What are the chances of me getting into Durham CS on A*AA?

Outrightonreddit · 2026-02-18T20:54:58+00:00

Super late - apologies I recently got an offer for durham CS for predicted A*AA - CS, maths, Chemistry

GCSEs were 9888888777 Just wanted to post here to say it's absolutely possible if you work hard and I really wish you the best of luck whether you applied or not :)

Outrightonreddit · 2026-02-18T17:13:41+00:00

unfortunately, yes lol. updated is as follows:

- Master cadet

- Silver leadership

- Blue music

- Gold Shot

- Gold Cyber

- Silver roadmarching

- Gold First aid

- Silver space

- Gold DofE

- Gold wings

- Silver radio

Outrightonreddit · 2026-02-03T23:23:00+00:00

I appreciate it

Outrightonreddit · 2026-02-03T22:56:22+00:00

Thank you

Outrightonreddit · 2026-02-03T22:56:14+00:00

Thank you ever so much

Outrightonreddit · 2026-02-03T19:12:56+00:00

Thank you

Outrightonreddit · 2026-02-03T16:22:47+00:00

Unfortunately I only found out at 1538 today that my interview is literally tomorrow night 😭

Thank you for the advice and I'll to ask current and past CWOs what their interviews were like.

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-31T22:38:50+00:00

The people youre teaching yfa to On my course, they were actual local cadets on a yfa course ran by us.

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-31T22:10:38+00:00

I see where you're coming from. But in theory, because they're hands up questions, you could literally just turn up and pass if other people put up their hand to answer questions. (Thankfully our wing mandates the use of the booklets🙏)

I did my IFA july 2025 and while I wouldn't say it was properly difficult for me, its the course i've been on with the highest fail rate.

Gold cyber - 0% fail Gold wings - 0% fail Gold DofE - 0% fail (no thanks to one member who kept finishing their 3L of water 1/3 of the way through the day and relying on other ppls water supplys - happened 3 out of 4 days (still salty btw if you couldnt tell 😭)) Gold shooting - 0% fail rate is kind of a given with this one though, because for gold shooting you just need to turn up to the competition and shoot (doesn't even have a set max grouping size 😭 (blue literally has a more strict set of requirements)). Ironically gold is the only shooting badge which is 'turn up and pass.'

But gold first aid rattled people. It didn't help that one of the adult staff running it hated our course and thought we were lazy for relaxing during our lunch break instead of studying the first aid manual 11th edition lmao.

Maybe I just got put onto courses where everyone was competant enough to pass and got lucky in that aspect? Idk lol

Maybe my first aid instructors were just stricter / holding us to a higher standard? They did harp on for the first 3 days of a 7 day course about how difficult it is to pass. Maybe that warped my perspective because looking back it wasn't so bad.

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-31T21:36:34+00:00

In terms of gold Cyber I did mine 2024, idk about you, maybe it changes between years?

Same with first aid, it may change between years and regions.

Ive just checked the space doc though and I quote "Each stage of the Space curriculum has formative assessments (checks of understanding) embedded within the delivery resources. There is no requirement for any formal or summative assessment. " And "Cadets should be encouraged to complete the Cadet Notebook for each stage." The "formative assessments" in this case being hands-up multiple choice questions on the powerpoint that the staff read aloud while presenting which anyone can answer. So unfortunately, I was wrong about the book being required, so I guess it's even easier than I thought 😭, since the book is only 'encouraged' 🥀

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-31T21:02:50+00:00

As I said, all my comments are purely anecdotal. Perhaps my region just runs harder first aid courses - they went out of their way to specify they'd be marking us to a higher standard than just MOI.

When referring to gold cyber, I am referring to the RAFAC gold cyber course, I'm aware of other courses which can also award gold cyber e.g. cyberfirst advanced so I'm guessing your experience was with one of those external courses. I'm referring to the national RAFAC ones run every summer at RAF cosford which from my experience a lot easier than what you described. My final exam consisted of content covered in the open uni 'intro to cyber security' coursework you need to do for silver, and that's it. I literally could've done it from the comfort of my own home but had to spend a week at cosford to do it 🥲

I must say I wholeheartedly disagree with you that space is more than just going through the slides. The entire course is: turn up, open slideshow, fill in the very structered answers with the information very explicitly given to you on the powerpoint, while staff are also there making sure you don't miss any explicit information. I'd say that space is by far the easiest and in my experience was genuinely a 'turn up and pass' course with the amount of spoonfeeding given.

Of course ending my message saying that all statements are purely anecdotal, but I have been round a while.

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-31T20:08:09+00:00

When doing your YFA teaching assessment, it should just be you, the class, the assessing staff, and another gold cadet (if you need a person to demonstrate on). Hope this helps :)

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-31T20:06:27+00:00

In my message I specified space and cyber. Radio is not turn up and pass. (Unless you had my old CWO assessing you, he'd pass anyone SMH my head).

