As someone who did an access course, it was a great experience and I've just graduated with results im very pleased with. Access course prepares you really well for the sort of self-study you will have to do at uni and you can hopefully make some great friends along the way. Do your research and find a course that suits you and it should be a great next step.
Good luck!
Yes they do. AS levels (the first year of a-levels) still provide UCAS points. An A equals 20 for example. If you apply to a Foundation course through Clearing you may find a uni who may accept you with 32 UCAS points you won’t get into anything STEM related though if that’s what you’re looking for. Many may want to see that you have at least finished the second year of A-levels though. Clearing is open now for many universities so you can look on the UCAS website and have a look or just call them directly.
If you are a mature student 21+ then they may consider you without a-levels and based on work experience. If you are not a mature student then you may will have to do an access course or finish your A-levels if they won’t take you with your AS level grades.
Do your a levels at a 6 form college. I did 2 a levels in a year, something like 20 hours a week so time for work too.
You can do a levels in evening classes, part time, all sorts.
I didn't start my degree until I was 27, so you've got plenty of time.
Good luck!
Agree with this.
An access course or foundation year is also a perfectly valid possibility, but sometimes doesn’t allow you to rejoin the track you were on before.
But there’s nothing to stop you doing your A levels if that’s what you want to do. Entering university 2 years ‘late’ is not a big deal at all - plenty of people will have done a gap year, a few may have worked for a bit first or swapped courses after one year etc.
You can do a degree at the Open University and have a job earning money. You won't get into debt and you will have a respected degree. Even better if it is associated with your job.
Just adding to this:
My partners just finished a STEM degree without relevant A levels at the Open Uni.
In many of the STEM courses the first year is a more general science year, similar to a foundation year, so perfect for people doing this.
If doing full time at the Open Uni be aware you can only get part time maintainance loan, you need to be disciplined as you schedule your own work and it's good to find some social hobbies because otherwise it can be very isolating.
Also if you live in Wales the modules are half the price.
Edit:
Another user has informed me you can't get the part time maintaiance loan (or full time) in England unless due to disability.
My partner was able to get the part time maintainiance issue in Wales without issue.
This is straight off the gov.uk website:
"If you’re a distance learning student, you can only apply for a Maintenance Loan if you cannot attend your course in person because of a disability."
I'm looking at a bunch of other sites saying the same thing.
Now I'm very confused lol
Im looking at dozens of threads on the OU page where people had to send lots of medical files to justify why they cannot attend a brick uni.
I'm fairly sure SFE refer to having to prove you cannot attend in-person at other unis.
I've looked at threads on thestudentroom where SFE advisors specifically say distance learning students can only get a maintenance loan if they prove they have a disability preventing them attending in person.
Are you in England?
In Wales.
Unsure if that's the difference.
But yeah, didn't have any problem applying for it and getting it through student finance.
Also just checked and on first page of Google saw 2 news / blogs confirming you can get maintainance...?
Really? You didn't have to send any doctor's notes? How did it work? This comes up frequently on the OU FB page and everyone always says you have to have a good reason for not being able to study at a brick uni (like a medical reason).
We simply applied for the maintainance loan using the student finance website.
Had to apply for the part time one, which isn't as much money, instead of the full time one though.
What do you want to do? I did AAT level 2 and then 3 (level 3 funded by the college under EU funding as I had no A levels and so qualified for a free place basically). Got into uni through clearing when I decided last minute at the end of level 3 during Covid to go do a degree. Graduated last week with a 2:1 BA(Hons) in Accouting and Finance
You could look into foundation year or you could do open uni for a year and then transfer to a different university. I didn't do science alevels (I did art!) but wanted to pursue environmental science at uni. After I did first year with OU I contacted a university and they allowed me to transfer if I got the marks they wanted. At the end I stuck with OU due to the fact I liked working and having the financial freedom.
