Capital Summertime Ball 2024

[Jono]

If you've got a rubbish teacher you're expected to do the reading and sort yourself out so you do excel. It seemed so much fun to have free lessons, but the novelty soon wore off. Especially when you include the fact your teachers will be ill. That's a lot of spare time!

[popbitcher]

a levels begin from day one, its weird saying that but you do need to focus so you are ready for your modules

[Grace]

I think it's because I'm still unsure over subject choices, I'm not too worried about making friends because I know a fair few people who are going, but not too many that it'll be hard to move on. I'm going to have long days and I'm already thinking that I should be working towards uni.

[dstrkzn]

Im back at college for my second year in September

Dont be scared Grace Last year i started college away from all my best friends, i had one person who was in my year at school who i used to be really good friends with but we had drifted totally. At first it was difficult to integrate but now i found 2 people who i can talk to about anything [some things i wont even talk to my best friends about] And ive met a lot of interesting people and learned so much from them.

Dont worry about things Enjoy your summer!

[Jono]

Even if things go wrong with your subject choices you'll have a chance to change. It's inevitable some people will make the wrong choice occasionally. Although things will be different, it's a much more relaxed atmosphere.

[Emma]

Corr, I wish I was going back to do A Levels again. I'd choose totally different subjects to what I studied while I was there.

[Guest]

There were people I met and became really good friends with in the sixth form who I had never spoken to before at school, in fact, I didn't even know they existed.

Everyone has a maturer attitude and approach to school work, the old cliquey divisions that had existed before and kept people popular or not disappear and everyone more or less gets along.

In choosing my A-levels, I adopted for subjects with a likeness. I chose Psychology, Sociology and English (the range of available subjects in my sixth form wasn't wide way back when) as I felt that it would help me get the degree that I wanted to do, instead of picking subjects that were greatly disparate but I don't think that it matters as much these days. In retrospect, however, I should've picked Biology over English as originally suggested by my Sixth Form tutor. Ne' mind.

[Guest CancerForTheCure]

I got a B and a C. I got into four universities and an interview with my fifth. Chose not to go as UEA was where I wanted to go - they wanted AAB.

Grades aren't everything it seems. I had a good personal statement, a good reference, and some good GCSEs.

Yeah I imagine your personal statement must have been quite good with all the stuff you do. I should have put more effort into mine to be honest.

[FreakaZoid101]

I'm going to UEA in September, hopefully, if I get AABB. I'll be graduating either 2013 or 2015, depending on if I intercalate (take another degree in the middle of medicine to get a better job when I graduate).

4 hours and 2 trains away... yay...

[Hugh.]

I'm taking that considerably smaller step aswell.. though I might regret my choices.. I've chosen what I like at the moment.. which just happens to be the stuff with tonnes of coursework and the longest exams... Joy!

[Mike]

u iz 2 clever innit.

[Sam]

I got conditional placements for (both at UWE Bristol)

Games Technology

Computing

I was really pleased

[Ema]

I went to look around De montfort today and I liked it, at first I was like Oh my god no, but now im swaying towards the yeah I could live here idea. Despite getting up at 6 am this morning, and sitting in a car for a healthy 5 hours there because of a major traffic jam, it was really good.

The Journalism Suites are amazing and the lecture/talk was interesting. The Accomodations quite basic, but what do you expect...

We went on the tour bus and got soaked, it was a bad idea, the tour lady looked like Carole off of Big brother and sounded so much like her!

[Jono]

How much work a day/week do you reckon needs to be put in to your course to succeed?

[FreakaZoid101]

How much work a day/week do you reckon needs to be put in to your course to succeed?

It depends entirely on which course you're doing, and what you mean by succeed.

My sister, the architect, slept in the studio at her uni because she never actually left, except to eat and have a shower. She ended up winning competitions all over the world and she came 2nd in her year at graduation. That's success to her because it's a talent based degree, and the better you do, the easier it is for you to find a job. She had started getting interviews lined up in London and got offered jobs by 4 out of her first 5. So working so that you never see the light of day is my answer from her.

Luckily she said that the medics party hard and still do amazingly, so I have nothing to worry about. This year I studied 5-6 hours each night when I got home from school, but I still felt I didn't do enough. In all fairness, I was taking extra A-levels, while my friends did about 3 hours a night. Meh.. I had my fun at the weekends.