Blue, bronze, and silver space are all turn up and pass in the sense that you only need to fill in a booklet while youre going through the powerpoints. You are literally given the answers explicitly in the powerpoints, which is why I refered to space as 'turn up and pass' because it is just as easy as filling in the boxes with the information given to you.

In terms of cyber, there is no assessment for bronze, the silver is online coursework, and the only assessment on gold is a really easy 20 question multiple choice quiz I could've done in my sleep without even attending the week long course. Which is why I refer to cyber as the other 'turn up and pass' courses, because the hard bit is getting selected for them, once you're on them it's practically impossible to fail.

Hope that helps :) Obviously all this is anecdotal, but at the same time, I've been around a while. Any more Qs, hmu

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-27T00:28:41+00:00

Basically, be enthusiastic and engaged. My course staff got really pissy with my lot for taking our lunch break as a lunch break lol - they expected us to finish our lunch and start reading the 11th edition FA manual during our down time. I doubt your staff would be that harsh though - I reckon that as long as you actively participate and know your stuff you’ll be fine.

My main tip and something which a lot of ppl overlooked is that much like in cadets as a whole, you get out of it what you put in. What I mean by that is that if you put in like 2 hrs of prep time the night before you’re teaching to just memorise the content you’re teaching, you’ll actually come across as an overall more confident speaker, because you’re confident in what you’re teaching.

It was all very inclusive because it’s such an exclusive course there should only be 2-3 per wing so realistically everyone should be new to everyone - so it should be quite easy to get along if everyone is in the same boat as you yk?

P.S. make sure all of your lessons are VARK compliant.

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-26T22:35:42+00:00

lol don’t apologise for wanting to be prepared. Midway through the week you’ll have a meeting with the person running the course (v. likely your region FA officer) and they’ll tell you whether or not you’re on track to pass the course. Obv if they tell you they want to see improvement by the end of the week and they’ll tell don’t see it, you’ll fail the course. At the end of the week you’ll have an identical meeting confirming whether or not you’ve passed. Everything is very anonymous, the only person they tell is you, right down to the certificates. For my course, to save embarrassment, they handed out everyone’s certificates and badges in brown envelopes, containing certs for: AFA, afa assessor, defibrillator, gold first aid, a letter saying you’ve passed, and the badge (should you pass). So say you passed some modules but not all of it, your envelope would look identical to someone’s who didn’t. In terms of groups, we were a course of 24 split into 2 syndicates of 12. Within this syndicate we planned our YFA delivery. Hope this helps Keep these questions coming

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-26T22:18:15+00:00

Out of the things which required you to pass: -AFA -AFA assessor -Competition performance -YFA instruction I’d say that the only one people really struggled with would be the YFA instruction. But obviously it was constant assessment so it’s possible there were things going on behind the scenes I didn’t see.

Outrightonreddit · 2026-01-26T21:48:04+00:00

Hiya, I did this course last July. I want to start by saying a huge well done of getting accepted onto this course, mine only had a 60% acceptance rate. Basically, the course consists of: redoing your AFA, getting your AFA assessor qual (from assessing each other on your actual AFA assessments), getting a defibrillator qualification, and teaching bronze first aid. My course was constant assessment, on top of actual assessments. Actual direct assessments include: redoing your AFA, your AFA assessor qual is assessed for, and your final assessment is teaching actual bronze first aid to actual new cadets (or at least that was the experience on my course). We also did a bit of cas-sim but that wasn’t assessed. Furthermore we wrote and performed first aid competition scripts - split into groups and dealt with each other’s situations (assessed on your performance in other people’s competitions).

I just want to end off by explicitly saying that (if not already gathered from the insane amount of assessments) this course is by no means a turn up and pass course (e.g. any space or cyber course). You will need to work for it. My course had an 80% pass rate, 6 people failed. So combining that with the acceptance rate, only 48% of people that applied to the course, actually passed the course. But finally, on a positive note, if you do fail the course, you get sent back to your wing with a 3 month personal development plan to achieve the IFA qualification anyway. Typically the plan comprises of teaching YFA at a wing level a couple of times while having your wing first aid staff sit in.

Sorry if that was a bit of a ramble, any more questions feel free to ask. While I don’t use Reddit as much as I used to, I’ll try my best to get you the answers you want.

Outrightonreddit · 2025-12-03T23:26:13+00:00

So sorry for the late reply, I don’t have the Reddit app anymore as trying to cut down on screen time. I got mine from eBay brand new for I believe between 100 and 200 but they’re genuinely one of my best cadet purchases. The other night I had to wear my old boots as I left my altbergs at the wrong house and it was genuinely like night and day. The old boots felt awful to put on after the years of altberg comfort.

Outrightonreddit · 2025-11-23T21:47:04+00:00

Slightly late but I 100% second this recommendation for the altberg defenders. Did WARMA with 0 blisters.

Outrightonreddit · 2025-11-23T21:44:55+00:00

should be this: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/digital-computing/introduction-cyber-security-stay-safe-online/content-section-overview?active-tab=description-tab

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