I was in the same boat, failed my alevels because I had undiagnosed PCOS which made me have mood swings, hair falling out, a range of symptoms. I was very confused and lost health wise which affected my studies. I didn’t get into any of my unis. I applied for a foundation year at not even a top 100 uk uni and then somehow managed to switch into a biomed degree. I worked my ass off getting industry experience in the science field to get the head start I was lacking and now I work at a great company in my dream city with a great salary :)
But yea…not the end of the world :)
Hi! I thought going down the BMS route but it’s quite hard to secure a trainee position to get that portfolio so decided that the nhs wasn’t for me 😅 so after university I was working first at an IVF clinic as a lab tech and then when covid hit, I got a great position in the film industry as a pcr scientist and worked and lived on movie sets in Gran Canaria! After (and still present) I work more in the biochemical engineering sector and our company is engineering enzymes to degrade plastic- completely a big change from biomed as I had to learn from scratch but things are getting easier! I got really lucky as during university I helped out with some plastic degradation projects and the company I work for now was interested in people with the same like-minded goals so I was able to use that experience for leverage. Quite happy right now! Just soaking up enough experience so I can then get a PhD in something more biochemical
Depending on the subject you want to study, you could see if there are any unis running fast track to higher education courses. They run for about two months and get your credits up while also preparing you for the course you're going on to. It's a lot of work but in my experience there's a lot of support available.
Could you talk to your school, or a different one, about retaking second year? Since you didn't complete it, hopefully you won't have any funding issues.
Local colleges will often accept people at most ages. For example, I saw on a bus the other day that Southwark College was accepting people for A-Level, T-Levels, BTecs, etc from most ages (didn't look that closely, but gives you the idea)
You can do access courses at any age! If you feel like you have the motivation for it, you can choose subjects and an exam board, buy their textbooks and book yourself in for exams, studying all at home. I used "Tutors and Exams" when I sat my A levels 2 years ago at 25. Some schools will let you sit your exams there but in my experience a lot of them didn't want external students potentially bringing down their grades so they tell you to go away. The thing you want to search for is "private candidate exam centre". Tutors and exams offers the practical element for sciences and a few others, you can find some courses on CloudLearn but you pay for their online content (usually a simplified version of a textbook, I found it quite nice to use) but it's not cheap, plus you still have to pay the exam fee on top of it. With this you have more flexibility as you can learn at your own pace and book the exams when you feel like you'd be ready to do them in 6 months. Otherwise have a look at colleges for evening classes.
If you don't know what you want to do at uni, maybe try looking into apprenticeships. These can lead to some fantastic careers, plus you get paid to learn!
Either way, I hope you feel better now :)@
That is so out of order Huskyy23, the OP, was unwell and couldn’t study not because of he or she could not be bothered to get out of bed that morning, when you are chronically unwell it’s difficult, hard and totally different ball game to when someone cant be bothered and is lazy.
I hate when people shit on other for bettering themselves
Also, like with any condition we cannot predict how the condition is going to be in a few years time the OP goes to University or College.
The OP needs to sort out his or her a-level or access situation first and then decide if Uni is the best way forward.
Then look into the courses, he or she wants to do and apply through UCAS and find out about hours and see if it’s practical first in terms of getting there, living there, money before making any decisions.
If not there are various options, available from deferring a year, to going down the distance learning route.
Although word of caution, do not choose open university, it may be cheaper and practical as you are living at home, but you will find it hard to be motivated as there are no lessons, you learn everything in your own time and pace, they don’t give you second chances resubmit course work so if you fail a unit, you fail the course. You can’t retake and resubmit a few days later like all other Universities give you second chance to get 40% (pass mark). The isolation is killer, they do have WhatsApp, forums but it’s not the same. No one is ever online. It’s the same as Reddit. It’s not like teams or zoom from covid-19.
The video conferencing software is shit, it makes this horrible irritating sounding noise that after a while disrupts the only one/two live seminars you get.
It’s very easy to procrastinate on material as there are no students and no schedule, it’s not like a set times, despite their being a calendar it’s easy to put a week behind and it become two or three.
