Verbal

I haven't - but I do know the government were recently paying people to do the conversion because of the shortage of maths and science teachers.

Not with the professions VFTT mentioned you can't. If your burning ambition is to do either of those (and a whole host of others) you have to get a long way through the education system.

Living in London, you wouldn't stand a chance on £30,000. And the difference between graduate and non-graduate salaries certainly matters here. My nephew and niece, undergraduates at Oxford and LSE respectively, are on a £1000 a week as interns. They expect to be making at least double or treble that when they graduate. All fine, except that it really feels sometimes like London is a different country to the rest of the UK, and with very high (financial) walls around it that anyone from the outside would struggle to climb.

What does that mean though? I've met someone who said to be the cleverest man alive, Ed Whitten. He's virtually impossible to communicate with, and I'm sure would be rubbish at an awful lot of things. Still a genius. Maybe the only difference is he found a way to deal with it all by becoming a mathematician - probably good that he didn't get his hands on a submarine.

One of the problems of distance learning is that it often attracts people who shouldn't be doing A Levels, who then get cross when they fail. Anyway, given your degree qualifications, I wonder whether you should really be looking at a PGCE and convert to maths or physics that way.

You have to be careful, you're right. ICS have been doing it for decades and frankly have a better reputation than the Oxbridge tutorial colleges. I'd be surprised if they didn't do A-Level Physics, including the lab work.

Are you serious? Of course the value of what's been received matters in sentencing! How strange.

I can! He can have yours.

So are you now ready to celebrate Andy's success? Even though he has much better grades, I think you're just about ready to make that step.

I'll let you have the last word because it seems you might be damaged without it. So what were your grades? I'm guessing DD.

That's lovely, thanks, but slightly undermined by the fact that it's clearly not worked for you. D & E was it?

I was hoping you'd ask. I've got just the tip for you. Find a therapist who follows the teachings of Wilhelm Reich. All you need is one of his orgone boxes and a copy of his book, 'Listen, Little Man!'. This is tailor-made to address your inadequacies vis-a-vis Andy's success.

You can't go on measuring everyone against your standards. Try a little night school, or a correspondence course - anything that might raise your ambition a little. You'll feel better for it, and you'll not be so crushed and disappointed in yourself by Saintandy's success.

I did, and thought it too bonkers to mention in case it caused embarrassment to you.

It's not a risk in the slightest, especially if it's taken for reasons that it's better suited to the candidate. Frankly there so many alternatives to A-Levels now that admissions tutors have developed almost into a science the ability to translate from one set of grades in one type of qualification to those of another. For example, the new hot alternative to A-Levels (or sometimes a supplement) is Cambridge Pre-U. It's much tougher than A-Level, but its grading structure is well understood and equivalences well worked out. Practically-oriented courses like BTEC are also well integrated, although do not stretch to the highest level (a DDD, the best you can get, is equivalent to AAB). Then the are Scottish Highers, Advanced Highers, European Bacc's, and other European qualifications like the German Arbiter (which marks backwards), and so on, and so on. The IB is the least of an admissions tutor's worries - and is actually the most easily translatable into A Level equivalents.

You're in such a state of high dudgeon that you forgot to think. She wasn't found not guilty - she was given a non-custodial sentence of 75 hours' unpaid work for receiving one pair of shorts from a looter. Seems not only fair, but a burden lifted from the taxpayer.

Yes, 42 for AAA is way over. It should be 36. Nonetheless, with the advent of A*, I expect 42 will remain the norm for a lot of Oxbridge courses.

And so it begins... The first successful appeal against an admittedly ridiculous sentence. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/19/riots-mother-looted-shorts-freed

This really isn't true. IB is well regarded by admissions tutors, and the equivalence with A-Levels is carefully calibrated. For example, 32 is the same as ABB, and 34 is AAB. IBs turn up in pretty much every university admissions tutor's in tray.

Great. Sussex would be a very good choice by the way. The London ones are tough to get into no matter how good your results, but also the most prestigious obviously - especially UCL.

....

Andy, you probably already know this, but despite three A's being very good, you'll probably have to be a little strategic about where you apply. And make sure your UKCAT (or the other one) is done well in advance.

You tease.

So you think scientists somehow forgot that the sun has an effect on the earth's climate?! Or that they hadn't thought about devising methods and measurements that distinguished between solar activity and human activity?!

Yes, but commuting at all by train is now exclusively the privilege of the quite wealthy. If you're low-paid and in London you have to be in London. Which means you end up, often, at the bottom of the housing pile - and that, in london, is something you definitely want to avoid. The sink estates around the inner perimeter of London are full of people in this situation. So maybe if the wealthy commuters like you had campaigned for fares not to be so high, the offspring of those on these estates might have had happier lives in the burbs. Therefore, you are responsible for the looters. Correct n'est pas?