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History or Economics at A-level

Hi, I've just finished my GCSE's but I'm struggling a bit deciding whether to pick History or Economics for A-level next year.

I have decided on doing Maths + Further Maths, Physics, German, and then either History or Economics for my last slot. I am fairly sure I want to study Economics at university, but I realise that if I chose A-level Economics instead of History, I would not have a full-on essay subject. Would this lack of an essay subject be a disadvantage if I applied for an Economics degree? And would the lack of an essay-subject narrow my options if I wanted to do something other than Economics, especially given that Economics is not considered a "facilitating subject", and that History is probably a little more well-regarded? All else aside, if I were to apply for an economics degree, do you think the uni would prefer history or economics?

I was also considering applying to a US university, because they offer more scope for learning about things unrelated than your major. Would it be a disadvantage to have an A-level as narrow/specific as Economics if I decided to apply to a US uni if they are looking more for all-round ability?

For History, my main concern is the workload - at GCSE despite finding the subject really interesting and despite getting fairly good grades, I found it was very demanding in terms of revision time (I think I ended up spending more time on Hist than all my other subjects combined!), and even then I was still thrown by one of the essay questions in the GCSE paper. Given that A-levels are supposedly a lot harder than GCSE's, I'm not sure whether I'd be able to survive the onslaught of essays! If you did History at A-level, how did you find the workload? Is it very difficult to get an A*? Another consideration is that whereas the GCSE course focused on Modern History (Treaty of Versailles, WW2, Cold War, Nazis etc.) which I loved, the A-level course at my school will be on things like the England in the mid C17th, France in late C18th, and Russia 1856-1950. While the Russian revolution sounds fun, lots of the course is history from hundreds of years ago, which I feel could get a little tedious. I don't know what it would be like to study history from that long ago, but I am worried that it could get a little tedious and boring, given that unlike modern history I feel it doesn't really tie in that much with the present world. Not to mention the fact that entire course is European history. Am I being closed-minded in thinking that C17th English history will probably be boring and irrelevant? If you've done A-level history covering that sort of time period, what did you think of it? Is it very different to modern history? Is there any way I would be able to tell whether or not I would enjoy it?

Sorry for such a long post - any help/advice would be greatly appreciated!
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Daniel-B
Hi, I've just finished my GCSE's but I'm struggling a bit deciding whether to pick History or Economics for A-level next year.

I have decided on doing Maths + Further Maths, Physics, German, and then either History or Economics for my last slot. I am fairly sure I want to study Economics at university, but I realise that if I chose A-level Economics instead of History, I would not have a full-on essay subject. Would this lack of an essay subject be a disadvantage if I applied for an Economics degree? And would the lack of an essay-subject narrow my options if I wanted to do something other than Economics, especially given that Economics is not considered a "facilitating subject", and that History is probably a little more well-regarded? All else aside, if I were to apply for an economics degree, do you think the uni would prefer history or economics?

I was also considering applying to a US university, because they offer more scope for learning about things unrelated than your major. Would it be a disadvantage to have an A-level as narrow/specific as Economics if I decided to apply to a US uni if they are looking more for all-round ability?

For History, my main concern is the workload - at GCSE despite finding the subject really interesting and despite getting fairly good grades, I found it was very demanding in terms of revision time (I think I ended up spending more time on Hist than all my other subjects combined!), and even then I was still thrown by one of the essay questions in the GCSE paper. Given that A-levels are supposedly a lot harder than GCSE's, I'm not sure whether I'd be able to survive the onslaught of essays! If you did History at A-level, how did you find the workload? Is it very difficult to get an A*? Another consideration is that whereas the GCSE course focused on Modern History (Treaty of Versailles, WW2, Cold War, Nazis etc.) which I loved, the A-level course at my school will be on things like the England in the mid C17th, France in late C18th, and Russia 1856-1950. While the Russian revolution sounds fun, lots of the course is history from hundreds of years ago, which I feel could get a little tedious. I don't know what it would be like to study history from that long ago, but I am worried that it could get a little tedious and boring, given that unlike modern history I feel it doesn't really tie in that much with the present world. Not to mention the fact that entire course is European history. Am I being closed-minded in thinking that C17th English history will probably be boring and irrelevant? If you've done A-level history covering that sort of time period, what did you think of it? Is it very different to modern history? Is there any way I would be able to tell whether or not I would enjoy it?

Sorry for such a long post - any help/advice would be greatly appreciated!



You are worrying too much about the minutiae. If you dont have an essay based subject then so be it. You do some essays in economics?
Five A levels is a lot. three good ones are better than five mediocre ones.

Maths Physics and German are all facilitating subjects . Dont worry.

They want the grade dont mind about the subject.

You can check yourself the admission criteria, but not every economics degree requires economics, but they do want maths.

NO comment US.

History is great. It has a lot of volume though imo do Economics.
Reply 2
take Maths-History-Economics-German

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