Retaking A-Levels after a degree

Hello everyone! So I recently just graduated with a 2:1 in Architecture and don't want to continue with my Masters, it's just not what I see myself doing for decades to come.

So to start this off, I was in the hospital for most of year 13 (from October), got discharged around January (stayed at home) - kept going back to the hospital due to infections/surgery and I went back to school around Easter time, and I simply couldn't catch up. Ended with a BCD in English, Maths & IT respectively. As you can imagine, I had to do a foundation course to get into university, not just because I didn't have the grades, I also didn't do Art. I wanted to redo A-Levels at the time but long story short, I didn't.

Anyway, I was recently made aware of Open University/Birkbeck University's part-time courses and the fact that I can get funding for a second degree if I do a STEM subject, which is precisely what I'm gunning for. Possibly Maths, Computer Science or Engineering - then potentially go on to an RG uni later on for Masters (if I'm lucky).

But as it turns out, even my GCSE Maths (one that I got an A* for) is a little rusty. I can fill the gap by self-studying but I can't for the life of me seem to remember anything in A-Levels Maths (thinking of possibly taking Further Maths or Physics) that I don't have the confidence that I'd be able to take a highly numerate subject at university level without external help, and I don't know any Maths/Physics/Engineering grad who could help.

Is there any way to do this? I've seen some online ones but most of them received mostly negative reviews. Are there any good ones out there? Are there any alternatives I can do? Would STEM (Maths/Engineering specifically) be better at Open or Birkbeck?

Hello everyone! So I recently just graduated with a 2:1 in Architecture and don't want to continue with my Masters, it's just not what I see myself doing for decades to come.

So to start this off, I was in the hospital for most of year 13 (from October), got discharged around January (stayed at home) - kept going back to the hospital due to infections/surgery and I went back to school around Easter time, and I simply couldn't catch up. Ended with a BCD in English, Maths & IT respectively. As you can imagine, I had to do a foundation course to get into university, not just because I didn't have the grades, I also didn't do Art. I wanted to redo A-Levels at the time but long story short, I didn't.

Anyway, I was recently made aware of Open University/Birkbeck University's part-time courses and the fact that I can get funding for a second degree if I do a STEM subject, which is precisely what I'm gunning for. Possibly Maths, Computer Science or Engineering - then potentially go on to an RG uni later on for Masters (if I'm lucky).

But as it turns out, even my GCSE Maths (one that I got an A* for) is a little rusty. I can fill the gap by self-studying but I can't for the life of me seem to remember anything in A-Levels Maths (thinking of possibly taking Further Maths or Physics) that I don't have the confidence that I'd be able to take a highly numerate subject at university level without external help, and I don't know any Maths/Physics/Engineering grad who could help.

Is there any way to do this? I've seen some online ones but most of them received mostly negative reviews. Are there any good ones out there? Are there any alternatives I can do? Would STEM (Maths/Engineering specifically) be better at Open or Birkbeck?

From what you have mentioned above, you more or less have 4 options.

Option 1 - Do A Levels via online/offline college
I don't know when you did your A Levels, but a lot of things have changed since a few years ago. There are now more resources than ever online, and you have more support than we used to have. To do your A Levels, you can find a local adult college and pay for the courses (this is rare though as many adult colleges don't offer A Levels), or you can do them online. I'm currently redoing my Maths A Level online, and it seems fine so far. I have also started Further Maths, because I am brooding for punishment, and that the courses I intend to do will involve a lot more maths.
A Levels aren't expensive per se, but they can still cost a bit e.g. £400-900 each including exam fees and courses. You can just buy the textbooks and pay for the exam fees, but I don't recommend it.

