A-Level Results Morning Stories

Ahh, that fateful date back in 1994. We all went up to college and checked our results. I got a B and two C's and got my first choice university (Kent - history of art and film studies), but really I didn't want to go there at all. As I just wanted to stay in London, and had picked completely the wrong course. Oh well.

Amazed! I'd done grebt! And then ARRRRGHHH, cos I was a million points above my predicted grades and could have gone anywhere. But mostly hooray hooray poo ur gosh. I queued up with all my friends, went into an office where they handed us our grades, asked us where we applied for, went "oh yeah you're fine there" and I walked out. Everyone got in where they wanted and I got teased for getting my grebt grades. And then we waited outside the pub and they opened up especially for our gang - YAY! One person didn't get what they wanted so they went off to try and sort that out. Mostly - pubs. And green drinks.

i was on holiday so didn't get to open the fabled envelope! i phoned my friend hellsbells and she told me my result over the phone and i was like "oh my god... i'm going to university!" walked out of hotel room, outside into hotel bar where parentals and brother were sitting waiting for me. mum bought me a vodka and coke to celebrate.

haha it was yesterday last year. I got a lift into school to collect them and I remember waiting around for ages. Then I went inside and the vice principal Mr Ryder said "well Ronan I don't know if you'll be pleased with these". And I looked at them and realised he must not have known me too well cos I was delighted. Quick bit of calculation later I was pretty sure I'd got the thing I wanted. I then went to this pub next to the school and rang my then boss to say I wasn't going to work. I drank many pints that afternoon then came home and I remember cooking a Marks and Spencers pizza, then I went out to a small party near where I live, had some more beer and some champagne then went to local pub followed by local CRAP club.

I only remember all this cos I was talking to someone yesterday and they asked me. It is a fantastic feeling, of course then you go to college and wish you'd got less marks and had to do something else.

They had them all up on notice boards. No letters or envelopes or comments from tutors in Bexhill (though they do have drive-by shootings now). Most place give you offers in points, but Salford offered CCC. I got an A and C a-levels and C and D AS levels, so didn't know what to do. And epnt aging trying to phone the university to confirm, not that I was that bothered when I found out I was.

I was in the South of France on holiday and had to phone my uncle up and get him to tell me. It turned out I had dropped a grade and not got into my first choice of university, and had to sort everything out from the end of a payphone in another country. Not really a fun day.

But then I went out and got right royally skullfucked in the evening, so all was well.

Every story should end with that sentence.

I have no memory of this. Half the threads I read on ILx (first lines, what where the best yrs of yr life), I just think: I have no memory. Or maybe it doesn't work right. I'm sure I knew this once...

Cor creaky good contender for worst morning of my life, going in and finding my results were not good enough to get me into anywhere. Ulp.

It was my first ever bits-of-paper failure (adding to the various other personal failures, heh) which meant that although I kind of knew how badly I'd done, I kind of thought I'd skank through. Tears, realisation that I perhaps had to have a bit of a rethink. Gub. Most likely all worked out for the best, but it was an uncomfortable morning and was followed by a fairly humiliating year: probably just what I needed.

Also, 1 year later, the feeling of a nasty year paying off, hurrah, which in truth was more relief than anything else. Dampened by feeling *desperate* on behalf of classmates of mine who'd done the same thing as me only to find themselves a sum total of no further forward. Ugh.

can we tell SAT stories on this thread, or is it Official Property of The Queen?

I suppose SAT stories will be alright.

I was playing it cool - I didn't want to go up the school with the rest of them because it was all a bit touch and go (my required grades were - how you say - a bit on the tough side AAAB). Year head rang me while I was in the bath to give me the good news. All my mates had either jobs or were out - very few people expected good grades - so I wandered around the centre of town eating Phileas Fogg Devilishly Hot Tortillas as some kind of celebration (I was only 17 and wasn't going to go to the pub on my own). All a bit of an anti- climax.

You should've got a bottle of cider & headed for the nearest bus shelter you lightweight.

I only needed 2 Es so no pressure other than the fact that EVERYONE at home / school / in the universe expected me to do fantastically well and anything less than perfect would have been FAILURE. So no 'will I get into uni' stress but tons of 'will I let down my family' stress which I have thankfully gotten over to embrace a thoroughly disappointing-to-parents lifestyle.

My SAT story is pitiful. When I took the test, I was racing with my friend to see who could finish it first. When I got my score, I was crushed because he beat me by 20 points, never mind that my score was still in the 99th percentile. I beat him by 2 points on the ACT, so everything worked out all right. Also, we both got into our first choice schools, so it really didn't matter in the end.

