hey evb, i’m a new y12 and aiming to apply for cambridge for eng lit. i achieved 99888877 at gcse, with 8s in the englishes and a 7 in maths. my aps is an 8.0. i take eng lit, spanish (9 achieved at gcse) , and r.s (which i did not take at gcse but achieved all 8-9 in my humanities). are these results good enough for cambridge ? whilst i understand gcse’s do not hold as much weight as predicted A level grades or your personal statement, i just wanna see if i’m eligible. contextually, i got average results for my selective hs.

I’m doing maths, further maths, physics and computer science, however a couple weeks after the year started I realised I really do not like compsci but my school isn’t letting me drop it to just do the other three. I really cannot be bothered with completing any homework for it as it’s just so uninteresting and feels like a waste of time to me. So I guess my question is if I was forced to sit the exam and ended up getting A/A*s in the other subjects, would it hold me back at all if I got something like an E in computer science when applying to university? The two courses I’m most likely to apply to are probably maths and EEE.

Hey bit of a long shot but.

Did anyone get a MacBook for uni / a levels this year and realise they don’t actually need or want it?

I wasn’t able to afford one new and need one for my course. So was seeing if anyone is looking to get rid of theirs (obviously not for free)🙏🙏

Pls lmk, apologies if this isn’t fit for the sub

Edit : to everyone asking why it has to be a MacBook, we need to use softwares like Xcode and languages like SwiftUI which are Apple only softwares

I'm considering applying to the Oxbridge Summer Courses program. It's quite pricey and you have to pay up front which will be quite strenuous on my family's finances so I'm wondering what the process they look over for admissions to the program is to see my likeliness of even qualifying or getting in.

For the past couple of weeks I have been very paranoid about my personal statement being flagged for similarity of universities accusing me of using AI.

I used this website : https://www.turnitindetector.ai/ to check for AI.

Then I started to become really scared that my personal statement may be stored there and that Copycatch may find it and flag me for similarity!!!!

Regarding AI use, I have not used AI to suggest rewrites, nor did I ask it to generate paragraphs for me. Those are the things that "drowned out" my voice anyway.

I typed out everything myself. I DIDNT COPY AND PASTE ANYTHING INTO MY PERSONAL STATEMENT!

I have used AI to learn some concepts such as how differential equations model this particular motion, and I have also used AI to break down difficult language in a research paper that I read into something that I was able to understand. I don't know if this counts as AI misconduct :(

I js want to go to uni and I am literally questioning whether I will make it...

Anyone can offer their thoughts?

"Is taking 4 A-Levels actually worth the stress, or is it just a massive flex that universities don’t care about?

I genuinely don't know how i got into this situation, i feel like a big prank is being played on me right now but unfortunately this is genuinely my real life.

Last year, I was planning on applying to Cambridge for a course that required an entrance exam. I was aware of this and far in advance so i booked it months before and i remember paying for it and then picking a place to do my exam along with getting a confirmation that i had booked a center in a website. However i neglected to check my email which for whatever reason never got the confirmation email for the test center. Infact, somehow someway, i had never actually booked my exam to begin with despite it being recorded then that i had paid for it. I then spent a month revising for the exam just to find out a few days before (after the final deadline to book a center) that i somehow didn't have anywhere booked. This led to 5 days of being stringed along by pearson edexcel before having them tell me on the day of my exam that they couldn't do anything to help me anyways meaning i couldn't apply to Cambridge that year. This was heartbreaking but i kept it stepping.

I ended up applying to imperial and needing 3A* in order to get in, which i unfortunately narrowly missed (for separate also stupid reasons) leaving me with A*A*A as my final grades. Instead of going to my third choice uni, i realised that i could apply for Cambridge and Imperial (given i take an extra subject) again so i took a gap year and restarted the application process.

I made sure not to repeat my mistake with my entrance exam and my application went smoothly so after October 15th i just decided to stop thinking about it. I saw a bunch of emails telling me that my application had been received so i didn't bother reading them and just went about life normally.

