Maths Studies?

I've seen a lot of people saying that top universities will not look at applicants who have maths studies instead of maths SL.

Is this true? Even if your degree will be in a subject completely unrelated to maths - for example, English, or languages?

Surely they'd rather you'd get a better score overall? And compared to A level students who don't even have to have any maths...it just doesn't make much sense! :confused:

Reply 1

Welix

Original post by bazoolium

For the most competitive degrees, maths at SL will simply look better than maths studies, because it shows that you're challenging yourself. maths is generally regarded as a "respected academic subject" or whatever, at places like Cambridge and LSE.

This would be a tiny difference though. To illustrate my belief an example: i would think that someone applying to do history, having done an AS level in maths would have a similar advantage to someone who did SL maths over maths studies (also applying for history). I really wouldn't worry about it, chances are that the admissions tutors won't even realise that there's a difference between studies and SL :tongue:

Reply 2

amykc

^^ Agreed.

But I think that if you're going for a degree that has limited relation to maths, it shouldn't matter all that much. A 6 or 7 in MSSL would probably be seen as better than scraping a 4 or 5 in SL Maths.

But if you do find that you end up wanting to take a degree where SL Maths is "Recommended" or "Required", you can always do an external course that says you can handle the SL content.