Option 2- Do an Access course specialising in Engineering or Maths+Physics
Access courses are 1 year courses that provide you with the equivalent of 3 A Levels (it's intensive, but not necessarily as difficult, and they are marked differently). They can cost £1500-3500. You can either do them at your local adult college or online. The thing you will need to be very clear on is whether the university you intend to go to will accept Access courses for the particular degree and whether you have enough credits in the right sort of subjects. (Even if the university accepts Access courses, they might not accept them for the particular degree.) if the course page does not specify, you will need to contact the undergrad admin department.
If the Access course doesn't have enough credits in the right subjects, then you might be asked to supplement it with further A Levels. In your subjects, it's likely to be A Level Maths.
The other thing you might need to be aware of is that I have yet to see a math degree course that accepts Access. It's best to stick to A Levels should you want to do Maths. You shouldn't have that much trouble with Engineering or Computer Science though, and many of the Russell Group universities accept these.

Option 3- Another foundation degree/ degree with integrated foundation year
A number of Russell Group univerisites offer foundation degrees or degrees with foundation years in the subjects you have mentioned. However, I doubt you would want to spend £9k for the one year to do it. On the upside, SFE will fund you to do another foundation degree/year (to my knowledge, but you might want to check).
Certain universities also offer their version of Access courses, but they are not regarded as Access courses (i.e. other universities might not accept them or see them as meeting their entry requirements, but you will need to check). These courses more or less set you up to study at their universities, so they are essentially more like foundation year qualifications without the £9k price tag. The ones I have found include Glasgow, Derby, and Liverpool (Liverpool works with one of their local colleges). Manchester and Durham also seem to be working with their local colleges via an Access scheme (I could be wrong though). Birbeck similarly is working alongside UCL, as you might know.

Option 4 - Spend 2 years doing a BTEC at an adult college
BTECs are 2 year courses where it's a lot more vocational than A Levels. I haven't particularly looked into them, but you should find these at adult colleges. BTECs are accepted at virtually any university in the UK and abroad (they're as commonplace as A Levels), so you may have trouble finding a place where they reject these.

You might want to check SFE regarding the STEM degree, as they are only providing funding if you study part time and for certain STEM degrees.

My question to you is why do you want to do the degrees?
If you want to work in programming, computer maintenance, or engineering, you might be able to get away with entry level roles without having to go down the uni route for the second time. If you don't intend to go into academia, what do you intend to do with a math degree?
In fact, unless you intend to go into academia, research, or teaching, I doubt having degrees in the above subjects will help that much.
If you want to work in most areas in health or medicine, then going back to uni will make perfect sense since they are jobs that will require you to have done a degree. (There are some areas where you won't need a degree though e.g. dental hygienist, counselling at lower levels.)

Just to check - I'm assuming that you are limited to part time courses due to funding? Are you also working full time? Is you reason for studying STEM for interest/ career reasons or both? Birbeck doesnt have a lot of STEM courses of the type you are referring to which may be an issue. I think there are a decent range of companies in London offering degree apprenticeships in Engineering if that might interest you?

Hey! Thanks for your response.

Of all the options you mentioned, the online courses to do A-Levels seem to be the most feasible for me. They're not too bad price-wise and I can fit it around other commitments. Access Courses are a bit limiting and Foundation Courses generally cost almost 10k and tend to be full time as well, which are not luxuries I can afford. Also, as much as possible, I want to do all this within one year of education, and afaik, I would also have to pay the college given that I have a higher qualification than what they're offering.

I have checked the exemption courses at Open and Birkbeck and Open offers every single course I'm thinking of doing but Birkbeck offers only Maths, Maths with Stats and Computing with Data Science, not a lot of choices there but at least I'd get to attend physical lectures, which tbh is something I feel like I need to immerse myself.

As for why I'm doing Maths, I'm thinking of going into Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning. Worst case scenario, I use a general engineering degree to increase my employability with my Architecture one. Health allied professions don't really interest me, except for Radiography, which I think is cool but don't really wanna do for a living.

Have you got any idea about the quality of Maths at either Birkbeck or Open? Where do you suggest I go? I'm leaning more on Birkbeck atm because of the physical learning environment and it's shorter, but I keep finding posts about how much employers hold Open in such high regards and such.

