Uni, (B)lacklist (Top 10 Uni power, Top 20 Uni Power, Top 20-50 Uni Power) A( , , ) A+B( , , ) Difficulty: (Worst Rank, Best Rank)
Good as a 1st choice A-level: Generally Suitable A-levels (view of TRinity College Cambridge)
Art History 1Arts
Biology 1Science 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567012 3456789(5th,2nd)
Chemistry 1Science 1234567890123(2.0,1.8,1.2) A(1.5,1.4,1.0) A+B(1.7,1.5,1.1) (5th,2nd)
Chinese 1Arts
Classical Civilisation 1Arts
Economics 1Arts 1234567890123456(1.7,1.7,1.4) A(1.1,1.1,1.0) A+B(1.2,1.2,1.0) (19th,12th) why power reduced
Engl Lit 1Arts 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 1234567890(22nd,18th) why green
French 1Arts 1234567890123456(2.1,1.9,1.4) A(1.4,1.2,0.9) A+B(1.6,1.4,1.0) (8th,5th)
Geography 1Arts 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 1234567890(23rd,15th)
German 1Arts 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 1234567890(9th,5th)
History 1Arts12345678901234567(1.3,1.2,1.4) A(1.3,1.2,1.3) A+B(1.2,1.1,1.2) (13th,8th)
Irish 1Arts
Italian 1Arts
Japanese 1Arts
Further Maths 1Science 1234567890123(4.0,3.1,0.8) A(1.8,1.4,0.4) A+B(2.6,2.0,0.5) (26th,1st)
Latin 1Arts
Maths 1Science 1234567890123(2.0,1.9,1.2) A(1.2,1.1,0.7) A+B(1.5,1.4,0.9) (16th,6th)
Music 1Arts 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 1234567890(10th,6th)
Philosophy 1Arts
Physics 1Science12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567012 34567890(3rd,2nd)
RE 1Arts 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 1234567890(26th,20th)why green
Russian 1Arts
Spanish 1Arts 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 1234567890(18th,11th)
Welsh 1Arts
Ok as a 3rd A-level: A-levels of More Limited Suitability (view of Trinity College Cambridge)
Archaeology 12345678901233(Arch & Anth)
Art Desg 1234567890123B 3(Arts)12345678901234 (0.4,0.4,0.6) A(0.3,0.3,0.5) A+B(0.3,0.4,0.5) (29th,27th)
Bus Std 12345678901234B 3(Economics)123456789 (0.3,0.5,0.8) A(0.4,0.8,1.2) A+B(0.3,0.6,1.0) (26th,23rd)
Design & Technology 123453(Architecture)
Drama/Theatre Studies B 3(Arts) 12345678901234(0.4,0.5,0.9) A(0.5,0.6,1.2) A+B(0.4,0.5,0.9) (30th,25th)
Electronics 12345678901233(Engineering)
Engl Language 123456789013(Arts)12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 12345678 (25th,16th)
Film Std 1234567890123Bc 3(Arts)12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 12345678 (33rd,33rd) why Purple
Law 123456789012345678Bl 3(Land Economy & Law) (0.3,0.4,0.8) A(0.3,0.5,1.0) A+B(0.3,0.5,0.9) (25th,18th) post on Law A-level and A-levels for Law
Media 1234567890123456B 3(Arts) 12345678901234(0.1,0.2,0.8) A(0.2,0.3,1.1) A+B(0.1,0.2,0.7) (32nd,30th) why Purple
Politics 12345678901234563(Arts) 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 12345678(24th,11th)
Psychology 123456789012343(Arts) 12345678901234(0.4,0.5,0.8) A(0.5,0.7,1.1) A+B(0.5,0.6,1.0) (16th,12th)
Sociology 1234567890123453(Arts) 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 12345678(31st,28th)
Suitable only for 4th A-level (view of TRinity College Cambridge)
Accounting B 4
Applied Science 4
Citizenship 4
Communication Studies B 4l
Computing 4 (13th,
5th)
Critical Thinking
Dance Bc 4
Environmental Science 4
Gen Std B 4 (4th, 1st)
Health and Social Care Bc 4
Home Economics B 4
IT (ICT) B 4 (14th, 4th)
Leisure Studies Bc 4
Music Technology B 4
PE Bc 4 (24th, 11th)
Performance Studies Bc 4
Performing Arts Bc 4
Perspectives on Science 4
Photography Bc 4 (32nd, 31st)
Science 4
Science for Public Understanding 4
Sport Studies B 4
Travel and Tourism B 4
World Development 4
Not classified by Trinty Cambridge
DT Prodn B (26th, 16th)
English (25th, 19th)
Fine Art (29th, 28th)
Psych Sci (18th, 13th)
How important is A-level selection?