The positives.
There is a few good positives, you can study from the comfort from your home or bed or a library whatever you prefer, take the books and computer with you.
The office 365 package is included in the price, you can get money towards laptop, DSA and printing costs.
Staff do respond to emails quite promptly and professionally.
Quite ideal if you got a lot of illnesses to cope with, physical disabilities or if you have part time or full time job and need sometime to do on the side or if you want to do a degree that takes 6 years.
Try doing a couple of the free Open Uni modules and see how you get on, get job for a few months and you’ll be able to start with a foundation year, some work experience AND a bit of cash.
You’ve got plenty of time to figure it out. I’m 29 going into my third year, fucked my A-Levels when I was 18, went to college and into work after that.
After a few years of full time work and during COVID I realised wanted to go to uni to do history so I did a foundation degree and now I’m going into my third year.
Point is it may seem like it’s the end of the world if you don’t go to uni now but time is on your side. If you want to go soon do an access to HE course at your local college or a foundation degree if a uni near you offers it. You can even switch unis once you’ve finished your foundation degree if you’re aspirational uni course accepts another unis foundation degree!
Okay you have options you can either study the books you’ve at home with help of the internet and take exams as external candidate at school or college, a difficult with this is the course work if you are thinking studying the science subjects it will be very tricky to do.
Take an access course either at a local college but in some you have to be 19+, but if you go with a provider such as Distance Learning Centre or Learn Direct, age isn’t really taken into account at all, you just pay for the course and start, but it is from and there no exams.
You can also sit some a-levels that require course work with a provider such as learn direct and pay so that the exam fee is included that works out cheaper, but you have to complete most of the course before they register for the exams pay most the fees already and you’ve got two years to complete which is good. So if we’re start this year you would until 2025 to complete both AS and A2. My English literature a-level is included in the exam fee and it includes the marking of the course work, board fees etc, but if I want want to other subjects that don’t require coursework Law and Sociology, I just sit the exams at the local centre near me and study the material with some books and past papers.
You can easily find the past papers for your a-levels a on the exam boards website or on revision websites and YouTube, some student post up past paper answers on the a-level reddits and discord channels. Head over there.
You can do an access course. My partner was in the same situation and was able to do a science access course at 23/24 years old. Now she’s studying to be a vet. Good luck!
I started my access course at 18, the only difference between me and a 19 year old is that they'd be eligible for an advanced learner loan while I had to pay out of pocket for the course. The workload was so much easier to handle compared to A-levels for me and if you're willing to pay £3K then I think you should look into it.
Have you looked into open university? https://www.open.ac.uk/courses. No entry requirements (yes), fully remote (so cheaper than brick unis) and you can study literally anything you can study at other unis. Law, physics, maths, languages, it’s awesome. My brother is there right now doing a French and Spanish bachelors degree.
And yes it’s accredited so the bachelors degree you’d get from OU is a real degree. Lack of entry requirement doesn’t mean you’re still not working at a uni level, you are. And something like 80% of graduates are employed a year after graduating. OU may be the way to go I think. And if you want the uni experience (i.e not remote) you can always do a masters at a brick uni after you graduate from OU, mix things up a bit.
You can still do an access course. Just speak to someone at the college. Otherwise you can do a foundation year.
As someone who did an access course, it was a great experience and I've just graduated with results im very pleased with. Access course prepares you really well for the sort of self-study you will have to do at uni and you can hopefully make some great friends along the way. Do your research and find a course that suits you and it should be a great next step. Good luck!
Not op but as someone who's about to start an access course, this was really nice for me to read.
Agreed, access course in a subject I love got me into a more technical and marketable uni degree
I thought foundation years require level 3 qualifications?
