Beyond Selidor

I considered the IB instead of STX actually! the only reason why I didn't do it at all is because it wasn't offered in my area. my family moved to another part of the country just before I went to boarding school so where I would've been able to do an IB before we moved, after we moved it wasn't possible because there wasn't one within a commutable distance. in Denmark the IB is considered the same as an STX though iirc it's 2 years instead of 3? It's taught at the same type of schools and it doesn't cost anything as far as I know. my STX school also taught HF for example. other schools also offer HHX, HTX and IB, in various constellations. (HF is also 2 years instead of 3 but you can get into university with it provided you had the right subjects at the right level.) I'm not really upset about missing out on the IB, it wasn't anywhere near as important as whatever was going on with STX was. although. the IB student cap is the second coolest student cap because it has flags on it. (the actual coolest student cap is the black STX cap which is reserved for those who on the Old system specialised in Classical Languages (Greek and Latin) OR those who did 5 A level subjects, and since I did 5 A level subjects I earned that cap.) My school didn't offer a Classical specialisation since there wasn't a Greek teacher and only one ancient Latin teacher who actually quit halfway through the first semester due to old age/dementia so I never even finished the introduction to Latin course we were all subjected to in lieu of the option of Latin as an optional language. anyway...

STX is technically a broad education as there are a lot of mandatory subjects that are the same for everyone. everyone has mandatory Danish A, English B, History A, Maths C, Religion C, Classical Studies C, and PE C (although PE last all three years despite being a C level subject). it's mandatory for everyone to have an additional 3 STEM subjects at C level but which ones you get depends on which specialisation you choose and what the school offers. Mine only had the standard subjects, not any of the fancier ones. I's also mandatory for everyone to have another language in addition to English B but whether it's Continuing German B/French B or a Beginner Language A is optional (Beginner Language depends on the school. all schools offer French and German, most offer Spanish, anything beyond that depends. My school used to offer Russian but they shut it down the year I started. other schools offer Russian, or Chinese, or Italian, or something else. Chinese especially is on the rise as China gains more power and we do more business with China). It's also mandatory to have one Arts Subject C.

the modern languages line I applied for which was cancelled because only 5 people applied had Continuing Language B, English A and *two* Beginner Languages A which for my school meant Beginner French A and Beginner Spanish A as they were the only other languages they offered in addition to German. (the Music specialisation in my year had only 9 students so I wonder what the minimum threshold was since 5 didn't cut it but 9 did.)

somebody doing a Music specialisation might have all of the above but then do Music A, Drama B and Art C. and then upgrade Drama to A and Art to B or A to avoid upgrading Maths or English or whatever. my specialisation subjects were English A, Social Sciences B and Psychology C. One is required to have four A level subjects and that's what's standard to do as well, however I wound up with five in order to avoid Maths B (Danish and History as the two mandatory A levels and then English, Social Sciences, German as the optional As).

where it gets hairy is that entry requirements for university require different levels of each subject to get in. so just checking the current admission requirements for Physics at University of Copenhagen:
Danish A
English B
Maths A with at least 7,0 average mark
one of following combinations:
Physics B with at least 7,0 average mark* and Chemistry B
Physics B with at least 7,0 average mark* and Biotechnology A
Geoscience A and Chemistry B
*If you've passed Physics A there is no minimum average mark required

so there are the two mandatory humanities subjects that everyone has to have (Danish A and English B) and then a specific set of STEM combinations. My STX school didn't have Geoscience and Biotechnology, but they did offer Physics and Chemistry so I could've gotten in with those subjects at the right level.

If I'd taken a Maths specialisation at STX I would've been able to get in no problem as I'd have been able to take Physics at a minimum B level and Chemistry at minimum B level, but I wouldn't have been able to take Social Sciences at a level higher than C, probably wouldn't have been able to take Psychology at all, and I wouldn't have been able to upgrade German to A (probably would've been able to upgrade English to A though). I didn't have Chemistry at all and my Biology C and Geography C wouldn't have made a difference. I would've had to pay for a year or two of upgrading Maths, taking Chemistry C and B and probably throwing in an upgrade to Physics from B to A (I can't remember what my Physics B average mark was - I think it was at least a 7 but say it wasn't, getting a passing average in Physics A would've taken care of that problem), in order to get into Physics at uni and I never had the money to do that. better to just apply for a humanities or social sciences course that I *could* get into.

(as a sidenote, an average mark of 7 is the equivalent to a C on the international scale. If I remember the UK scale correctly, A starts at 70% and then B is the bracket 60-69% and C is the 50-59% bracket? so this course doesn't even require top marks to get in, so even if I'd had the same awful maths teacher throughout STX for Maths A and never got a top mark, I still had a fairly high average. infuriatingly I would score equivalent to B on *all* my weekly maths problems and assignments, I never got a C on those, but my two semester marks were C and the final exam was also a C so my average mark was, in fact, 7, even though my weekly assignments never dipped below a B. the two semester marks should've been Bs. infuriating. I hope that teacher rots in hell. (I did confront him about it and he said he'd calculated my semester marks from an average of all my homework marks and therefore that was the correct mark. because god forbid he made a calculation error or possibly input a different student's mark in the system or whatever other possible explanation. I was literally holding a stack of paper all marked B. fuck him with a thousand rusty spoons. on a positive tangent, my German teacher artificially inflated my average mark because even though I was making a lot of mistakes she recognised I was making progress and she wanted to reward that more than she wanted to punish mistakes. she also recommended I upgrade from B to A because the A level exam was oral whereas the B level exam was written, and I performed better orally than in writing. she really made a huge difference.)

I applied for a handful of courses in the UK, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, and Denmark when I was looking for things to study that wasn't nuclear physics. I got accepted into a few different programs including a Social Sciences and Russian course in Glasgow that I ended up declining, which I wouldn't have gotten into if not for Social Sciences A. (imagining how different my life had been if I'd gone to Scotland for that BA! I may never have come back to Denmark at all. I probably wouldn't have gone back to Finland as much as I did.)

Idk if this sounds like a defence of STX or not, that's not really the point. I have complicated feelings about it. I think I was unlucky in many ways and I think my generation especially struggled because we were the first generation to go to STX with the reform so we were technically lab rats. one of the things the reform introduced was interdisciplinary projects (unheard of before) where we were required to do research projects combining two subjects, e.g. English and Social Sciences or History and Arts or Psychology and English or History and German - all real interdisciplinary projects I've done. our teachers often didn't know how even to guide or mark the projects because guidelines from the ministry of education were often half-formed! so they were making up as they went and we just had to roll with it.

I do appreciate a lot about the interdisciplinary part of STX because it taught us to think outside the box and while we weren't allowed to do any independent NEW research "wait until university for that" and could only rely on already published research and material to put together our essays, we were encouraged to cross-pollinate. use theories from social science to do literary analysis or look at German propaganda posters for an Arts & history project and whatnot. I really do think that if not for that, and especially considering this directly followed from two years at boarding school that also encouraged out of the box thinking, I would've felt a lot more boxed in than I did. there was a level of freedom there as well.