Destination Education
00:27:01 · Ruth Benny
[00:27:01] S0: Yeah, I want to ask you about that actually. So, we said that you're going into upper six or last year of school it's time to start the applications, but going back, I mean, when do you think is the right time to start preparing? Because I would even wonder, I'd ask you that even choosing A level subjects or IB subjects. So we have to go back even further, don't we? Because whatever subjects you choose, you may be keeping the doors open or unfortunately closing certain doors for certain courses. Is that right?
00:27:34 · Barbara Lestak
[00:27:34] S1: Yeah, absolutely. You're spot on. So it's vital. And even at GCSE stage, you have to make sure that you're picking because what you... If you pick the wrong GCSEs, as an extreme example, if you to apply for computer science at Cambridge, you will need to have certain A levels. Also, you imagine GCSE you might pick, oh I'm going to pick history, geography, economics. But your school offers computer science, statistics and further maths. But you haven't picked those because that's not what you like at that moment in time or you want an easy GCSE or however you spin it. That then might close your door at the A level subjects that you get to choose depending on how your school processes, what your pathway is. And what you might end up doing is closing that A level door and having to do it privately as a private student outside of the school. Now some schools aren't that controlling with that pathway but you need to have that conversation as early as GCSE to really understand. And then looking at your A levels exactly as you say, you need to make sure, you know, again Cambridge Computer Science is your dream, must have maths, you must have further maths and one other, you know, sciency STEM based subject. And if you look at the entry requirements for the subject and the university that you want to go to it will tell you clear as day these are the basic requirements and underneath they will have recommended subjects. Now, very niftily, underneath those recommended subjects it will give you very openly the statistics of how many students take those recommended subjects and what other subjects students might take. I promise you now, what they recommend is what is required. Because if you want to join the other top cohort, you need to have those in the bag. So if the university is saying to you, okay, for example, if you're applying for Economics and Management at Oxford, you don't need further maths, but the majority of students will be taking further maths. So you kind of need to make that decision, you know, and have a very good reason perhaps for why you didn't take further maths. You might choose philosophy or something else, which is again fine for economics and management.
00:29:53 · Barbara Lestak, Ruth Benny
They need a humanity subject as well as your maths and further maths, but you have to cut, you know, you've got to make those decisions and they will change the pathway that you've chosen if you're not careful. [00:30:06] S0: So it gets earlier and earlier. So just to recap, you know, children will choose their GCSE subjects in the latter half of year nine. Do you think that's a really good, but they're so young and they're so immature. They don't really, I mean, they are so young at year nine, aren't they too? But do you work with students of that age? Do they generally have a sense of what they want to do?
00:30:27 · Barbara Lestak
[00:30:27] S1: Yeah, yeah, really good question. We do work with some students as early as year nine. It's a very relaxed programme. There's nothing that we sort of give them that they can't manage. So, we don't give them sort of high level access to things because what that does is it does the opposite effect. It completely freaks them out. They get completely scared and go, I can't do this. I'm not ready for this, etcetera, which isn't what we want to do. But it is very important that we guide them through that and say, okay, is that what you love? All right, let's find out if that really is, or maybe there's a tweak in here somewhere. We can go down a whole other path and allowing the student to have that fun, and it should be fun, you know, it should feel like fun for that student, like an exploration of, okay, where do my interests really lie? Because exactly at that age, they're so young, but they're in their absolute formative years. That end of year nine, my son's just gone through it. That end of year nine is so critical, you know, and we went through it together and we decided what his GCSEs would be. And, you know, and he said like, this is what I love. This is what I want to do. Fantastic. You need to explore that a little bit with them because you know, one month they love one thing another month they'll fall in love with something else.
00:31:39 · Ruth Benny, Barbara Lestak
[00:31:39] S0: Yeah, but at its core, I've heard it said so many times. This is what I said to my children. I said, you must choose what you love, where it intersects with what you're good at in a very basic form. Gonna have to ask you Barbara for a nice visual, because I'm realizing that we sort of jumped in with a little bit of jargon and the lots of dates and that you must have a nice visual or sort of an overview of the system that we can link to put it in the show notes. If you don't, we'll have to create one. [00:32:12] S1: Yeah, I have Perfect. One [00:32:15] S0: Thank you. I knew you would. I want to ask you about international students. Does what we've discussed so far, is there anything that differs for international students or is it pretty much as we've discussed?
00:32:28 · Barbara Lestak
[00:32:28] S1: Yeah, good question. So with international students, there's a few other little elements. So your UCAS application as an international student is the same. They will ask if you're an international student and there are British government rules and regulations that will help you and guide you if maybe you have dual citizenship or a family member lives here in The UK etcetera. It it will guide you as to whether or not they would deem you as a home or international student. If you know for certain that that's what you are, then fantastic. You just tick that you're international student. They will ask you don't try and get away with it please because they will ask you for documents and proof and evidence etc. And then the university will label you as whichever they deem is fitting for your status and the information that you've given them. International students, you have a bigger competition, you have greater competition because for some courses, medicine being a very key example, you actually have fewer spaces available to you. And so, you know, that if you imagine the ratio is a lot greater and so that competition is a lot lot higher. The other element that I always advise international students to check is if you aren't in an international school or you're not taking APs, so the American or IBs or A levels, to check your country and the qualification whether or not that university accepts your qualification that you are taking in your school and to what level that needs to be. Not all universities will accept all qualifications around the world. So that's really, really important. You don't want to set yourself up to then fail because you haven't checked that.