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Comment by laputan_machine | Hacker News Reader

I think the impact is that some students are going to get placements that they otherwise would not have gotten, and will struggle accordingly because the level of study required at Uni will be that much greater. Outside of gaining entry into a university, A-levels are fairly meaningless.

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get placements that they otherwise would not have gotten, and will struggle accordingly

It will be very interesting to see. Based on my own very limited observations, the correlation between high school grades and university performance isn't that strong.

I'd propose that a kid who worked their ass off to get a B+ will do much better at university than the lazy kid who got an A simply because they where smart and had knack for the subject.

My personal anecdote as someone who did "ok" in highschool (when I didn't care, 5 A-C GCSEs, an F in IT!) and scored in the 95th %ile at uni studying CS (when I did) relates to that too, but I'm not sure how accurate this is for most people.

I hope it is, I guess time will tell

The top unis in the UK still require you to take an entrance exam if I'm not mistaken.

At least I had to for Physics and Philosophy at Oxford, but I'm just an expendable American.

That greatly depends on your grades and grade history. If an applicant has high grades, meets the entry requirements, and shows a consistently high grade history, they won't be asked.

It really depends on how much information the Uni has and how contested each seat is. Some schools just make everyone take an entry exam anyway.

> Everyone who applies to study physics or physics and philosophy at Oxford, without exception, must take the Physics Aptitude Test (PAT), a two-hour test that evaluates a student’s ability in both physics and maths. We work in partnership with Cambridge Assessment Admissions Testing to administer the PAT.

At least for Oxford, it seems universal.

Oxford and Cambridge are outliers in many, many ways. It's a bad idea to generalise based only on experiences from them.

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