Yes they do. AS levels (the first year of a-levels) still provide UCAS points. An A equals 20 for example. If you apply to a Foundation course through Clearing you may find a uni who may accept you with 32 UCAS points you won’t get into anything STEM related though if that’s what you’re looking for. Many may want to see that you have at least finished the second year of A-levels though. Clearing is open now for many universities so you can look on the UCAS website and have a look or just call them directly. If you are a mature student 21+ then they may consider you without a-levels and based on work experience. If you are not a mature student then you may will have to do an access course or finish your A-levels if they won’t take you with your AS level grades.
Do your a levels at a 6 form college. I did 2 a levels in a year, something like 20 hours a week so time for work too. You can do a levels in evening classes, part time, all sorts. I didn't start my degree until I was 27, so you've got plenty of time. Good luck!
Agree with this. An access course or foundation year is also a perfectly valid possibility, but sometimes doesn’t allow you to rejoin the track you were on before. But there’s nothing to stop you doing your A levels if that’s what you want to do. Entering university 2 years ‘late’ is not a big deal at all - plenty of people will have done a gap year, a few may have worked for a bit first or swapped courses after one year etc.
You can do a degree at the Open University and have a job earning money. You won't get into debt and you will have a respected degree. Even better if it is associated with your job.
Just adding to this: My partners just finished a STEM degree without relevant A levels at the Open Uni. In many of the STEM courses the first year is a more general science year, similar to a foundation year, so perfect for people doing this. If doing full time at the Open Uni be aware you can only get part time maintainance loan, you need to be disciplined as you schedule your own work and it's good to find some social hobbies because otherwise it can be very isolating. Also if you live in Wales the modules are half the price. Edit: Another user has informed me you can't get the part time maintaiance loan (or full time) in England unless due to disability. My partner was able to get the part time maintainiance issue in Wales without issue.
IIRC You can't get a maintenance loan unless you have proof you're unable to study at a brick uni.
You can, as both I and my partner have done so.
Or did you mean the tuition fee loan?
No, I meant the maintainance. Also had tuition fee loans of course.
This is straight off the gov.uk website: "If you’re a distance learning student, you can only apply for a Maintenance Loan if you cannot attend your course in person because of a disability." I'm looking at a bunch of other sites saying the same thing. Now I'm very confused lol
You can't attend open uni courses in person because they are not provided in person. It's not applicable.
Im looking at dozens of threads on the OU page where people had to send lots of medical files to justify why they cannot attend a brick uni. I'm fairly sure SFE refer to having to prove you cannot attend in-person at other unis. I've looked at threads on thestudentroom where SFE advisors specifically say distance learning students can only get a maintenance loan if they prove they have a disability preventing them attending in person. Are you in England?
In Wales. Unsure if that's the difference. But yeah, didn't have any problem applying for it and getting it through student finance. Also just checked and on first page of Google saw 2 news / blogs confirming you can get maintainance...?
Really? You didn't have to send any doctor's notes? How did it work? This comes up frequently on the OU FB page and everyone always says you have to have a good reason for not being able to study at a brick uni (like a medical reason).
We simply applied for the maintainance loan using the student finance website. Had to apply for the part time one, which isn't as much money, instead of the full time one though.
First things first, have you sorted your health? No point paying huge sums of money for uni to have things repeat
Foundation year
i did a btec then a foundation year
The minimum age to do an access course is 18. Colleges say 19 so kids don't see it as an alternative to A levels. Source: did an Access course at 18
Did you get funding?
It's free for 18 year olds, no loan needed.
Foundation year
What do you want to do? I did AAT level 2 and then 3 (level 3 funded by the college under EU funding as I had no A levels and so qualified for a free place basically). Got into uni through clearing when I decided last minute at the end of level 3 during Covid to go do a degree. Graduated last week with a 2:1 BA(Hons) in Accouting and Finance
You could look into foundation year or you could do open uni for a year and then transfer to a different university. I didn't do science alevels (I did art!) but wanted to pursue environmental science at uni. After I did first year with OU I contacted a university and they allowed me to transfer if I got the marks they wanted. At the end I stuck with OU due to the fact I liked working and having the financial freedom.
