I have no idea what to do for uni

I'm just about to begin year 11, so I haven't picked my A levels at the moment, but I have absolutely no idea what to take (let alone know what to do for uni), and it's seriously stressing me out.

I'm not significantly worse at any particular subject. Still, I find myself verbalising my thoughts better in humanities subjects rather than STEM ones, which I feel like would be better for interviews.

However, the career prospects for humanities degrees seem to be either something I love with low pay (which I honestly can't justify as I come from a poor background) or don't appeal to me, which is extremely unmotivating. The only degree I feel mixes both humanities and STEM well is psychology, and even then, to get a job in that career, you need a PhD, which I seriously don't want to do.

I can't tell if it's just my insecurities, but I seriously feel like I can't cope with the STEM courses that interest me, e.g, chemical engineering, so it seems pointless to me to enter such a competitive job market. I also can't help but think I'd have a lot more fun in a humanities course.

Overall, I just find myself extremely confused, and I don't want to pick my A levels without having at least a semblance of an idea of what I want to do for uni.

Reply 1

CatLover1

Hi @lovezc

It's good you are wondering about this, but I wouldn't get too worried now. I did biology, chemistry and history at A Level and am now entering the second year of my history degree. I personally enjoyed science, but hated practicals.

I want to enter into something around research or policy (maybe in education) hopefully in the Civil Service. For the Civil Service graduate schemes, you need a 2.1 in any degree.

Strong Humanities degrees such as history are well respected as you gain a lot of skills in finding information, analysis, essay writing. In fact, many law firms hire history graduates because of the skills they have. Doing a history degree does not mean having to go into history. Have a look online at the different careers history/humanities graduates go into, they are very varied.

With your concern about whether you can articulate thoughts around humanities instead of STEM, you are only in year 11, that will develop over time. A Level sciences are very different to GCSE, you may find you either enjoy it or hate it, both options are fine. If you want to have a broad range of subjects you can enter, doing 2 science/maths and a humanities is a good route. Humanities degrees typically don't have lots of requirements. If you have a broad range of A Levels, then you don't need to know what you want to do as you can enter many fields. Also, if you change your mind, you could do a foundation year.

I'm finding my history degree really enjoyable (though with hindsight maybe a history and politics degree would have been better, but there is no impact on my career based on that). I enjoy researching everything, doing essays ish, the lectures and the stuff related to it.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask any other questions.