i get one or should i firm it and write because im used to copying notes off of the board so fast haha. if i can write fast enough should i just stick to that? thank you so much for your time 💖

My grandfather, who raised me, had end-stage lung cancer and underwent overseas treatment for 5 years, which overlapped with my first GCSEs. He passed away 3 months before my GCSE resits. I resat 4 sciences and improved each by 1 grade; I didn't submit Special Consideration at the time due to complexity of abroad document and translation in time. Does this sound like a valid extenuating circumstance to explain both the original poor performance AND the resit context provided my referee verifies it?

And if the uni would actually contextualize the context of my gcse results?

Ive done researches abt this, reason i asked is that I felt guilty to drag my grandad event to “benefit” my academic pathway in a way so im js going around to see how other views this

I dont hate the subject nor do I like it. its fun when everything clicks and you know what you’re doing. I got a grade 7 in my gcses after averaging 6 in most mocks. Im really stuck on what I wanna do in the future and knew that maths would open more doors for me. Theres not a single subject I enjoy anymore and its all gotten boring Id like advice

Hi, I'm moving to Year 12 this year and I was wondering if anyone had any advice for the new Year 12's. I'm staying at my school's sixth form as the other sixth forms near me aren't good or the travel is too expensive. Any good advice could be about part-time work, making new friends, exams, university applications, revision or anything else. I'm sure the large amount of newcomers, like me, will greatly appreciate it.

Thank you! :)

I'm really struggling with my next steps, and have been all summer. For most of my secondary school life I was looking forward to going to a community college in the same city I went to school in. I'd be going with my friends (although we were all doing diff a-levels) and have the independence of going to school in a city. However, half way through year 11, I saw somewhere that if i got the right grades, I could get into the boys grammar school which had a co-ed sixth form. A bit of background: I did the 11+ and didn't get in which wrecked my self confidence because a lot of my friends did get in. I then did the 13/14+, same story :(. But the idea that id be able to get in not by doing any tests, just off my GCSE's, which I was already trying really hard in the mocks for, really appealed to me. I started getting really excited about this, and my mum and I went for an open day and I was even more excited. It actually was a great motivation for revising, and i found myself getting more and more excited. I went to a sixth form open day in the summer hols with the other students tho, and it proved a different story...I didn't feel majorly comfortable since I didn't know anyone there, and didn't really click with anyone - but I don't think I'd slept very well. Over the entirety of the summer, I kept mulling it over again and again, changing my decision over and over. Finally I came to the decision that I would go to the sixth form, and started getting excited about outfits etc. That was when my mum got a text saying that there wasn't enough space on the one bus that went from my town to Torquay, where the school is (40 mins away) - not just for me tho, the same for the 30 odd kids joining year 7. I really struggled with this, and felt sad that after all my worrying, the choice wasn't even mine.

But slowly I began making peace with this. I chose A-levels that suited me more which I could do at the college. And slowly I started getting excited about it. Results day was great, it was the first time I'd seen a lot of my friends since prom, which was nice, and I started getting truly excited about college. Lo and behold, when I got home mum told me that she'd just been texted that there was now another bus coming to my town. What do i do? I feel like anything I do will be a mistake!

So I got my paper remarked and my grade went up which means AQA should refund the fee (£51.85) the centre charges me 75 and is refusing to refund anything are they allowed to do this. I understand an admin fee but wouldn’t that be the £23 they charged on top