A-Level Choices

Hiya!! I am picking my a-levels soon and I am unsure whether to pursue further maths.

I am planning on taking maths, chemistry, and physics for alevel, and I am averagings 8's and 9's in most subjects. In all honesty, I don't plan on going down a maths/engineering/computer science route and I've seen mixed opinions on whether FM is a good idea or not because of this. I am planning on doing an EPQ too and hopefully an extracurricular programme (e.g. COMPOS) alongside my alevels (if i am accepted into any LOL), and either way a few supercurriculars!! I am hoping to go to cambridge or ucl/imperial (in a very ideal world that is) (and depending the route I go down) and I am not sure if it'd affect my chances of getting in. I feel personally if I take those 3 subjects I'll get better overall grades than if I do 4 in all honesty.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, TIA!!

Reply 1

tboc09

Start with all 4 you can from further maths if its too hard you dont like it or if you think you've given yourself too much of a burden. Also if your not too sure about what you want to do unless you enjoy the subjects your picking dont just pick them because your good at them its better to do something you like. Unis dont really care about what you do more so your grades so long as its on the universities list of prefered subjects (which is most of them) youll be fine

Reply 2

DerDracologe

Study Forum Helper

Original post

by saffyy_y

Hiya!! I am picking my a-levels soon and I am unsure whether to pursue further maths.
I am planning on taking maths, chemistry, and physics for alevel, and I am averagings 8's and 9's in most subjects. In all honesty, I don't plan on going down a maths/engineering/computer science route and I've seen mixed opinions on whether FM is a good idea or not because of this. I am planning on doing an EPQ too and hopefully an extracurricular programme (e.g. COMPOS) alongside my alevels (if i am accepted into any LOL), and either way a few supercurriculars!! I am hoping to go to cambridge or ucl/imperial (in a very ideal world that is) (and depending the route I go down) and I am not sure if it'd affect my chances of getting in. I feel personally if I take those 3 subjects I'll get better overall grades than if I do 4 in all honesty.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, TIA!!

If you dont want to do something maths related at uni then its not worth it, focus on your other 3 and do an EPQ cos some unis will give you a reduced offer and even if not writing about your EPQ on your ps is always great 🙂
What field are you interested in?

Reply 3

dxgfchvjbn

Original post

by saffyy_y

Hiya!! I am picking my a-levels soon and I am unsure whether to pursue further maths.
I am planning on taking maths, chemistry, and physics for alevel, and I am averagings 8's and 9's in most subjects. In all honesty, I don't plan on going down a maths/engineering/computer science route and I've seen mixed opinions on whether FM is a good idea or not because of this. I am planning on doing an EPQ too and hopefully an extracurricular programme (e.g. COMPOS) alongside my alevels (if i am accepted into any LOL), and either way a few supercurriculars!! I am hoping to go to cambridge or ucl/imperial (in a very ideal world that is) (and depending the route I go down) and I am not sure if it'd affect my chances of getting in. I feel personally if I take those 3 subjects I'll get better overall grades than if I do 4 in all honesty.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, TIA!!

i would say take further maths as a fourth subject, and then if you feel that the workload is too heavy, you can drop it! It's always better to have 3 great alevels than 4 good ones!
The only thing to consider is that if you want to study maths specifically, all the unis you've mentioned do require furhter maths, so you'll either need to stick it out (if you can be sure that ur other subjects wont suffer) or decide that you cant study maths at uni. Luckily, as far as i know, maths is the only degree that requires further maths at alevel, so if further maths doesn't work out, it just means you cant study maths, you could still go into the other fields you were looking at!

Reply 4

Muu9

If you don't plan on going down a maths/engineering/computer science route, why do COMPOS? I would say the difficulty level of the maths in COMPOS is at least as high as FM. If you want to study physics, do FM. If you don't want to do physics or maths/engineering/computer science, I don't see the point of doing COMPOS.

(edited 1 month ago)

Reply 5

Muttley79

Original post

by saffyy_y

Hiya!! I am picking my a-levels soon and I am unsure whether to pursue further maths.
I am planning on taking maths, chemistry, and physics for alevel, and I am averagings 8's and 9's in most subjects. In all honesty, I don't plan on going down a maths/engineering/computer science route and I've seen mixed opinions on whether FM is a good idea or not because of this. I am planning on doing an EPQ too and hopefully an extracurricular programme (e.g. COMPOS) alongside my alevels (if i am accepted into any LOL), and either way a few supercurriculars!! I am hoping to go to cambridge or ucl/imperial (in a very ideal world that is) (and depending the route I go down) and I am not sure if it'd affect my chances of getting in. I feel personally if I take those 3 subjects I'll get better overall grades than if I do 4 in all honesty.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, TIA!!

What degree are you aiming for?

Reply 6

saffyy_y

Original post

by Muu9

Thank you so much!! This is a great insight honestly, it's so hard to know about these things (especially programmes like COMPOS with not too much info out there on the level) so I really do appreciate it!! Yeah, I'm not sure I want to pursue physics higher than a-levels if I do definitely take it, so thank you for the advice!