subjects of death for chosen careers

Have stumbled across this discussion by chance but am finding it fascinating. I have 15 and 14 year olds who are on track to get good grades in variety of traditional academic subjects. They have supportive family etc.. and my gut feeling is that whatever they choose it'll all be ok in the end. Is this naive?! I reckon in 15 years we'll look back and wonder why choosing the 'right' subjects seemed so stressful.

She does want to apply to Oxford but not sure what predicted grades school will give her. She usually pulls it out the bag in the end so will apply on actual results if predictions based on AS aren't good enough. If that makes sense.

abouteve- If your DD looks likely to get all A's at A-level, and has a good number of A's at GCSE then she should apply. They can only say no, and if they do, so what?

Riven's daughter was accepted and only had 5 GCSE's.

Yes, this is the exception, and MillyR is right about general requirements- they could fill the place with straight A students 4 times over- but someone has to be the exception.

MilyR, I hope it's just scaremongering to say that forget the best uni's unless you have all A* at GCSE. Perhaps it's designed to put people off applying. No-one will get in if they don't apply.

Best rule, if you don't want to rule out universities/careers etc is to stick to old fashioned academic subjects. Do not do anything vocational(e.g. law, accountancy) or which has the sord "studies" at the end. Psychology and sociology are also viewed as soft options.

There are exceptions to this rule (e.g. if the goal is art school rather than university,when textiles/design/photography etc are fine).

AE, on parents evening at my son's state school, they put posters up of the previous year's sixth form. Each leaver has a poster with a picture, their current university and a list of their A level and GCSE subjects, grades and other achievements.

Quite a few go to Oxford, and most of the ones that go do not have all A/A* grades at GCSE. One student had a C in both English and English lit.

I have also seen the videos put on Youtube by Cambridge, showing the interview process and how they make the decisions. The admissions tutors were discussing how good they thought a candidate's GCSE results were; in some of her subjects she had a B.

So I'm inclined to think this whole idea that you have to have all A grades at GCSE to have a decent chance of getting in is not rather strange. Are there stats produced on it? There seems to be stats on everything else to do with Oxford.

Agree with LadyGlencora about quality of advice. FE college and sixth forms are not impartial - they have spaces to fill and will often allocate students accordingly without regard to what's best for the student. Thus, I have come across students with the grades for level 3 courses (including A levels) being put on level 2 and even level 1 courses because the level 3 course was full. The other issue is lack of career knowledge among teachers - many attended university 10 or 20 or more years ago and their knowledge and advice is out of date. The situation is likely to get worse as hundreds of professional qualified careers advisers (who provide impartial guidance) are being made redundant across the country.

I think part of the problem, LadyGP, is politics (with a small p). Can you imagine the ruckus in the staff room if the school/college told pupils that Subject A was 'better' than Subject B? They have to carry on the pretence that all things are equal - which is nice for the staff but not very helpful for the pupils.

i've found as long as there is enthusiasm that counts so much more than exams

I have no experience of broadcast journalism, so what CockneySparra says may well hold true for that, but it is certainly not true for print journalism. You need, as MillyR put it, a knowledge base.

As for the wider question of whether we should be talking in terms of subjects of death at all - well perhaps it is not entirely as black and white as that, but too many young people ARE let down by not having the expectations of their chosen career spelled out to them early enough. I know that the FE college in my town gives appalling advice to pupils who are choosing A-level subjects. They appear to have no contacts with universities, no sense of what the requirements for the most competitive courses are going to be, with the result that pupils who don't have parents with the appropriate experience are left floundering.
That's why threads like this are important.

So, OP, to go back to your original question about which subjects should be advised against for particular careers, given the variety of conflicting opinions on this thread, do you agree that there is no simple answer to this question that everybody can agree on?

And that we therefore need to move away from the idea that there are "subjects of death for chosen careers"?

excuse my appalling typing

Only read OP, but absolutely do NOT buy into the snobbery about media studies re: careers in journalism / radio / TV.

If you want to be go to a Russell Group uni, they might hold it against you. Otherwise, if a young person enjoys media Studs and is likely to excel / get a good grade - go for it!

I worked for the BBC for 10 years - in news, sport and music radio - and shit loads of people had Media Studies / Cultural Studies / English & Communication Studies etc degrees.

To be honest, nobody gives a shit what your degree is for most media jobs - they want you to demonstrate work experience in the field and a passion for your area.