That was until yesterday afternoon at like 8pm when i saw a final warning email from the College i applied to, reminding me to do something called a MyCambridge application (like a 10 minute form where you have to give some basic information) otherwise my application would not be processed. I did it as soon as i could, and in the process found out that it was due at 6pm that day. I also found out the reason why I didnt know anything about this was because Outlook for some reason decided to put the informational email from the university along with all subsequent reminders into my junk which, combined with the fact that im applying by myself and first in my family to even apply for uni let alone Cambridge, meant that i litterally had no way to know about the requirement until it was literally too late (outside of if i had gotten lucky and i was at home to read the final warning email earlier). I emailed the college and the university explaining my situation but the university told me to talk to the college and the college straight up told me that since i sent it late then they arent considering my application and that they were going to mark me as rejected (their response was super robotic and they didn't mention anything i said so i doubt they even read my email anyway). I might send one last hail mary email but i doubt it'll change anything

Im genuinely so gutted that i just had to get this off my chest. I genuinely cant believe i managed to whiff it three times over the course of one year. Like, not saying id do it, but im starting to understand why people SH, im just so mad at myself for not being that little bit more proactive or just reading my mail in the morning or anything. Maybe this is a punishment from God for not diligent in my prayer enough idek. It just stings extra too because of how bad i genuinely wanted to go to the university, so much so that i took a whole gap year just to not even be rejected for not being good enough but rather over a minor ten minute form that Microsoft decided to hide from me. If i don't end up getting Imperial i might just have a semitruck turn me into a stain on the pavement who knows.

TLDR;
always check your mail, especially your junk

edit:
i just realise i shouldve just lied and said i had a power outage fuck man why was i raised to be honest

edit edit:
i probably would have had to provide evidence anyways. Only thing that couldve changed is microsoft not putting the emails in junk or if i randomly checked my email in the morning. long story short theres nothing i could have done

Hello!

I’m a year 13 student looking to start a non profit, student led tutoring organisation! The plan is that students in yr12/13 (but if you’re year11 we can hopefully expand in a bit, once this launches) lead online IGCSE/AS preparation classes for groups of disadvantaged students.

Open to IB and AP students too! If you’d like to teach SAT prep; I won’t be able to help with curriculum planning, if so though. This is gonna be an outside of school led thing but you can still teach students in your school, of course ideally the batches would contain students from multiple schools.

Teaching would be online/in public libraries (If preferred) ideally each student would teach an hour a week (more or less is acceptable!) and we can add up all our hours; which would be really good for uni applications too! This is currently based in the UAE but if you’re in other countries you’re welcome to join too! We’d just need to set up different classes at different timings, and if enough students join it shouldn’t be an issue!

Im posting on here to ask if anyone would be willing to join as a representative of their school and/or a founding member! There are about 16 students from my school who have signed up and a few more from different schools! So far we’ve got math, physics, chemistry, biology, geography and history; any subjects are welcome, we’d love to have you!

All students that sign up now are listed as founding members, all students that are the first to sign up from their respective schools are board members.

Also if teaching isn’t your thing but you’d still like to spread awareness/discuss philosophical topics then maybe joining my podcast would appeal to you!

Feel free to contact me if you’ve got more questions! And if you want to sign up.
Thank you very much!

Also, can I still change it or nah?

https://essaymateapp.com

I received a rejection from LSE but I thought they did their offers later in the year… Should I ask them why I received one so early or is this normal?

Edit: I received an email that said it was due to my personal statement. The actual contents was heavily Econ and politics focused but I mentioned PPE so that is probably why. Also I don’t think it was about the actual quality of my ps since multiple teachers have reviewed it and I did not use AI.

So for those applying later…just apply to the PPE course 😭

for context im a pretty good maths students. i got a 9 in normal, 8 in further and 90% in my induction test. i understand stats and pure, and my teachers for those are nice.

my mech teacher is a very grumpy 'wise' guy. said he knows your grade from the way you walk in on day 1. he taught me in year 7 to year 11 and long story short think im an absolute dumbass.

we js did chapter 9 as (constant accelration and suvat stuff). im fine w the maths part - i can derive all the equations and i understand all of it, but when it comes to questions i completely misinterpret it and work out the wrong thing entirely. tried to do a bunch of practice questions but never managed to get it to click.

had a test on it, walked out thinking i did alright and turns out i got 57%. never had below 75 so it was a bit jarring. havent gotten it back yet so can't say i know fs where i went wrong but im pretty sure its due to afformentioned. talking to people in my class, a handful of people (like 1/3rd) got 80, but met many who were around 60-70, met some who got 40 asw. before the test he said if you get anything below 80 you can kiss an a* goodbye.

ofc im sure hes overreacting, but i am a bit scared that i made the wrong decision with further maths, any reassurance of similar stories as hope would be appreciated, or any tips (or brutal honesty if i should just drop it haha)

I completed the "My Cambridge application" form 4 hours and 27 minutes late and emailed Clare College immediately of my extenuating cirumstances. My form still sent through and got an email saying it was completed and they recieved it, but it also said it was past the deadline. It did not specify if my application was going to be carried forwards or not. I am actually hyperventilating. Please! Someone respond!!

