<p>How highly are the A-levels considered in contrastto the APs which our american counterparts present......on top of that, the most competitive applicants to Yale or Harvard have something arounf 14 APS (yes people do take that many..and there was even a blogger on the MIT website saying 7 AP '5' and 4 AP '4' were on average good enough).............whereas we in the A-level cirriculum give at best 4 or 5. and the A-level A grade is considered equivaklent to the AP top grade of 5</p>
<p>yes A levels is considered to be equal to AP i suppose and an A grade is certainly a 5 in AP. But i think giving one A level is equally hard to giving 2 AP's.</p>
<p>i'm sorry, i think i just choked on my water..</p>
<p>14 APs? no. not at all. a lot of universities don't even take APs into consideration in admissions. AP COURSES are a different story.. schools would like you to have taken as many courses as you can, but.. for example, my high school only offered 3 APs junior year and the rest senior year, so I only applied with 3 AP scores.. but 10 AP classes.. i got into schools just fine.</p>
<p>7 5's and 4 4's are not average. by any means.</p>
<p>and A-levels are looked at in a different light, in lieu of what we have as our GPA. AP's are sort of supplementary here, essential for top 20 schools and Ivies, but not mandatory.</p>
<p>if you do 3 or 4 A Levels, and get A's.. you will be in good shape from that end. they will care a lot about your SAT's and SATIIs.</p>
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yes A levels is considered to be equal to AP i suppose and an A grade is certainly a 5 in AP. But i think giving one A level is equally hard to giving 2 AP's.
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<p>1 A-level takes up between a third and a quarter of you years study (sometimes a fifth, but that's not very common). Can't you do 12 APs in a year?</p>
<p>I would think an A-level is worth more like 3 or 4 APs: My Advanced Higher (Scottish equivalent of A-level) in mathematics included several parts of sophomore/junior level college mathematics.</p>
<p>^^^ seconded</p>
<p>No, an A-level is definitely not worth multiple AP's. But they are very different things, and are not easily comparable. AP's can be sat at any time, it is not uncommon at some of the best American schools for students to do an AP in what would be a British 4th form or 5th form. Students in their last year at a US secondary school might do as many as 5 or 6 APs simultaneously. This is more than the 3-4 A-levels, but they are designed to do a very different thing.</p>
<p>As a result of this, most competitive US universities including Harvard, Princeton, MIT and Stamford do not use AP exams in their admissions processes at all. Whereas in the UK, A-level results are critical to university admissions.</p>
<p>Comparing A-levels to AP's is like comparing fish to turtles. Both are marine animals, they both have similar life-functions, but any attempt at real comparison is based on a misunderstanding of one or the other or both.</p>
<p>^seconded.. I think do the IB programme if there's a choice.. easily predicted 40+ points and you're competitive at most colleges.. whereas A levels you need definite 'A's to be competitive.. I mean you can slip a bit and still get 40+ for IB, but A Levels you slip a bit you're done i think</p>
<p>Beyond that, you have some of the problems outlined in the Tomlinson report, where precisely what an "A" grade means at A-level is subject to quite a lot of variation particularly from year to year. Indeed, the planned introduction of A* grades is a direct consequence of some universities (say Oxbridge) being unable to draw meaningful distinctions between students.</p>
<p>I love A Level, what did you folks take? I had like 5 in Bio, 7 in Computer Science</p>
<p>I had 4 Alevels , phy chem bio maths ; and A in all of them'; but i do not have good Math 2 score in SAT2 , will my A level grade cover up for that?</p>
<p>Ayush, nope. Not really. Sorry, but A-levels do vary. For example an A in a Hong Kong A-level means something different than an A in a Welsh A-level. Whereas everyone applying to a US university takes the same SAT II, so the scores are easily comparable. As a result, US universities tend to rely much more on the SAT II than on the A-level.</p>
<p>One other significant difference though is that MANY US universities allow you to take the SAT multiple times and they will only consider the highest grade achieved (which is of course impossible with an A-level). This includes many of the most competitive US universities (e.g. MIT). So if you think that you could do better on the SAT II, you may want to try them again.</p>
<p>I detest SAT I, try always but suck at it. A Level is really interesting, adept and very informative, good preparation for college torture.</p>
<p>^You're right.. A Levels are great? You must be kidding.. It doesn't test aptitude AT All.. Btw, I am doing the A Levels.. You can see that anyone who study their socks off / drill themselves with Past questions can score 'A's.. It's NOT rigorous at all </p>
<p>PS. You can't say A Levels are better just because you know you can score As on them</p>
<p>I second that. I have no idea about AP. But A-Levels were such a breeze. No aptitude required. You just have to read your textbooks (yeah, only your textbooks, that's enough!), work hard on past papers and get all As. The UK is flooded with straight-A students. UCAS system is so much worse than the US application system. You're treated as a number, labeled with a letter "A", "B" or "C". I've got to know loads of internationals who are straight-A students and who can't even speak decent English. If those students were to take the SAT, they would definitely score sth like 400ish on the Verbal section. And no, I'm not kidding. They're straight-A students.</p>
<p>The American system is much more complicated, challenging and intriguing <em>_</em></p>
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I second that. I have no idea about AP. But A-Levels were such a breeze. No aptitude required. You just have to read your textbooks (yeah, only your textbooks, that's enough!), work hard on past papers and get all As. The UK is flooded with straight-A students. UCAS system is so much worse than the US application system. You're treated as a number, labeled with a letter "A", "B" or "C". I've got to know loads of internationals who are straight-A students and who can't even speak decent English. If those students were to take the SAT, they would definitely score sth like 400ish on the Verbal section. And no, I'm not kidding. They're straight-A students.</p>
<p>The American system is much more complicated, challenging and intriguing <em>_</em>
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<p>I know a couple of people, and have heard of many more from Profs, who don't speak decent English and yet scored close to 800 (if not 800) on the verbal part of the GRE. Anything above about 720 is 99th percentile. My point is that the SATs can be studied for nearly as much as A levels can be studied for. You can't "definitely" know what they would score on the verbal part of the SAT.</p>
<p>And in Britain all interviews (that I know of) are conducted by professors, not just by alumni, which I think is considerably better treatment of students by the universities.</p>
<p>I certainly wouldn't ever go out on a limb and say one system was undoubtedly better than the other.</p>
<p>I agree with you to some extent about A-levels, but I never did them so I don't know for sure (Scottish Advanced Highers for me!).</p>
<p>Ah but A Level's for Humanities are quite a different story. They require higher order thinking skills, informed personal responses, in addition to contextual knowledge. Furthermore, you have to write well, i.e. engage the examiners, to score well. </p>
<p>An A or B will probably equate to 4 or 5 on the AP.</p>
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And in Britain all interviews (that I know of) are conducted by professors, not just by alumni, which I think is considerably better treatment of students by the universities.