Yes, I am limited to part-time courses. I'm working full-time right now (unrelated to my course, damn this pandemic) but will be getting a masters within a year or two start a BSc in Maths/Engineering as soon as I finish it to get into construction rather than the design aspect of it (which was what Architecture was mostly about). This is mostly just to support myself whilst I'm doing the STEM course as prospects with Architecture is a bit limiting, especially now. I also feel like where I got it from reduces my chances to an extent.

I wanna study STEM for personal interest and professional development, but also to prove to myself that I can. I went through a lot during A-Levels and so I wanna just show myself that I can do it without all those hindrances, and more. I guess it's internal conflict and I'm not sure you'd understand but yeah, lol.

And yeah, you're right, Birkbeck doesn't offer a lot of ELQs; Engineering isn't even an option. This puts me off a bit but currently would still prefer it over Open because of the physical learning environment and face-to-face teaching that I feel like would help a lot (if you think Open is gonna offer so much better prospects later on, please let me know why! I'm proper torn). Anyway, Birkbeck only offers three courses I'm interested in: Maths, Maths with Stats and Data Science and Computing. If you have any information about what Birkbeck is like for any of these courses(these specific subjects, support, student life, lecturers, etc), or in general, please do share it!

I have looked at some apprenticeships but they mostly look for RG grads and the pay tends to be quite terrible (definitely can't live off that when I live in London). I might try to look some up though, but do you have any specific companies in mind?

If that's the case, then you would want to go for the fast track A Level courses. They are meant to be revision for retakes, and then are supposed to be completed within a year. On the other hand, you will need to take exams like everybody else, and I'm personally not sure of what November will bring in midst of the pandemic. The online colleges should provide you with a predicted grade based on the assignments you complete, but some colleges may have some restrictions on when you could enroll on the courses.
On the one hand, if you have not done Physics or Further Maths before at A Level, would you surely want to do it within 1 year? Most colleges I've asked won't allow you to do Further Maths within one year anyway because of how hard it is.
I too would prefer the classroom environment, but given the lockdown restrictions, you're still more likely to be going through the equivalent of an online course, so I don't see the point with some. Online courses tend to be cheaper anyway, but the classroom courses would have the same price as prior to lockdown.

Technically, if you're looking to do AI or ML, you're kind of better off learning it yourself (there are plenty of sources online, as you may know) than going through uni in my opinion. They're relatively new fields, so I doubt the courses at unis would be that much better than learning things online. To my knowledge, I think the main programming languages you need for AI would be C++, and ML should be Java (I have a friend who did his PhD in AI). You can find these short courses on Udacity that will give you the overview at a relatively lower price.
If you're intending to use an engineering degree to complement your architecture degree, then I am not sure what employers would think about doing a degree in general engineering as opposed to civil engineering, which from what I have limited uses of maths as opposed to other disciplines. (Since you have a better idea of the construction industry, I'm not going to comment on the labour market for the industry). If you're going for AI and ML, then I would have thought computer engineering, or electronic and electric engineering would be better specialisms outside of computer science. I'm not sure general engineering would necessarily give you the best opportunities in these areas.
The other thing is, after speaking with a number of potential and exisiting engineers (as well as doing a bit of research on it myself), I have found the field is unnecessarily competitive, in the sense that even though plenty of firms know they need many more engineers than they have and that they really should consider how they can contribute to society, the jobs are ridiculously limited for some reason. So, even if you have a top degree from a top uni, it doesn't necessarily mean you will have an easy time finding a job in the field.

I can't really comment on Open vs Birbeck. I would consider Birbeck is because their qualifications is acceptable to UCL, but the variety like you said is limited. With Open, I wasn't a fan of their Access degree and the limited science degree that you get to do after that, so I didn't look into it further.