It is the one industry I have worked in where nobody (bar perhaps in the very upper echelons of BBC News/Politics) gives a flying fuck if you got a first from Cambridge.

harassed- i think the point is that contrary to what many believe there is no advantage in having an accountancy degree over e.g a history degree when applying to the big accountancy firms (other than the exams exemption).

However, by taking accountancy as a degree you are narrowing your options because if you decided after graduating that you actually wanted to be a lawyer or a banker, the accountancy degree would not be seen in as good a light by law firms or IB's as a more traditional academic subject.

(I am an ACA btw, so definitely not down on accounting)

about eve- if she looks like getting A's a A-level she should apply anyway.

I am a firm believer in "you'll never know if you never go"

I'm not sure, Exepat, when I applied to Oxford they said they liked to see a string of As at O level. That probably varied with the subject, mine was a non-school subject so they couldn't go on how you were doing in that subject, they liked breadth.

And really, there are the same number of places at Oxbridge as there were, so it can't actually be that much harder to get in.

I feel a bit sorry for them that they mostly seem to get lots of high grades but the grades aren't worth as much cos too many others have them.

As to Oxford it depends on what she wants to study. Is it Medicine? Then maybe not, but if she is from an under-represented school it might be worth a punt. If she is enthusiastic and loves her subject, then it is worth considering Oxford. If she is from a state school then even more so for some colleges, as long as she is bright.

As I was once told, "If someone from a State school has 3 A's then I know they are bright, if they were at a public school they may just have been well taught."

talkinpeace

"they may have gone in with an accountancy degree
but how did they do in their CCAB exams and afterwards?
they will have had a narrower intellectual base on which to build a business career."

Virtually everyone went on to get the ACA qualification with a big firm - many including me with first time passes. If you know you want to be a chartered accountant (and sad but true - I and most others on the course did) then exemption from a year's worth of exams was worth having. And I would argue that the intellectual base you refer to was not narrow at all - as I said before we studied all sorts alongside the lawyers, economists, statisticians. A large proportion of the people who joined the firm at the same time as me had accountancy degrees - and they were welcomed not frowned upon. Certainly not second best!

I'm starting to feel a bit sorry for our DC's generation. When I went to Cambridge, the standard A-level offer was AAB, I knew people who had got in with less, and no-one cared about O-levels.

When my father went to Oxford, he got one A-level, and had to retake the equivalent of Latin O-level in his first term, as he had failed it three times at school and you needed an ancient language to matriculate. He did pass the entrance exam, though.

And now they are all expected to get close on 100 per cent for everything. I know that exams may have got easier, according to some teachers/academics I know, but even so, there is so much hard slog - my 16-year-old nephew is doing more work for his GCSEs at the moment than I did in my final year at Cambridge (and I got a first).

Well she is from a disadvantaged background and it's post 2012 entry so that might help . Not sure she will even apply there anyway, depends on A level grades.

she can apply- anyone can apply- but they have to discriminate somehow and they will probably have enough candidates who have never dropped a grade at GCSE or A-level to fill their places.

For Oxbridge, the question is not "is my child bright enough for Oxbridge" but, "is my child brighter than all the other people who want to go Oxbridge" because there are more people who are bright enough to do a degree there than there are places.

Checkmate, so my DD won't be able to apply to Oxford because she has GCSE grade C in Drama?

Regarding MFL's - if the teaching starts at primary school and it is seen as important as numeracy and literacy, as it is teaching english in other countries, then hopefully it will become pretty automatic that children will go on to study it at GCSE level and actually be able to have a basic conversations in that language. That's what we meed to aim for.

As far as taking "traditional" subjects at A level, all children are different and for some this may not be the best way to succeed. I have maths GCSE but there is no way I could have done maths a level, it's just not where my talents lie. As I posted n a thread a few days ago, I did sociology a level, shock horror, alongside history and english. I then went on to do a sociology degree (at a top uni), but I'm confident I would have got a place on a history course if I'd wanted. I had a good idea of the type of field I wanted to get into and that these a levels and degree would be beneficial to me.

If I'd been "persuaded" to take maths a level I wouldn't have got a high grade, so wouldn't have met the standards needed to get into the university I wanted to. Ok so my mathematical skills may not be great but that's really not important for my career, and I know enough to get me through normal life. So there will be children choosing their alevels at the moment who also need to look at their strengths as well as the subjects needed to get into the uni courses of their choice.

Re: accountancy degrees - I have quite a few friend who took a level accountancy, some alongside economics too, and have excellent jobs with top firms (and one even did an accountancy degree, shock horror!).