How important are GCSEs/A-levels?

I was pretty dumb in school; my grades were horrible. Now, I'm doing my master's degree at a good university, and I'd like to apply to good firms and positions. Unfortunately, for some applications, I'm required to disclose GCSEs and A-levels. In fact, for some Big 4 companies at least, there are minimum requirements for these assessments. WTF? How do my grades at the age of 15/16 reflect my competence years later? I cannot find any justification for this other than if they get more applications than they can handle, and they are just trying to filter out candidates in any way possible.

Also, what if I don't have access to my grades from fucking middle school? What do I do then?...

7 Comments
 

GCSEs don't really matter for entry level positions, however given the ultra-competitive nature of roles your A levels will matter.

After 2-3 years of experience, there's no need to include them on your CV anymore, so it's just a matter of getting your foot in the door :)

 

I honestly forgot my results for GCSE and don’t have access to them. I made educated guesses, but I couldn’t really recall with full accuracy what I got. How rigorously do they check for these sorts of things?

 

Interesting. I'll review my transcript and see if something is off relative to what I put. If so, I guess I'll just send an email to recruitment so they don’t think I’m intentionally dishonest.

 

I don’t recall seeing many needing GCSEs but remember a lot needing you to enter A-levels.

Agree completely that its stupid, but I’m pretty sure some firms will auto reject if do not meet criteria. 

A few definitely had an option for extenuating circumstances oe, so I would recommend that route if possible  

 

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