Well you need to do subjects:
1) firstly you are good at and enjoy
2) secondly form a good basis for further study. This matters both in terms of the knowledge contained in the course content and the study skills required.
i) Some degree courses require specific A-levels. e.g. sciences (this includes Economics) often require Maths.
ii) Do some A-levels that are in the same category (e.g. Sciences, Arts, Languages, Humanities) as the degree you may be targetting.
iii) Avoid subjects with overlapping content (e.g. Businees and Economics).
iv) Especially if you are aiming for a competitive uni or subject than look at how many A-levels you have chosen in each of the 3 categories above. i.e. good to have atleast 2 subjects in the Generally Suitable Category.
But Remember:
i)an A in business studies is more appealing than a D in maths - and playing to your strengths and interests is always going to make it easier to excel.
ii) even LSE and Cambridge will pick somone with an AAA prediction including a blacklisted subject over someone with an AAC prediction excluding all blacklisted subjects.
What do terms like Soft, Less Prefered, Less Respected and Blacklisted mean?
These terms all refer to the reality that not all A-levels are treated equally by universities.
(Unlike what the Government claims.)
What do the B,Bl, Bc mean?
B means blacklisted at both LSE and Cambridge
Bc means blacklisted at just Cambridge
Bl means blacklisted at just LSE
What do the 1A, 1S, 3 and 4 numbers mean?
Trinty Cambridge categorise A-levels into four groups
1st or 2nd A-level:
i) list A1: suitable science subjects (1S)
ii) list A2: suitable Arts subjects (1A)
3rd A-level
iii) list B: suitable only for some subjects (3 followed by degree subjects/areas they are considered suitable for)
4th A-level
iv) list C: suitable only as a 4th A-level. (4)
Note this is a simplification of the actual Trinity Cambridge position:
http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=604
For example Trinity do not talk about 3rd A-levels. But:
i)For Arts Degrees they want applicants to have atleast 2 1A A-levels.
ii)For Science Degrees they want 2 (or 3) specified 1S subjects.
Hence I think that implies that any of the limited suitability subjects need to be supported by two group 1 A-levels.
Also some A-levels are not claissified.
Why do some subjects have 1 pair of numbers and some 2 pairs?
Where there are 2 pairs:
i) the 1st is a measure of how attractive subjects are to unis (the
subject power) (data from the Exchange Report)
ii) the 2nd is a measure of
subject difficulty (data from the SCORE report)
The Exchange Report considers less subjects and so for some subjects there is no measure.
How is the subject power calculated?
The Exchange report has data both::
i) from the government what percentage of A-levelstudents study each subject
ii) on how many students at each uni have each A-level.
(tables 2 and 3
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/ima...Hard_Truth.pdf)
The Exchange report has data from 8 of the top 10 and 13 of the top 20 unis. (Times overall rating used). So this gives an estimate of the situation at the top 10 and top 20 unis. Hence give a measure of how the situation varies between the top and the very top (answer not much!).
If the power is 1 this means the subjects is proportionaly represented at that group of unis.
If the power is >1 this means the subjects is overly represented at that group of unis.
If the power is >1 this means the subjects is underly represented at that group of unis.
Which 8 uni are used for the Top 10 rating?
Oxford (1st), Imperial (3rd), St Andrews (5th), Warwick (6th), UCL (7th), Durham (8th), York (9th), Bristol (10th).
So the missing two are Cambridge (2nd) and LSE(4th).
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/tol_...rsityguide.php
Which 13 unis are used for the Top 20 rating?
Oxford (1st), Imperial (3rd), St Andrews (5th), Warwick (6th), UCL (7th), Durham (8th), York (9th), Bristol (10th), Loughborough (12th), Exeter (13th), Leicester (14th), Bath (15th), Nottingham (16th=),
So the missing seven are Cambridge (2nd), LSE(4th), Kings College London (11th), SOuthampton (16th=), Edinburgh (18th), Lancaster (19th), Newcastle (20th), Glasgow (20th).
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/tol_...rsityguide.php
So 2 of the top 10 and 7 of the top 20 unis are missing?
Yes but given how static the data is over the unis we do have, I don't think it would make a big difference
And what about if a different measure of which are the top 20 unis were used?
Again I don't expect that to make a difference
Which unis make up the 20-5o unis?
14 uni from the Russel and 1994 groups of unis are used:
Sheffield (22nd), SOAS (24th), Birmingham (25th), Cardiff (29th), Manchester (27th), Royal Hooloway (30th)Liverpool (34th), Queens University Belfast (31st=), Reading (31st=), Queen Mary (37th), Sussex (38th), Surrey (39th), Essex (42nd), Goldsmith (46th)
What the A( ,) and A+B( , ) entries about?
To see if variations in A-level achievement matter I have representation calculations but instead of looking at all students taking each A-level instead:
i) look just at Grade A students for the A( , ) entries
ii) look at Grade A and B students for the A+B( , ) entries
How are the subject difficulty rankings calculated?
