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What A-Level's should I choose?

Hi everyone,

I am currently a year 11 about to submit my choices for A-Level, but need some advice.

I currently study business, media studies, sociology and history and of course all core subjects. I am achieving fairly decent grades in everything, with all of my targets being 7's and an 8 in business.
My original plan was to study economics at A-Level, as I currently enjoy business and was told that economics was a slightly 'better' A-Level to take. I would have taken maths however don't think I have the skill set for this 🙈. My next thoughts were doing media studies, however don't know how useful this is for future. Finally, I thought I would enjoy doing politics as I do enjoy UK and US politics, but would love to know what it is like from someone's experience.

I'm currently not too sure what I want to do career wise, but would like to do a degree apprenticeship, or a high level apprenticeship after sixth form.

Also, do you think an EPQ or Core Maths additional qualification would be better?

Any help at all would be super helpful, and any recommendations of what to do would be amazing!

Reply 1

DerDracologe

Study Forum Helper

Picking subjects you like is your best bet if youre not sure what direction to go with 🙂 Core maths is a good idea if you’re working at a 5 or above in maths seen as econ is one of your choices. If not an epq is a great way to build essay skills!
@Jaa_ can you help with politics?

Reply 2

Jaa_

Thanks @DerDracologe for the mention!

I'll take you through my experience of Economics (AQA) and Politics (AQA), since I do them both at A-level :biggrin:

.

They're both terribly interesting, and since you said you enjoy UK and US politics already, studying it academically might be really interesting for you. From my experience, politics relies heavily on having a broad range of examples to use in essays and to be able to think critically. Studying the governance side - i.e. the institutions and processes of the branches of government - is really quite applicable as you begin to understand current events, and begin to form opinions, like whether actions of presidents break the constitution. On the other side, studying politics is covering things you'll have most likely heard of before. Take voting behaviour for example. It's rather interesting to apply theory and concepts and then to see them materialise in actual elections. Overall, a wonderful subject. But, it does require a lot of memorisation and from my experience, the AQA exams are quite tight for time. It's two hours per three papers, with 3x 9 markers, 1x extract 25 marker, and 1x 'traditional' 25 marker.

Econ relies a lot less on memorisation, more on understanding and application. For the most part, in micro econ you'll be given extracts and you'll have to apply economic theory to it, usually analysing whether governments should intervene in a given market, factor or product, and whether markets are too concentrated and for what reasons. For macro, you'll be looking at the wider economy. Again, this'll likely be covering things you've heard of before, like economic growth and inflation, but explores the theory behind them, analysing them with economic models and diagrams etc. As for the papers, paper 1 is micro (2, 4, 9, 25, 15, 25 markers), paper 2 is macro (same structure as micro), and a synoptic paper 3 (30x 1 mark multiple choice, 10, 15, and 25 marker). Some do say economics is slightly 'better', but if you prefer business, go with business.

If your Sixth Form allows it, you could pick both and drop one if you choose after a while.

Hope this helps! 😀