[Athena_Laleak]

I am just choosing my A Levels, but already know that I want to do Ancient History at university. Anyway, my school begins GCSE's in year 9, so I hadn't started looking at useful courses for Uni then. I ended up picking perfomance over French, but did do a french GCSE that year and got a C. Now I'm choosing my A levels I'm not doing a language, because it has been so long since I have done one. Looking at courses now it seems they like you to have done a language at A level. Just wondering if anyone who has done or is doing ancient history at Uni could let me know if I will struggle to get places having not done a language A level, considering I did get my french C two years early.

Thankyou

[palicearker]

I wasn't! I did Art, Eng Lit and Hist and got in Exeter, Southampton and Warwick

[Athena_Laleak]

Thankyou

[Historophilia]

I didn't do a Language either (I did History, English and Politics) and got in to York, Warwick and Exeter and was interviewed by Oxford.

[WelshStarKid]

I'd say only if you are going for the top uni's for Ancient History do they want evidence of a language at A level, and even then most are happy with it at GCSE! I've applied for 5 Uni's with History, English, Biology as my A2 subjects to study History / History & Ancient History and got a yes from all of them and when I researched Ancient History courses that's where I got this information from Just make sure you get a high grade in history!

Hope I helped x

[brumunihistory]

I don't think this will disadvantage you at all necessarily. I certainly wasn't disadvantaged and I didn't do a language at A Level. It can be an advantage - for instance, some special subject/dissertation tutors might not allow you to study certain things if you haven't got adequate language skills to be able to read the primary sources for instance. But there are usually plenty of ways to get around that (printed translated sources, or basing the focus of your research slightly differently).

Bottom line - no Language is not a disadvantage. Having done one may open up your options very, very slightly, but not anywhere near enough to greatly alter your results or anything like that.

[yoyodavis]

I wouldn't say so at all. I didn't do very well in my modern language GCSE's and hated the subjects so dropped them as soon as I could. Did History, English Lit, Classics, Drama and R.S for AS level and got all 5 of my offers from Durham, UCL, York, Exeter and Bristol to study History this year (Exeter with a year abroad)