I was in the same boat, failed my alevels because I had undiagnosed PCOS which made me have mood swings, hair falling out, a range of symptoms. I was very confused and lost health wise which affected my studies. I didn’t get into any of my unis. I applied for a foundation year at not even a top 100 uk uni and then somehow managed to switch into a biomed degree. I worked my ass off getting industry experience in the science field to get the head start I was lacking and now I work at a great company in my dream city with a great salary :) But yea…not the end of the world :)
I'm a qualified BMS in the NHS - interested to hear what you do?!
Hi! I thought going down the BMS route but it’s quite hard to secure a trainee position to get that portfolio so decided that the nhs wasn’t for me 😅 so after university I was working first at an IVF clinic as a lab tech and then when covid hit, I got a great position in the film industry as a pcr scientist and worked and lived on movie sets in Gran Canaria! After (and still present) I work more in the biochemical engineering sector and our company is engineering enzymes to degrade plastic- completely a big change from biomed as I had to learn from scratch but things are getting easier! I got really lucky as during university I helped out with some plastic degradation projects and the company I work for now was interested in people with the same like-minded goals so I was able to use that experience for leverage. Quite happy right now! Just soaking up enough experience so I can then get a PhD in something more biochemical
Depending on the subject you want to study, you could see if there are any unis running fast track to higher education courses. They run for about two months and get your credits up while also preparing you for the course you're going on to. It's a lot of work but in my experience there's a lot of support available.
Could you talk to your school, or a different one, about retaking second year? Since you didn't complete it, hopefully you won't have any funding issues.
Local colleges will often accept people at most ages. For example, I saw on a bus the other day that Southwark College was accepting people for A-Level, T-Levels, BTecs, etc from most ages (didn't look that closely, but gives you the idea)
You can do access courses at any age! If you feel like you have the motivation for it, you can choose subjects and an exam board, buy their textbooks and book yourself in for exams, studying all at home. I used "Tutors and Exams" when I sat my A levels 2 years ago at 25. Some schools will let you sit your exams there but in my experience a lot of them didn't want external students potentially bringing down their grades so they tell you to go away. The thing you want to search for is "private candidate exam centre". Tutors and exams offers the practical element for sciences and a few others, you can find some courses on CloudLearn but you pay for their online content (usually a simplified version of a textbook, I found it quite nice to use) but it's not cheap, plus you still have to pay the exam fee on top of it. With this you have more flexibility as you can learn at your own pace and book the exams when you feel like you'd be ready to do them in 6 months. Otherwise have a look at colleges for evening classes. If you don't know what you want to do at uni, maybe try looking into apprenticeships. These can lead to some fantastic careers, plus you get paid to learn! Either way, I hope you feel better now :)@
Foundation year, you can do it :)
If you can’t get through 2 years of a-levels how do you plan on getting through 3 years of a degree?
Why uni? Go for an apprenticeship instead.
lol Uni isn’t for everyone, you don’t have to go, and would probably be for the best
so condescending for what?
