And I get the peanut butter thing, it was either you that told me that at uni and I told my friend at work or the other way round, thing it was you thou. Still very funny though not as good as horse blow job thou or black man with blow up penguin

I always figured that my degree would supercede them but I too have never quite escaped the spectre of my not too flashy A-Level results.

Damn those employers!

And my actual grades were shite compared to my predicted grades, so I have no reason to feel smug about them. One bad day in the exam hall (and some pretty average coursework) can make a huge difference.

@Han: Sorry to tell you this, but A levels matter a hell of a lot, unless you have a 1st class degree and a full checklist of extra-curriculars like sports captain/society president while at uni.

This especially applies to the blue-chips as me and Rhys both found out to our cost.

The problem is, so many applications come through that the empolyers really like to thin the numbers down early on - assessment centre days cost a lot of cash! Exam results are the most objective way of doing that, unfortunately.

To put it in perspective, here’s a little story I picked up at a recruitment fair a couple of years back:

One of the Big Four (accountancy firms, and not the one I ended up at) had a “rule of thirds” at the time.

For every 100 applications, around 32/33 would be asked to do some online psychometric testing. For every 100 applicants that did those tests, around 30 would be invited for an initial interview. Same process for the 1st assessment centre, same again for the 2nd assessment centre (not sure how many firms do 2 assessment days now), and same yet again for interviews with a Partner.

I think Partner interviews had a slightly higher success rate (50%-ish), mainly because they have to be pretty serious about the applicant to dedicate that amount of Partners’ chargeable time to the process.

So, with such a massive process in place, the last thing you need is to be filtered out at the first hurdle.

If you have worse than expected A-levels, make sure you blitz your 2nd-year modules at uni so that you can be predicted a 1st. Offers are normally made based on predicted results, so it’s worth doing!

Sometime in the last 10 years, they changed the marking so that anyone scoring over X% got an A, so once you’ve scored your 80% (or whatever it is) the rest of your paper doesn’t much matter.

Now this doesn’t help the universities or the students. In wales, very nearly 24% of all papers got an A grade but can you honestly say that one quarter of all people sitting the paper were identically smart?

Now go to university and two things happen; first you are going to be marked on the bell curve and your institution and course MATTER. Employers aren’t daft and they know a first science degree from, say, Hull isn’t equivalent to, say, Imperial.

My A levels were pants B,C,C,D,E. woo for my E, the only reason I think I got into Kent was because I’m a girl, and there’s like 5 girls on my course! (including me!)

I dont think alevels matter at all, they only look at them when they have 2 perfect candidates and need to differentiate.

History - C
Computing - C
Economics - E (i will never understand this bullcrap subject!)

still - i got to Liverpool too congrats to your bro!

Is Bonnie suffering from a peanut butter overdose?? (i’ll be suprised if anyone gets this reference but if you do… your a bit sick in the head and i fear for your dog!! its also a reference from a blink-182 song before you cast dispersions over me!)

and exams are blatantly being marked more leniently these days!