3 or 4 A levels?

Yes of course you wouldn’t stand out for taking 4 or be penalised but it shows a degree of rigor. Taking 4 and achieving BBCC for example is worse than taking 3 and achieving A*A*A. But if you take 4 and get A*A*A*A, it obviously is better than A*A*A. Many people get into Oxbridge without 4, but the only people who have received offers from Oxford & interviews from Cambridge at my state school are people who have taken 4 A levels. But once again, no point taking 4 if you’re going to under perform

I'm sure there were also many at your state school who undertook 4 A levels but were unsuccessful with Oxbridge. In this instance, correlation does not imply causation.

And the students at my school who went to Oxbridge all took 3 A levels, and had offers on 3 A levels (bog standard comprehensive)

I'm thinking of Computer Science, Maths and French with either Photography or English Language as the 4th, but not too sure ^^

Not sure why loads of people are so adamant against taking 4 when surely taking 4, then having room to drop, is far better than taking 3 and then being stuck with them?

Hey, are you thinking of applying to uni and if so what course? Unis only "look" at 3, but they will obviously consider all 4 as part of your application! Sometimes their offer might be A*AA, and if you get a B in a subject by accident, but an A in an irrelevant fourth subject you'll still meet the offer!

I'm taking maths, further maths, physics and drama, and I'm going to study computer science at uni! I also self-taught cs and did an epq so I'd go with whatever you feel comfortable with - it is a lot of work though! XD

I'm either going to do computer science or linguistics. I'm still not too sure though, so I don't know what I should choose for A level :/ How have you been self-teaching cs?

Personally, I don’t think it matters very much if you study comp sci at a level- all CS degrees teach assuming no prior knowledge, but they need a a strong foundation in maths, so maths and further maths are very good subjects for a comp sci degree at prestigious unis, others may just look for regular maths.

I found as I did a lot of extra reading around CS, programming projects and web development and I am quick at picking things up, so I found I was already quite good with cs papers, so I just brought a textbook for my schools exam board, and worked through it and my school assessed me when it went to CAGs!

So I’d recommend maybe doing maths and french, and then decide between the other subjects for your other two. Maybe you could do further maths and linguistics as that lets you do comp sci and linguistics, all up to you!

Which is the better option? I'm a hard worker with good grades but I don't want to feel overloaded with work. I have 5 possible choices but I'm struggling to narrow them down.