We tend to associate a fixed amount of time to how much we study. For example let's say I was doing Trigonometry exam questions - I would ideally want to spend as long as possible on the exam questions to really understand the process and mechanism behind the complex ideas because if you set a time limit, you may get all the questions wrong and then not properly understand simply because your day is so planned out to the finest minute of what to do. Please just give yourself flexibility when it comes to studying and revising.

Also, if you work at a 'slow' pace, a 40 minute session of Exam Questions may feel like an entire day of studying to someone else. What I am getting at here, is we need to understand but also take breaks when the workload gets too much (understand taking breaks is better than pushing through).

At least I'll escape London prices for another year 🔥🔥

Anyone else applying for these? From what I'm seeing offers came out so late last year I don't think we'll be hearing back till January

Finally got confirmation from St John's tho!!

Edit: ok this isn't bait my ps has some social science stuff too to appeal to human sciences so I might be cooked for some of the biology courses😭

My predicted grades are ABB and i have no idea what to do. i asked my careers advisor if i could negotiate with my teachers but due to the fact that the predicted grades already get increased by a grade, i was told ‘good luck’. I needed at least an AAA, but one of my exams went terribly wrong and i didn’t really do the other (very rare for me btw, and i asked the teacher if i could do it some other time and got an angry reply back which honestly i’d rather not engage with).

I want to do law, which not only is competitive but has high entry requirements usually, and considering the job market, anything beyond a russell group uni is a hopeless cause. I might go do a gap year and apply but i don’t know if i can defer an entry if im going to decline it later on

gosh even posting this is a humiliation ritual

LSE has publicly stated that they will flat out reject people if they have heavy suspicion that they used AI to construct their personal statement.

As they place so much value on the personal statement, they obivously want it to be yours, not a machine's work.

Just wanted to make this post to see if anyone feels the same.
As someone who has had one month so far or half a term of y13 and applied to Russel group unis requiring an early applicant ucas submission by the 15 Oct, High predicted grades that needed to be secured, and an entrance test, I’ve found that I have genuinely become obsessed during that period

I am on half term now but have soo much revision to do due to neglecting my work over the last month in order to prioritise my ucas submission and entrance test preparation. I find that I have isolated myself from doing my homely chores and even my family members as I have been focused on my work.
I will admit I have spent most of the time procrastinating preparing for my ucas submission which led to me becoming even more stressed as I hadn’t started so when I actually did put in the work I was working under a tight deadline.
Even in school I would spend more time in the library, less with friends and even on weekends go out less.
I felt fatigued,exhausted,tired, I remember I got into a cycle of getting 4-5 hours of sleep everyday for a week and even one day less than 2 hours of sleep(pure procrastination due to having lots of homework that I put off to procrastinate working on my ucas submission and entrance test preparation) to the point where I would go to school and leave early and I remember actually getting in trouble with my teacher and department of my a level subject as it was an important feedback on tests lesson but I decided not to stay I had under or just 4 hours of sleep.

Anyways safe to say, such a period is over thank God and it was truly an overwhelming experience, now I have rested for about 4 days during my half term and now face reading 6 books for coursework,catching up on homework,learning from my mistakes in my tests,and creating new revision for the content learnt in the first month of y13 whilst studying and finishing creating revision for the y12 content for my mocks coming up.

Just wondering if anyone else went through an absolute treacherous experience during the first month of y13 as an early applicant who also had to sit an entrance test…

It's still 0. So sad........

A sad weekend

Hi all im currently doing a computer science NEA project for OCR exam board and I have finished the analysis phase currently working on getting started on the design phase of the project, anybody who has done it before got any tips ?

hi i have a slight problem. i currently take maths bio chem but as of recently in the half term ive wanted to study quite quantitive degrees like finance,cs,efds etc however my school strictly says u need a 9 to take further maths, i got an 8 (205 marks)i’ve currently been self teaching myself the content and find it not too bad. Any advice from people who self taught it?

What is the absolute minimum ESAT score in m1 m2 physics just to get an interview (and hopefully an offer) at cambridge engineering and imperial mechanical engineering.
Predicted 3A* Math, Further math, Physics
As level Chemistry achieved A
Mediocre IGCSE
International Applicant