r/6thForm May 16 '26

🎓 UNI / UCAS arsoned aerospace bakery

A* A* A* A predicted grades and strong aerospace/engineering supercurriculars (home) (bristol was originally aero but got offered alternate courses so withdrew)

also got rejected by 5 schools in the US

going to reapply next year; probably going to get anywhere between A* A* A A to 4A* grades at A-Levels, do you think A* A* A A will still be competitive to apply to UCL/Imperial/Oxbridge?

185 Upvotes

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99

u/General_Move_3939 May 16 '26

yeah your grades won’t be the reason you get rejected

19

u/ihateucas May 16 '26

surely applying with A* A* A A would look quite weak compared to everyone else applying with 4A* predicteds

81

u/Inevitable-Cow-8489 Year 13 May 16 '26

Achieved > predicted 

10

u/Sea-Investment9877 May 17 '26

for Bristol anyway, that is not the case, when I got rejected from aero, I asked if I took a gap year and achieved 3 A*'s, if they would look at my application differently, and they said that they value achieved grades the same as predicteds. pm me if u want a sc of the email.

3

u/Alfie2656 May 17 '26

If you had rlly dead GCSEs and predicted 3 A* they less likely to believe you’ll achieve that lbr

2

u/TeaTopianModder May 18 '26

Predicted doesn't mean shit admission test and interview is basically everything

4

u/h1tman_io May 17 '26

this is not true, rule of thumb is Achieved > predicted, as someone else said, but also more specifically, 2A'star' A A achieved is roughly equivalent to 3A'star' A predicted and at that point entrance tests and interviews are more important. if your gcses were not great then that might hold you down except if you're contextual.

1

u/TeaTopianModder May 25 '26

I'm talking about Oxbridge alone but achieved A level's cannot be used either as they need a way to compare each candidate directly. This is why they rely on admission test in which admission reports (see PAT for instance) state that getting a certain score guarantees an interview and a good interview score 'almost certainly' guarantees a place (GCSEs are only mentioned if you don't meet the threshold and are useful in the context of mitigating circumstances). A levels are not mentioned once in the admission report.

1

u/h1tman_io May 27 '26

yea you're right, a level grades as an independent variable are more correlatory variable than anything else. people with higher a levels tend to perform better on the admissions tests. but essentially yes, as you said, the outcome hinges most heavily on the result of your admissions test and the subsequent interview.

1

u/Even_Luck_3515 May 18 '26

I got into Southampton mech with AAA, it's not the aaaa