h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Your SATs aren't anything like ours are they?
we take them age 7, 11, and 14 and then GCSEs....i take it they aren't but you never know. They are only in math, science, and english and you're measured on a scale of level 1,2,3 etc etc.... age 11 you're supposed to be getting level 3 I think and then age 14 you should get level 5...but I got level 5 at 11 and then didnt do SATs the next time round....id gone to a private school and had end of years instead.

If you do so many different things at school then how do they decide whetehr to take you for a course at college? I mean, to get on the course I want at university they want me to have at least a B in a foreign language, a B in english, and you have to have the combination of ABB at Alevel. If you don't ahve that sort of thing then what is it done on?

Higher level education is also *quite* different here. I'm not sure exactly how it works, because I'm not there yet, but are your universities government run/funded or something? Because they aren't here. Basically, you apply to different schools that you want to go to and they consider your application along with everyone elses and then they pick people to fill the slots they have open.
Our SATs are for college enterance. People usually take them at the end of junior year and the beginning of senior year, although there's testing every one-two months so you can technically take it whenever. They used to be required for college admission, and often the people with the best scores would get in, but colleges are shying away from that now because it's not really fair. And then each school has different requirements for stuff you took in highschool to get in. But a tech school may not require foreign language and stuff like that.

Our universities aren't government run which is why we pay bucket loads. What happens is you either pay the full whack or you get a student loan meaning you pay back the loan after uni once you're earning...X amount of money. This means that universities want to take the best people for each course as it gives them credit for turning out great people and then hopefully the graduate stays on to do post grads which brings in stacks of cash for the university.
So for example...Cambridge wants you to have AAA because they are top class and need to only take people who are going to keep them at the top of the league tables...
Sheffield on the other hand wants you to have ABB because they aren't so picky
Southampton wants you to have BBB and so on and so on depending on what course you want to take.
The university then picks the best people based on their results and also how much extra-curricular and social things they do and what they personally thought of them at interview.
It's often a bit iffy. 90% of people applying to Cambridge get AAA but many many MANY get rejected purely because they are in fact TOO studious and havent done enough out of school...or thy just dont like the look of them

Well, it's similar here. The only reason i'd asked about the gov't was that everything seems to be run the same way throughout england. There are national regs then?

There's certain things that each university has to conform to but basically they can do whatever they like. You can be refused simply because they dont like you, with no regard to how good your work is.
I can't remember if the exams are standarised though....

I just accosted our American Student Teacher (AST) and she said she hadn't a clue about college points and she just took her SATs and applied and got told yes or no.....?

Well, that's basically how it works, but if you take AP classes and are sucessful on the exams you get college credit for the course.

So its extra kudos like me doing debating and CCF and extra german and spanish and english society etc?

No. It's a regular class but you cover college level stuff, even though you're at high school. And then you will have credit for taking the course when you get to college/univ. and you won't have to take it a second time. (although not all schools will accept the credit)
Extra kudos would be like me doing fencing and math league. But extracurriculars are important too, because colleges don't except you completely on acedemic merit (or lack of it)

Oh i get it all now! Hey that's quite clever....i think i might like it more than our schooling system. We've had loads of problems with our stuff recently what with exam results being wrong and going missing and stuff like that. My mom wanted me to take the IB but i didn't want to have to do so many subjects. Can you do the IB?