In forty-eight hours I will either be having a very good day
or the single worst day of my life. This may sound dramatic, especially when you
learn that the reason behind this is it being my A Level results day, but I am
by no means exaggerating. Hanging in the balance of a grade-based system of unforgivingly
strict mark schemes and often mistaken marking is the fate of my entire future.
On Thursday I will discover whether l am to move away to an exciting city that
I love, surrounded by new people and potential friends for life, learning and most
importantly finally start living, or if I am to remain in my dead-end isolated existence,
friendless, in a sleepy small town I whole-heartedly resent for yet another
year and the very last year of my teens.
My last exam was some six weeks ago now and I couldn’t possibly tell you how well I have done. I remember last year at the time of receiving my AS results I was undergoing the NCS programme. To get my results I had to travel back to my hometown, in the full belief I had ‘underperformed’. As it turns out I actually did ‘really well’, and I was in a great mood that day. It was sunny as well, so that certainly added to the sense of euphoria. I went straight from my school to the bus station to head back to the university campus we were staying at, envelope still in hand. Everyone there soon found out how I’d done and congratulated me. I pessimistically said ‘it doesn’t matter if I’ve done well this year if I end up getting ‘U’s next year’. One boy said ‘it doesn’t work like that’.
Twelve months later and I am fully relying on, pleading on, this one statement uttered by this one boy who I haven’t spoken to since being correct. Somehow I am simultaneously both dreading Thursday morning and wishing it to arrive immediately. Whilst to get in this state I must believe on some level that I haven’t got a place on my course, that numerically my grades didn’t make the cut, the prospect of refreshing UCAS Track to read the word ‘Rejection’ is unfathomable, is incomprehensible, and will absolutely end in more heartbreak than I have ever experienced.
And this the same for thousands of young people nationwide. In my mind, this can only suggest that there must be some flaw in the way the university application process is carried out but also to my mind there is no obvious solution. You could introduce an American-style system of progress being tracked by universities throughout students’ final school year so acceptance is not fully reliant on just three weeks of exams, but this may require the scrapping of A Levels altogether, or at least changing their very nature in almost every way.
For now I guess the only thing students, parents, teachers and schools can do is accept this long-standing system, even if it is a system that can brutally undermine a young person’s potential and prospects at the expense of how grade boundaries just happen to sit that particular year. For now I guess all I can do is sit and wait.
My last exam was some six weeks ago now and I couldn’t possibly tell you how well I have done. I remember last year at the time of receiving my AS results I was undergoing the NCS programme. To get my results I had to travel back to my hometown, in the full belief I had ‘underperformed’. As it turns out I actually did ‘really well’, and I was in a great mood that day. It was sunny as well, so that certainly added to the sense of euphoria. I went straight from my school to the bus station to head back to the university campus we were staying at, envelope still in hand. Everyone there soon found out how I’d done and congratulated me. I pessimistically said ‘it doesn’t matter if I’ve done well this year if I end up getting ‘U’s next year’. One boy said ‘it doesn’t work like that’.
Twelve months later and I am fully relying on, pleading on, this one statement uttered by this one boy who I haven’t spoken to since being correct. Somehow I am simultaneously both dreading Thursday morning and wishing it to arrive immediately. Whilst to get in this state I must believe on some level that I haven’t got a place on my course, that numerically my grades didn’t make the cut, the prospect of refreshing UCAS Track to read the word ‘Rejection’ is unfathomable, is incomprehensible, and will absolutely end in more heartbreak than I have ever experienced.
And this the same for thousands of young people nationwide. In my mind, this can only suggest that there must be some flaw in the way the university application process is carried out but also to my mind there is no obvious solution. You could introduce an American-style system of progress being tracked by universities throughout students’ final school year so acceptance is not fully reliant on just three weeks of exams, but this may require the scrapping of A Levels altogether, or at least changing their very nature in almost every way.
For now I guess the only thing students, parents, teachers and schools can do is accept this long-standing system, even if it is a system that can brutally undermine a young person’s potential and prospects at the expense of how grade boundaries just happen to sit that particular year. For now I guess all I can do is sit and wait.
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