(Or did I beat him by 4 points? I can't remember his score now...)

I didn't actually get what i needed to get to Cambridge, but they took me anyway. probably desperate to get their comprehensive stats looking reasonable. S-levels were 3v01. no preparation for it, no guidance from teachers. bastards.

had a friend who couldn't make it to the school in the morning whilst there were people there to give hime his results. spent the afternoon down the pub lying to him about about not knowing what he got when we all knew he'd bottled it and would have to take the year over again. not particularly fun.

an a, two bs and a c myself, more than enough.

ah, 1986...

andy

got good enough results to get me out of Chesterdfield but got stung by a wasp on my way there and got very very stoned in the park afterwards, then later went to a pub and did Karaoke for one of only three times in my life.

Aug 1986.

Shuffled into a side-room to the headmaster's office (a creepy staff- only bit of the main school block I'd never ventured into before; perhaps it's where they administered the beatings) to be handed my envelope by - argh - my two Maths teachers, Mssrs McGovern and Cull. I knew by their faces that they already knew the contents - I'd failed Maths. An 'A' at O-level and an 'O' at A-level - ha! Other grades were ok, but no Maths meant no Uni place, for Physics at least.

Went straight home, avoiding pub with pals. Lost place at Salford/Toledo (I always wonder what that would've been like, a year in Ohio), rang around a few places, briefly considered Sunderland Poly (Christ - why?). Thought about re-takes for about 5 minutes. Mulled over entering the job market for half that.

A couple of weeks later I wound up on Liverpool Poly's Applied Physics honours course, encouraged by an employers' survey in The Guardian, rating it better than some Uni degrees. Not sure in which respects. It couldn't have been the cafeteria.

It was all downhill from there.

My SAT triumph was mooted by the fact that my grades in high school were so disastrous -- thus denied a proper education, me and my buddies invented emo. We're really sorry about that.

It sounds like the difference between A-levels and SATs is that SATs certainly help but aren't everything (my sister did awfully on hers but still got into her college of choice) whereas A-levels are essential...?

My SATs = pretty darn well. Something like 1410 overall or whatever.

(haha I beat Ned)

(sorry I won't ever do that again)

My mom alleged last year I would have gotten higher if I hadn't been wearing my extremely irritating contacts, which unknown to me were perforated at the time. I didn't even remember that at all!

I don't remember it either Ellie!

the US schools i applied to mailed their acceptance letters on the same day, so i got home from school one day and found two FedEx "Sorry We Missed You" slips hanging on the door, one from Princeton and one from Yale. my dad insisted on driving out to the depot which was 45 minutes away. i didn't celebrate with my friends because we all found out about schools at different times, so we just drank that much harder the night before i left. actually, that night i broke my collarbone in a drunken wrestling match with my best friend and had to spend the first three weeks of college with a brace on under my shirt, so it might have been a better idea if we had just celebrated at the time.

There was a guy who went to college with my previously-mentioned friend who scored 1290, then was diagnosed with dyslexia in the middle of his freshman year.

Subtitled: Are You Still Bitter That The School You Deserve To Be At Wouldn't Take You Because, Essentially, You Come From Another Nation and 9 As Just Won't Do?

...And You Went To A School Whose Famous Child Was Gordon Smith (ex- Rangers) And Had Never Had Anyone Clever Before So Didn't Realise The Applications Had to Be Made Earlier Than For Most Schools? Grr... haha, I'm not really bitter anymore, I was then though. My vice- Principal phoned me up on the morning to congratulate me. "Yeh, s'alright, I suppose", indignant me. Sulky exchange follows, phone hangs. Haha, down, estimation, in, his, well known sentence, connection fans?

I was up until 5am having sex the night before my SATs and still beat Ned!

Hell, *I* beat Ned, and I still had to help invent emo before any good school would take me.

Pam was telling me last night that P-SATs are possibly more important, cos they kinda determine whether you're likely to get a scholarship or not going into your SATs. Is this right? How does that whole bonkers system work?

Sixth form was a fairly grim time for me. I was labelled as lazy (true) and disruptive (not very compared to some). My lower-sixth school report said I was 'bigoted and offensive'(punXor!!) - can you imagine that? I reckon I've always been pretty much the same amiable chap that I am now - a little animated when full of beer maybe. Anyway, I digress. I actually worked pretty hard towards the end to make sure that I got to Univ and away from home, and ended up with A,B,D,D vs school prediction of C,C,D,D and I only needed C,C,D to get to Uni (Chemistry with Physiology and Biochemistry at Univ of Reading). I was quite restrained in my comments as the head of sixth form watched me open the envelope - I couldn't really think of anything other than relief that I was going to get away.

