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Confused about PPE

Today at school my self confidence was really knocked by some of my teachers. Up until recently, I'd wanted to study medicine and school had been really supportive about that. However, I've now had a change of heart and decided I wanted to do PPE, hopefully at Oxford.

Yesterday I had a good talk with the gifted and talented coordinator about it all and we had a little political debate and he said he felt I needed to read some books and gain some more understanding of the three disciplines but he said he felt I did well in our first debate.

Then today I went to speak to my head of year, and he told me that my teacher yesterday had said he was very worried about me applying to do PPE?! They're worried because I'm studying chemistry, biology, maths and French and they don't think this is a good subject combination for the course. However, I thought that, as there are no required subjects for the course and maths (which I'm taking) is the only strongly recommended one, I would be fine to apply for this course as long as I show strong interest and potential capability in all the areas. I'm doing facilitating subjects and I thought my grades (predicted all As for A2) would be more important.

I realise that having an essay based subject would be better, but I contacted Oxford asking about whether I should do a history AS next year on top of my A2s and they said to focus on grades so not really.

I've written an essay in my EPQ and when I contacted Oxford about it they recommended that I show my essay skills in other ways, such as the compulsory TSA admissions test for PPE and I've personally looked into some essay competitions.

I was under the impression that if you changed your mind your teachers could write something in your UCAS reference by mentioning that you chose your subjects based on wanting to study medicine but changed your mind. I'm now feeling very confused, I really want to study PPE but am I being mad? Have I got no chance at all? :frown:

Reply 1

Origami Bullets

Follow the advice that Oxford has given you - they know more about this than your teachers do.

French does contain some essay writing, and maths is a recommended subject, so you're only going to have one irrelevant subject at A2. I reckon you'll be fine - or at least, if you do get rejected, it won't be because of your subject combination

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Reply 2

AndreyFokin

Recently I have attended an conference where several lecturers from Oxbridge gave talks concerning their subjects. The man who spoke of PPE clearly let everyone know that in fact they prefer pupils from science backgrounds. Therefore I think you should be fine.

Reply 3

magicmuggle

Original post by AndreyFokin

Really? I've never heard that before - in fact, aside from maths the subject Oxford recommends is history. Could you go into a bit more detail about what was said?

Reply 4

AndreyFokin

Original post by magicmuggle

Really? I've never heard that before - in fact, aside from maths the subject Oxford recommends is history. Could you go into a bit more detail about what was said?

Sure, basically I was attending an Oxbridge information conference in Newcastle and one of the lectures to which I have been was given by a PPE teacher at Oxford. He explained for some reason they prefer pupils from science backgrounds for PPE and other similar courses. According to him it proves your ability to think logically and analytically. I am not fully aware of why it is so, but all I can say is that I too was somewhat surprised when he stated that a perfect subject combination for a course like Philosophy would be Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry and English Literature. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed to hear this as I who plans on doing economics or something economics related such as PPE, do not do any sciences besides Maths and Economics.