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<p>Again this is comparing apples with oranges. </p>
<p>I am personally an alumnus interviewer for MIT, so I will speak to that, accepting that it may not be typical, but many of the principles of alumni interviewing are extendable. At MIT, students are assigned to an alumnus living near them. There are interviews held locally from Ghana, to Thailand, to the Marshall Islands (actually although there is an interviewer assigned to the Marshall's I do not know how busy he is). The interviewers are trained, we all know quite a lot about the university, and I am happy talking about international financial aid, the water polo team, or the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble. This means that the students can talk to someone who lives locally to them, who understands their schools and their school systems, and is knowledgeable about the university and can answer their questions. I often answer my candidates questions both during and after the interview.</p>
<p>At most UK universities, the interviews are done by a professor on campus. A professor most often knows more about the university than an alumnus (though they are usually untrained in talking about financial aid, student sports or non-academic pursuits), but they are on campus. I find it vaguely arrogant to assume that if the student has any questions about the school, then they will jolly well show up at the school to ask them.</p>
<p>At many UK schools, the admissions are predominantly done by the admissions tutor within that department, or by the admissions tutor for the college. So for example, if I apply to read Archaeology at UCL, I will go to an interview at UCL where the admissions tutor will talk to me. There may be (generously) a couple of hundred applicants for the 80 odd places open on the course, so that is an upper bound on the interviews. Given the number of students who cannot travel to UCL, say there are 120 interviews to do. All of these interviewees want to read Archaeology.</p>
<p>Whereas students applying to MIT apply to the whole institution; there is a single admissions intake for all students be they budding political philosophers, business management majors, or biomechanical engineers. Students can take courses across all of the departments and many of them switch majors (which makes some sense; nobody decides to major in Nuclear Engineering due to the fine time they had with their high school reactor). As a result, there is a single interviewee pool of 12-13,000 candidates. A single admissions tutor cannot interview these.</p>
<p>One huge advantage of the UK system of having the admissions tutor (who ultimately makes the admissions decisions) being the person performing the interviews is that is allows the interview process to be aimed at SELECTION. This varies to some degree from UK institution to institution reaching it apogee in an Oxbridge interview. The purpose of an Oxbridge application folder is to secure the interview. The purpose of the interview is to get you in.</p>
<p>Given the huge variety of alumni performing the interviews for many American Universities, the admissions interview is much, much less useful for selection. I cannot really get anyone into MIT who wasn't already going to get in. Rather it is an informal chat designed to do allow for an exchange of information about the school and about the programmes. It also helps to validate the information in the written application, and to screen out extreme cases. For example there was one possibly apocryphal young woman who brought a teddy bear to the interview. All of the interviewer's questions were referred to the bear, and after some tense discussion with the bear, the candidate answered. The interview report indicated that this candidate might lack the emotional maturity to succeed at university.</p>
<p>Given that the interviews are designed to do different things, I do not think that it is particularly fair to claim that one type treats the students "better" than the other. However, I should make it clear that there are certainly grounds for arguing that alumni interviews are optimal.</p>
<p>i disagree, CAmbridge A Level is definitely challenging, whereas you can get 800 s on SAT 2s with 1 month of prepration, i know guys who studied Social sciences but still got 800 in physics. a level is definitely tougher</p>
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i disagree
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<p>Ayush, who are you disagreeing with? I did not see anyone here disagreeing with you. I think that nearly everybody on this board would agree that the A-level is tougher than the SAT II. It's much, much, much tougher. </p>
<p>That wasn't what you asked though. You asked if a strong A-level would make up for a weak SAT II score. The answer is still no, for the reasons given earlier.</p>
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Given that the interviews are designed to do different things, I do not think that it is particularly fair to claim that one type treats the students "better" than the other. </p>
<p>However, I should make it clear that there are certainly grounds for arguing that alumni interviews are optimal.
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<p>Agreed. My post was, in part at least, just a knee-jerk reaction to the excesses of the previous post.</p>