Sorry, I have to comment here. Whilst it's admirable to study STEM knowing it's not easy and that you have an interest in it is great, I wouldn't advise getting into the degrees unless you really want to get into a STEM field. Whilst the degree will open doors to a number of jobs, they are rarely available within STEM (ridiculously competitive for reasons that are still beyond me), and getting a job outside of STEM will most likely allow for any degree. Since you already have a degree in architecture, it makes little sense to get another degree in STEM if you are mostly likely going to end up doing any random job that requires just any degree.

Apprenticeships are synonymous with low pay, unfortunately, but for many it's the only via option to get into the field. Even if you take your background and experience into account, I would doubt that you would be able to get around this either. As mentioned previously, engineering is ridiculously competitive for reasons that are still beyond me. For me, I'm trying to have a separate source of income to help fund my way through university, and it's proving difficult. I am guessing you may end up doing something similar, especially when you're living in London. I don't know whether the employers within the engineering field have any opinions of this or get funny about it though.

Yes, I am limited to part-time courses. I'm working full-time right now (unrelated to my course, damn this pandemic) but will be getting a masters within a year or two start a BSc in Maths/Engineering as soon as I finish it to get into construction rather than the design aspect of it (which was what Architecture was mostly about). This is mostly just to support myself whilst I'm doing the STEM course as prospects with Architecture is a bit limiting, especially now. I also feel like where I got it from reduces my chances to an extent.

I wanna study STEM for personal interest and professional development, but also to prove to myself that I can. I went through a lot during A-Levels and so I wanna just show myself that I can do it without all those hindrances, and more. I guess it's internal conflict and I'm not sure you'd understand but yeah, lol.

And yeah, you're right, Birkbeck doesn't offer a lot of ELQs; Engineering isn't even an option. This puts me off a bit but currently would still prefer it over Open because of the physical learning environment and face-to-face teaching that I feel like would help a lot (if you think Open is gonna offer so much better prospects later on, please let me know why! I'm proper torn). Anyway, Birkbeck only offers three courses I'm interested in: Maths, Maths with Stats and Data Science and Computing. If you have any information about what Birkbeck is like for any of these courses(these specific subjects, support, student life, lecturers, etc), or in general, please do share it!

I have looked at some apprenticeships but they mostly look for RG grads and the pay tends to be quite terrible (definitely can't live off that when I live in London). I might try to look some up though, but do you have any specific companies in mind?

Hello everyone! So I recently just graduated with a 2:1 in Architecture and don't want to continue with my Masters, it's just not what I see myself doing for decades to come.

So to start this off, I was in the hospital for most of year 13 (from October), got discharged around January (stayed at home) - kept going back to the hospital due to infections/surgery and I went back to school around Easter time, and I simply couldn't catch up. Ended with a BCD in English, Maths & IT respectively. As you can imagine, I had to do a foundation course to get into university, not just because I didn't have the grades, I also didn't do Art. I wanted to redo A-Levels at the time but long story short, I didn't.

Anyway, I was recently made aware of Open University/Birkbeck University's part-time courses and the fact that I can get funding for a second degree if I do a STEM subject, which is precisely what I'm gunning for. Possibly Maths, Computer Science or Engineering - then potentially go on to an RG uni later on for Masters (if I'm lucky).

But as it turns out, even my GCSE Maths (one that I got an A* for) is a little rusty. I can fill the gap by self-studying but I can't for the life of me seem to remember anything in A-Levels Maths (thinking of possibly taking Further Maths or Physics) that I don't have the confidence that I'd be able to take a highly numerate subject at university level without external help, and I don't know any Maths/Physics/Engineering grad who could help.

Is there any way to do this? I've seen some online ones but most of them received mostly negative reviews. Are there any good ones out there? Are there any alternatives I can do? Would STEM (Maths/Engineering specifically) be better at Open or Birkbeck?

hi can i ask the pros and cons of ur course

Sorry, what do you mean? Which course? Architecture?