I guess I have to see once I get to uni, but my course is PBL (problem based learning) so instead of lectures all week I have a couple of lectures, but I have to solve a problem in a group each week, and learn like that. Which is fine. Last year my self taught modules were my highest papers.

[Bumble_85]

Or if you're like me you do sod all all year until you have to write all your essays at once then you panic, write each of them in a day or two days and somehow get a 2.1 \o/

[Emma]

I'm dreading uni still.

[KingTutsWWH]

Or if you're like me you do sod all all year until you have to write all your essays at once then you panic, write each of them in a day or two days and somehow get a 2.1 \o/

Haha. We are very alike Bumbly.

You can get away with doing very little for quite a while at Uni, but I did get pretty nervous and had many many many sleepless nights trying to get everything done at the end of each year. If you can cope with this sort of stress then you're ok.

I didn't attend quite a few of my lectures, so when it came to my finals I had to make up the notes and take lots of risks as to which topics MIGHT come up on the papers. I relied mainly on probability. Scary. The main problem was that my friends obviously needed their notes and all the relevant books had been taken out of the library. I had to walk to a different library in the centre of town and use different books on a similar theme. I worked virtually all day and most of the night in the run up to finals.

Paradoxically I think this somehow helped me. My essays were slightly different to everyone elses - different references, the info was fresh in my brain and it was good somehow to avoid all the other stressy students in the Uni library every day.

You'll be absolutely fine if you try to get to your lectures, definitely attend tutorials and don't leave too many essays to the very last minute.

You will only find how much work you have to do when you get to Uni I'm afraid though. It very much depends on your attitude, intelligence, whether you work well under pressure, your course and a multitude of other factors.

[Lucinda]

I just wrote a long reply and somehow managed to delete it. Gutted.

While we were shown how a 12 hours a week timetable of lectures can become a working 9-5 weekdays and never in evenings and weekends, in practice I don't work like that at all. I tend to go to most of my lectures and then do all the coursework in the last couple of weeks before it's due in and do the reading for the exams a few days before. However, the exam I did best in this year, I did the reading more consistently.

My course involves a fair bit of groupwork, so the slackers who don't turn up most of the term and still manage to pass are very irritating. The hardest work I did was the 12 hour days spent in the same computer room every day for a week each time to get my GIS groupwork done while the software screwed up constantly. Needless to stay I'm not taking GIS any more, it is so badly organised.

The main advantage to working consistently throughout the year is that you will find library books a lot easier to get hold of. Doing coursework early if you can is useful too. With ME you will also find it difficult to do the long hours necessary if you're going to do work at the last minute. There are definite advantages when everyone else is panicking the day before a big piece of coursework is due to have finished it a week or two before but this isn't always possible. I'd recommend you tell your academic tutor about your ME and you should be able to get more flexible coursework deadlines and also help in exams like extra time and rest breaks.

[MissCorsham]

Hoping to beg my way into Portsmouth or UWE Bristol...

Seeing as I completely destroyed my exams

But its ever ever so close now

I'm really scared now

[superchris0110]

How much work a day/week do you reckon needs to be put in to your course to succeed?

Jono, it all depends how well you want to do. I imagine you want to do very well so you will need to go further than most people on your course will. It all depends on how much you are willing to put in!

Do your reading and homework each week and you will get good results. Simple.

I did sweet FA in terms of reading and and homework for both my first and second years so have the results to show.

[Rob]

I know we've got separate threads for university, college, exams etc, but I thought it'd be nice if we could all pull together into one thread, making it easier to give advice, share tips (or horror stories) and generally get it all off our chest.

So, I know there's a lot of us starting uni and college (as well as continuing secondary school) in the coming months, good luck everyone!

Ta Grace, same to everyone.

[Andrew11@]

I know we've got separate threads for university, college, exams etc, but I thought it'd be nice if we could all pull together into one thread, making it easier to give advice, share tips (or horror stories) and generally get it all off our chest.

So, I know there's a lot of us starting uni and college (as well as continuing secondary school) in the coming months, good luck everyone!

Yeah - good luck to everyone to what ever they're doing

[Grace]

I enrolled at college today, I was nervous beforehand but I'm relieved to have my timetable (and I found the bus stop), so I can't wait to start now.

[MissCorsham]

I enrolled at college today, I was nervous beforehand but I'm relieved to have my timetable (and I found the bus stop), so I can't wait to start now.

Ah, good luck! You doing A Levels at college or a Btec?

Im off to Uni in 5 weeks. Ive turned my room upside down, emptying draws and things! So exciting and scary.