The Score report has the estimates of subject difficulty using 7 different methods for 33 A-level subjects. (Table 23 page 84
http://www.cemcentre.org/documents/n...2008report.pdf)
For each method I ranked the difficulty methods. So each subject is ranked 1st-33rd by each method. The above table gives the worst and best ranks.
How do the difficulty estimators work?
They compare how students who do multiple A-levels do on each one. So if lots of students who take both subjects X and Y get higher grades on subject X then that would subject that subject X is easier, subject Y harder.
Do the estimators work well?
They are not perfect: General Studies (GS) and Further Maths (FM) give particular difficulties;
i) very few students do well at GS but this is because they don't take it seriously rather than because it is hard.
ii)Many Further Maths students get grade As (which suggests it easy). Few of the Grade A students have lower grades in other subjects (which suggests it is hard). The full list of rankings is (1st,10th, 5th,3rd,26th,11th,6th)
But generally they work well. e.g. the different estimators give pretty consistent results.
What do the colours mean?
Green means the evidence suggests the subject is attractive to unis and/or a relatively more difficult subject.
Blue refers to evidence that is attractive to unis but not as attractive as green evidence.
Purple means the evidence suggests there are concerns about the subject but not as many as with the red. e.g. representation of 0.5 rather 0.3 and in the third group not the fourth.
Red means the evidence suggests the subject is unattractive to unis and/or a relatively less difficult subject and/or blacklisted
Should I not do red subjects?
Well there are caveats:
1) None of the three softness measures reflect any of the unis outside the top 20:
i)The Blacklist flag is generated by 2 top top unis in Cambridge and LSE
ii)The Exchange Report power figures given are only representative of the top 10 and top 20 unis.
iii)The Score report makes grade comparison between the results achieved in different subjects. And hence the score dat is not (directly) representative of the opinions of any of the unis.
2) If the subject is directly rated to your uni course (e.g. Drama for Theatre Studies) situation changes. i.e. the above table is averaged over all uni courses.
3)You do also need to consider what subjects you are good at.
4)correlation is not causality. i.e. it is possible that less academically gifted students choose certain subjects and that would make those subjects look bad in terms of subject power.
5)Do need to think about your aims. i.e. the subject power of his red subjects is much higher at the unis in the top 50 but outside the top 20:
Business 0.8
Drama 0.9
Law 0.8
Media, Film Studies 0.8
Psychology 0.8
6)Certainly ok to consider red subjects as extra subjects.
But you should be cautious and research the situation before selecting red A-levels.
So where did the idea for this table come from?
Originally it came from an article in The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/world/brita...ry_id=12814682
What is in the spreadsheet?
It gives the SCORE and Exchange data and shows how the difficulty ratings and the power are calculated.
I'm thinking about doing economics at a top university. Which would be the perfect 4 A levels?
Check out my sticky threads in the economics forum.
But for econ at a top uni for perfection you want:
i) both Maths and Economics A-levels.
ii)Further Maths
iii)A science e.g. Physics
iv)Essay based subject e.g. History
Which I know makes 5 not 4. But:
i)Consider doing 5 not 4 subjects to A2.
ii)If you are intend on doing 4 subjects then starting 5 AS and not 4 gives you a choice of what 4 you carry on in your final year.
Why are you suggesting doing more than 3 A-levels?
Back when I did my A-levels AAA was the gold standard (in September it will be 2 decades since I stated studying my A-levels!). AAA would get you into pretty much any uni (except possibly Oxbridge) for any subject (except the most competitive e.g. Medicine). Back then virtually no one did more than 3 A-levels (apart from a few people who did Further Maths). But in the last 20 years the situation has changed dramatically.
Take as an example economics: an area where I have studied the admissions process extensively. In TAELT (The Alternative Economics League Table), I have given information about admissions for economics at 60 different universities. At 49 of the courses I would be confident that AAA predictions would get you an offer (assuming you did A-level Maths when that is mandatory). But there are 11 where that is not the case. And they are, not surprisingly, the best 11.
If you are interested in another subject you can get a crude idea of what the situation is as follows. Just look to see how many of the unis for that subject have an average tariff above 420. (i.e. all the TAELT top 11 have a tariff above 420 and only 1 uni outside the top 11 has a traiff above 420.) That will give you one meausre of how valuable a 4th A-level might be.
[url="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rDvWgkoc5D5dZKfWi25Cu9w&output=html"]http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rDvWgkoc5D5dZKfWi25Cu9w&output=html[url]
What about other universities?
Well there is this information for sheffield. They rank A-levels into 2 categories: A-levels 'always' acceptable and A-levels only acceptable as a 3rd A-level.
Discussion about A Level exams and choosing A Level courses, including VCEs.
Useful Resources:
A-levels: Relative Difficulty and Uni Admissions Selection criterea
