Is it better to have an A/A* in Business Studies or a B in English Lit for Uni?

Is it worth switching to Business A-Level if I know I'll almost deficiently get the better grade? I've always heard its a 'weak' A-Level and would disadvantage me though. Which would be the bigger disadvantage for getting into a Russel Group - the worse grade or doing Business?

Somewhere-or-other there's a list of A-level subjects that are viewed as most valuable by the Russell Group. I don't know how old the list is, but I remember the subjects were English Literature, Maths/FM, all sciences, all modern languages, History and Geography. Probably depends on exactly which course you're applying for, but this is food for thought. (And you don't need business even to study business at uni)

What course are you applying to study?

Unless you are aiming to apply to a degree in English lit, normally it doesn't matter what the other subjects are and an A* will make it easier to meet standard entry criteria than a B. There are some caveats though - firstly a number of universities do not like the combination of A-level Economics and A-level Business Studies. So if you are taking A-level Economics, I would strongly not recommend taking business studies. Secondly, a small number of universities have published lists of "preferred" subjects and they normally expect you to be taking at least two preferred subjects. While business studies is on most of these, for LSE it's not - so if you are aiming to apply to LSE specifically, if you are taking another non-preferred subject for LSE then you should not swap to business studies as then you would have two non-preferred subjects. However if your other two subjects are preferred subjects for LSE, it makes no difference (assuming you aren't taking economics as one of the other two.


What you are thinking of are "facilitating subjects", a concept which was retired by the RG quite a few years ago now, precisely due to these kinds of misconceptions. As the idea of facilitating subjects wasn't that they are "better" or "hard" subjects that are "preferred" (as above unis may have preferred subject lists but these are and were separate), but that they served as prerequisites for one or more degree programmes. So it was recommended to take two of those subjects to ensure students who weren't sure what they wanted to do would have a good range of options of degrees they could apply to later.