GCSE's are time management more than actual difficulty. It would be unfair in say; geography to ask for a student to know the whole syllabus. For instance in my Geography course we were required to know around 35 different case studies with specific facts, these ranged from coastal erosion to urban migration. So surely if you were required to know it all then the qualification would be a 'who has the best photographic memory' contest. As it is, you are asked questions about 4 of the case studies (you choose 1 out of 2 per section).

The whole idea of them testing around half the syllabus per exam is to make you revise it all - as guessing what will come up isnt such a good idea.

However some exams are down to luck, for example in English Language I got an 'A', when I was predicted a high 'A*' before the exam. You cant revise the syllabus for the exam.. its purely down to what comes up. It so happens I hit 1 bad question and got a C in that bit.

However I dont think that shows that I only knew part of the syllabus, I just think its how it turned out on the day, another day another mark, that goes for all the exams. I would rather that element of luck in an exam, at least that way I dont get annoyed by people who just memorised the syllabus.

Thats kind of gettin off the original point now, but the first para pretty much summerises what I think

Plus overall across the grades people do get what they deserve in terms of academic capability. A good bit of luck in one exam is pretty much always cancelled out by lackings in another. (in my case my bad luck in English Lang was probably cancelled out by a few easy (for me) questions in Physics that probably got me the A*.)

I've just remembered about some of my first year unix exams, negative marking FTW! You know your somewhere near the top of the class when you get >90% and the person at the bottom of the class gets -16%...



Colleges/6th Forms take on students to study geography/history/Business Studies/Religious Studies/etc who may never have studied the subjects before (at least not at GCSE leveL). All the universities I looked at didn't require you to have to have studied computers before...A (very, very, very small) part of one of my first year modules 'taught' us how to open a program in Windows...

We used to get general questions across the whole syllabus, plus 4 in depth questions from a selection of 6. From that (from memory), >90-95% A, >80% B, >70% C > 50%D, >35% E, F. 50% of the marks for general knowledge of the subject, 50% for in-depth knowledge on the other 4 questions.

When I was doing my O levels, they brought in CSE about 2 years earlier. The top CSE was equivalent to an O level grade C. Employers just weren't interested in people with CSEs, because the exams were easier and the amount of the subject people needed to know was much less. Given a candidate with an O level C or a CSE 1, the O level candidate would be more likely to get the interview, because they probably had a better level of knowledge than the CSE candidate...

For Biology, I got 98% and for Computer Science 99% on CSE, without having to work hard or revise. I was gutted that I didn't get the chance to do O level.


Yep, it is down to what you are able to learn. It is there to test your knowledge of the subject, not what you managed to cram on one or two specifics...


For us, it wasn't "learning" the syllabus, it was understanding the syllabus. You had to answer questions about specific elements of the syllabus and what you understood them to mean.

That was one of the weaknesses of the CSE, it started to bring in multiple-choice answers in some subjects, which was considered an opt-out for actually having to learn the subject.

My first lesson in college (Computer Science) was to write a program in BASIC to take a value and calculate the minimum number of coins required in change.

We had 2 hours to do that and half the class couldn't do it!

It took me around 15 minutes to write and debug, I spent the rest of the lesson typing in machine code (direct hexadecimal), from memory to tart-up the program. When the user typed in a number, it typed poled the keyboard and displayed each digit as an 8x8 matrix (each "pixel" of the matrix was a space in either black or inverse (on or off, we had green screens). It drew a border around the screen and split the screen in two vertically. It then displayed various piles of "coins" (character graphics, bottom half of character on, top off, stacked on top of each other), with the numbers underneath.

The lecturer looked at my program and exclaimed "wow, I didn't know you could do that with a computer!"

Although that is the same for marking back at uni (>70% 1st, >50% 2:1, >40% 2:2, > 30% 3rd, <40 Fail), it's interesting to see how people mark. Some lecturers will mark you strictly against the spec (if you do more than required you start loosing points) do 100% of the spec right and get 100%. Other lecturers refer to the department handbook and by completing 100% of the spec you will only ever get a maximum of 69%, you have to show how you can go "above and beyond" to get 70%+. We're told what marking model will be adopted in the spec usually.
This is different from the OCR AVCE in ICT that I did where you are given a table and if you complete the things on the very left you get an E, do all from the E column and some from the middle column and get a D, do all of the E and middle column to get a C, do the E and C and some of the right hand column to get a B, do all three columns to get an A. There was a percentage given for quality of the work aswel.

Surely you mean >70% 1st, >60% 2:1, >50% 2:2, > 40% 3rd, <40 Fail. At least that's how it is at Bath (ie. 3rd != FAIL)

A 3rd isn't a fail. It's an ordinary rather than an honours degree.
A 3rd is still a valid degree and can be used, for instance, to get into teaching.

When studying a subject like maths or physics at A level, it's expected that you know the O level syllabus. When studying them at degree level, you're expected to already know the A level syllabus. If you don't, you're going to struggle.

Yes, I borked that quite badly didn't I? That's why you shouldn't copy and paste stuff (especially important code )

True, though I was just suggesting that not all subjects would require them

QI examining I want that.

Funnily enough my Compiler module the teacher was very keen on it, you lost a mark for not using a comment where needed, not using indentation etc

One person had code that did all the work but then lost all the marks for having no comments