I can remember what was at number one though - Abba's rather apt 'The Winner Takes It All'

Ha ha ha, I beat Ned and I was only 12...

No, actually I don't remember my score when I was 12, but I did have to take it to get into an accelerated math program. The P-SATs deterime if you can be a part of some group of kids, someting like the National Scholars thingy but different - but if you think you're gonna get a scholarshit through it, think again. I got one question wrong on the P-SAT, and was ranked 6th in the state(5 kids had gotten perfect, and 3 had gotten 1 wrong). I did not receive one penny of scholarship money from this. One of my friends from collge ended up getting a presidential scholarship - but he got a perfect score on the SAT, so I guess that's why.

Receiving my SAT scores was very anticlimax because I had already taken them 3 times (plus the P-SAT). Same with the ACT as well. When I got my GRE scores, it was the scariest - cause all you do is hit the button on the computer that says "Give me my scores" and you do, and you get them, and then you smile because you've done well (800/800/650), and you walk out of the room while everyone else is still working!

I'm really hoping that MCAT/GRE scores are a big factor for medical school/graduate school admission. That's gonna be my ticket in baby!

talking about SAT test day and attendant pressure = grebt

talking about actual SAT scores = dud, obviously

what about finals results? my memory is that results at university = way more stressful. also much more random: some years our results got put up a day early and people slowly noticed, other years they were really late. and our third/fourth year results were read out loud at 9am from the senate house balcony at 9am. scary.

But is it also dud to list the colleges that you recievied acceptance letters from?

I got my degree result from my tutor when I bumped into him in Sainsburys. He presumed I already knew, but I hadn't looked at the board yet. I think I added some champagne or chocolate ice cream or something to my trolley after that (it was good news).

A levels: couldn't believe the evidence of my eyes that I'd got 4 As, so I kept re-checking over and over again, at the same time feeling awful that my best friend hadn't got what she needed and was slinking off home instead of coming to get drunk...

Hehe, I got a handwritten acceptance letter from mine all the way from New Brunswick before the deadline for the Ontario university grade crushing machine. Its sorta like that one you see in the Simpsons that decides Bart should be a cop. I got accepted by that machine into my first choice, but my second one turned me down, then accepted me later despite being the same program at a crappier university.

Well, you're all punks, especially that Marianna character. ;-) Though I realize that labelling Colin that way just makes him smile, so never mind. ;-)

my sat's were pathetic. well, actually i scored an 800 on my verbal, but i'm so rubbish at math (i mean REALLY REALLY RUBBISH), i only crawled away with an 1290 or so. (and a lot of that was sheer luck.) combined with my grades (i had somehow managed to fail almost every class my senior year), things were looking pretty bleak. but i managed to get into a 20,000$ a year art school on the basis of my writing portfolio alone (god bless america, etc.) of course, i dropped out a year and a half later (or actually, stopped going to classes and failed out) after getting my heart stomped on in a number of senses. followed by a lot of drinking and "getting all emo" (figuratively and literally) that next year. naturally i blame colin. (well, him and tonie joy.)

of course, art school was my runner up. first choice: military strongman!

Bart: Do you need straight A's to be a cop?
The Two Cops: [laugh uproariously]

I remember the day I got my A Levels I was happy and I rang round my friends and almost all had done worse than hoped/expected. I ended up going down the pub to drown my sorrows, despite my results.

Getting my degree result was good because I got it over the phone and spoke to the head of the course, and he said "We were all really pleased that you got your First, not that we ever doubted that you would, because we knew how much you had helped other students," which I was really pleased with.

gosh yr grading systesm sound HORRIBLE (=> heh in NZ we don't recognize tall poppies grebtness . . .)

I would hate it if one test was going to determine where I went to school. Awful awful system. Is it really that bad, I mean are there things to soften it a bit, or is it just those tests? And why don't you apply AFTER the tests rather than before?

I can't decide whether to retake the SATS. I have 800 on verbal and don't want that to drop any, but I could stand to bring up my math a bit (it's respectable, not great). But then we went college visiting and they were like "We don't like 1600s, we reject 1600s more than we take them, blah blah blah" and it was very annoying.