long, long road

[woolymonkey]

Spidermonkey hasn't got an offer from Hills Road for A Levels. He's really disappointed because he loved what he saw of the place and really wanted to do Electronics as well as Maths, Maths, Chemistry and Physics.

The really strange thing is that only 4 kids in his whole school got offers. The school is so stunned they held a special assembly about it! In a normal year, about 25-30 do, which would have put Spider comfortably in. No-one knows what's going on--no-one who talks to me anyway--but the grapevine suggests that other schools are being treated more or less as usual while Monkey Academies is being set a much higher threshold for some reason. Weird.

On the plus side, he has a nice, we-really-want-you offer from Long Road to do all the same A Levels except Electronics, and Long Road is clearly going to be full of bright Scientists next year, many of them from Monkey Academies, and he'll have more dyslexia support, less pressure, and more time to carry on with all his music activities. So it may be all for the best. But it will be a heck of a bike ride from Girton.

Anyone have any tips for studying Electronics at home, clubs, evening classes, etc? He's not all that bothered about whether it gets him a qualification. He just loved the taster at Hills Rd and would like to do more so he can make an informed decision whether to consider studying it at uni later.

Comments

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Having done Electronics A-level (albeit over 25 years ago) I am not sure if I'd recommend it. If you want to learn electronics as a hobby interest, then teach yourself from a book like Make: Electronics (which I hear very good things about.) If you want to go on to study electronic engineering, universities are more likely to be interested in good results in physics and mathematics. I think I covered everything I learned in two years of A-level Electronics in the first month of my degree.

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That's interesting and good to hear. I'll point him at that link, though probably after the house move.

He's very aware that the A level as a qualification is fairly pointless--it would have been his 'extra' subject at Hills Road. But he wants to do electronics in some form or other partly because otherwise how can he know if he wants to do a degree in it, and partly just because he really really loved his one day taster (and seemed to be rather good at it too, which is always motivating).