Destination Education
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.
00:34:22 · Ruth Benny
[00:34:22] S0: Yeah, good point. I think there's on UCAS, you can scroll through, there's a lot of different qualifications that they do accept, but really, really important to check. I mean, I was coming at this question with the assumption that if you're not British and you're studying overseas, then you definitely are going to be classified as an international student. I mean, we could do a whole other topic on home fees versus international fees. Let's assume for a moment that those students will be international. I mean, my instinct, mean, the university is increasingly reliant on the fees for international students these days. And what I've seen again, in my small sample is that those international students get early offers for lower grades. In a sense, it's easier for international students.
00:35:10 · Barbara Lestak
[00:35:10] S1: I think there are some universities that will definitely do that because as you said, and have rightly identified international students have a vast amount more to pay than a national student than a home student. Now, I think that stands for a large number of UK universities. I would always caution those who are wanting to apply to the top five. So G5, Russell, Oxford, Cambridge, as that is not the case. So you will have the same entry requirements as a home student. But if you are applying perhaps to not the G5, not the Russell and not Oxbridge, then you may find that you will have a little bit more flex and a little bit more freedom, especially I think if you aren't taking sort of the A Levels or the A Level equivalents, because then it's a slightly different system for you, education system for you. So they might be a little bit more relaxed in that case. The other element that you can consider is are the foundation courses. So for students who maybe aren't quite there or something happened in their academic life and schooling, etcetera, or they just missed out on the minimum requirement. And there are some universities now that are doing what they call foundation courses or foundation degrees. They are very competitive and you need to check because they don't do a foundation degree for every but it does give you an in and you go and you know you start with some very basic modules but also to increase that English language and to sort of get you used to that university schooling system, university system, the education system there. So if you are a student who sort of fits into that category, by all means, you know, take a look at the foundation courses because they are very useful. But I do warn you, they can be very competitive.