The importance of a distinction Options

[FullofWind]

Should you only sit grade 8 when you know there is a very high chance that a distinction will be achieved? There will be musicians for whom this would be a mammoth task but if a child was capable of getting a comfortable pass, would it be better to wait up to two years until they were beyond distinction level? How are resits viewed by conservatoires if a child wishes to gain a distinction at a later date?

[anacrusis]

Look though at what is happening to all the universities trying to select their students at the moment: the political correctness of not letting kids feel bad about any given level of achievement has led to the system ironing out much of the sense of graded levels in exams - so many are getting top grades now, that working out who is actually suited to a course has become more difficult. The same would happen if there were simply a single hurdle of pass/fail at each exam level - and you'd have establishments trying to work out who actually was the scraped fail and who the comfortable one. Okay, so the way that the exams are set up now don't necessarily tell them all they need to know: I for one think that auditioning would have to be a part of selection of career musicians too, not simply a mark sheet from a music exam.

Having said that - I know fine well that had the university I eventually went to actually interviewed me as a raw eighteen year old, they'd have turned me down, as did the one which did interview me. And, had my university turned me down, then they'd also have lost someone who was actually pretty capable, and makes a competent and compassionate doctor, so no system of selection, in whatever career is perfect.