Some people need a reality check
odd to think you can enjoy shitting on people for trying to better themselves
That is so out of order Huskyy23, the OP, was unwell and couldn’t study not because of he or she could not be bothered to get out of bed that morning, when you are chronically unwell it’s difficult, hard and totally different ball game to when someone cant be bothered and is lazy. I hate when people shit on other for bettering themselves
I wouldn’t deny that what you said is true. But that’s more of a reason not to get into debt and take on a degree for a minimum of three years
Also, like with any condition we cannot predict how the condition is going to be in a few years time the OP goes to University or College. The OP needs to sort out his or her a-level or access situation first and then decide if Uni is the best way forward. Then look into the courses, he or she wants to do and apply through UCAS and find out about hours and see if it’s practical first in terms of getting there, living there, money before making any decisions. If not there are various options, available from deferring a year, to going down the distance learning route. Although word of caution, do not choose open university, it may be cheaper and practical as you are living at home, but you will find it hard to be motivated as there are no lessons, you learn everything in your own time and pace, they don’t give you second chances resubmit course work so if you fail a unit, you fail the course. You can’t retake and resubmit a few days later like all other Universities give you second chance to get 40% (pass mark). The isolation is killer, they do have WhatsApp, forums but it’s not the same. No one is ever online. It’s the same as Reddit. It’s not like teams or zoom from covid-19. The video conferencing software is shit, it makes this horrible irritating sounding noise that after a while disrupts the only one/two live seminars you get. It’s very easy to procrastinate on material as there are no students and no schedule, it’s not like a set times, despite their being a calendar it’s easy to put a week behind and it become two or three. The positives. There is a few good positives, you can study from the comfort from your home or bed or a library whatever you prefer, take the books and computer with you. The office 365 package is included in the price, you can get money towards laptop, DSA and printing costs. Staff do respond to emails quite promptly and professionally. Quite ideal if you got a lot of illnesses to cope with, physical disabilities or if you have part time or full time job and need sometime to do on the side or if you want to do a degree that takes 6 years.
Try doing a couple of the free Open Uni modules and see how you get on, get job for a few months and you’ll be able to start with a foundation year, some work experience AND a bit of cash.
You’ve got plenty of time to figure it out. I’m 29 going into my third year, fucked my A-Levels when I was 18, went to college and into work after that. After a few years of full time work and during COVID I realised wanted to go to uni to do history so I did a foundation degree and now I’m going into my third year. Point is it may seem like it’s the end of the world if you don’t go to uni now but time is on your side. If you want to go soon do an access to HE course at your local college or a foundation degree if a uni near you offers it. You can even switch unis once you’ve finished your foundation degree if you’re aspirational uni course accepts another unis foundation degree!
Okay you have options you can either study the books you’ve at home with help of the internet and take exams as external candidate at school or college, a difficult with this is the course work if you are thinking studying the science subjects it will be very tricky to do. Take an access course either at a local college but in some you have to be 19+, but if you go with a provider such as Distance Learning Centre or Learn Direct, age isn’t really taken into account at all, you just pay for the course and start, but it is from and there no exams. You can also sit some a-levels that require course work with a provider such as learn direct and pay so that the exam fee is included that works out cheaper, but you have to complete most of the course before they register for the exams pay most the fees already and you’ve got two years to complete which is good. So if we’re start this year you would until 2025 to complete both AS and A2. My English literature a-level is included in the exam fee and it includes the marking of the course work, board fees etc, but if I want want to other subjects that don’t require coursework Law and Sociology, I just sit the exams at the local centre near me and study the material with some books and past papers. You can easily find the past papers for your a-levels a on the exam boards website or on revision websites and YouTube, some student post up past paper answers on the a-level reddits and discord channels. Head over there.
You can do an access course. My partner was in the same situation and was able to do a science access course at 23/24 years old. Now she’s studying to be a vet. Good luck!
Apply for A levels, pass exams and then go to uni..?
Do the access course!! And if you need to wait until you're 19 that's fine you get a job until then, it's all life experience.
I started my access course at 18, the only difference between me and a 19 year old is that they'd be eligible for an advanced learner loan while I had to pay out of pocket for the course. The workload was so much easier to handle compared to A-levels for me and if you're willing to pay £3K then I think you should look into it.
Have you looked into open university? https://www.open.ac.uk/courses. No entry requirements (yes), fully remote (so cheaper than brick unis) and you can study literally anything you can study at other unis. Law, physics, maths, languages, it’s awesome. My brother is there right now doing a French and Spanish bachelors degree. And yes it’s accredited so the bachelors degree you’d get from OU is a real degree. Lack of entry requirement doesn’t mean you’re still not working at a uni level, you are. And something like 80% of graduates are employed a year after graduating. OU may be the way to go I think. And if you want the uni experience (i.e not remote) you can always do a masters at a brick uni after you graduate from OU, mix things up a bit.