@MYOS1634 I strongly disagree with you on GCSE’s simply because it is only 6 core subjects that actually matter(English lang., English lit., Maths, Chemistry, Biology, Physics). I don’t think your at a major disadvantage even when compared to someone with 8-10 GCSEs because most of the time you just take the GCSEs your school/sixth form college offer and a lot of colleges only offer courses for 6-7 GCSEs. I think A levels matter the most and If you are a student predicted 4-6 A* on your A levels I doubt MIT could care less about your GCSEs in addition to this you could ace the SAT/ACT test and take additional sat subject tests. The point is a lot of student have As on GCSEs but a much lower percentile have A on A levels. Actually only 2.2% of student taking 3 A levels get 3 A*s according to a recent report by Cambridge assessment of 82% of all A level students. Therefore if your in the top percentile for A levels you shouldn’t care about the number of GCSEs that you have (as long as you have 6 GCSEs at least).