PPE Applicants 2019

i got A*AA in Latin maths religious studies with A* in maths, would I be a competitive applicant for PPE at UCL? How much does it depend on personal statement?

I am applying for a PPE degree at Exeter, Manchester, York and Warwick. I don't know what to have as my 5th choice.

Originally it was Oxford but I then went there for a visit, and decided I couldn't see myself living there. Also I'm too dumb lmao. I also don't want to apply to any London Unis as I don't want to have high living costs.

I really wanted to apply to St Andrews or Edinburgh but they both don't do PPE.

What should my fifth choice be?

Durham offers PPE and is generally regarded to be fairly excellent overall. Otherwise you might want to look at some joint honours courses in just 2/3 of the subjects, and then taking external options in the third as possible - at Scots universities in particular you can probably be fairly "tripartite" in the first year or two. As suggested above though, you may find that in general the Economics and Politics departments are the more subscribed ones, and you may be less able to take options in those from another course. Thus, you might want to focus more on the Politics & Economics (or similarly IR & Economics) combination and look to take modules in Philosophy on such a course. Outside of Scots unis for the Politics & Economics combination you might want to consider Bristol or Bath, which are also very strong options.

I went for a talk at St Andrews where they were discussing degree options.

You could apply for a joint degree in say International Relations and Philosophy. You then pick a third subject (Economics) to take in first year and are timetabled equally between the three subjects in first year. You can swap onto a different joint honours courses from the one you originally picked at any point in the first year. In second year you switch to whatever your degree choice is but you may also be able to continue with options, I’m not so sure on this.

NB INternational Relations is by far the most popular subject, so they advised picking this as a single honours or part of a joint honours as you would be unlikely to get it as the third subject.

Please do your own research and check this out though.

Thank you both for this insight, I may just do Economics and Philosophy, and then do Politics modules alongside it. I do have another question about the scottish unis; do the 4 year degrees equate to a Masters, or do they equate to a normal Bachelors degree?

University choices: Warwick, Nottingham, Leeds, Exeter, Lancaster
What subject(s) are currently studying?: Economics, Maths, Physics
Predicted A2 grades: A*, A, A
AS grades: A in EPQ
GCSE grades: Two 9s, One 8, Three A*, Three A, One B
Why PPE?: Think it will be a very interesting degree and keep my options open in terms of jobs

Q: Can of you recommend any good books that you think are interesting and relevant to the course?

No Oxford?

I was planning to apply for Oxford until pretty recently but on visiting it I couldn’t really picture myself there. Plus I’m not confident I would score a place since my personal statement isn’t incredible and my subjects are quite maths based whereas my impression is Oxford prefers essay subjects to an extent like History or Politics etc.

You’re subjects are ok, I’ve got the opposite probelem where I have no maths based subjects 😂
But if it’s not for you then fair enough- good luck!