Three or four A-levels where one is Further Maths?

Can't advise on what is current, but when I did Further Maths in the late 1990s, we covered the Maths syllabus in the lower sixth and then the Further Maths syllabus in the upper sixth. This may vary from school to school - so speak to the school. I did Natural Sciences at Cambridge and although I didn't do physics past the first year, having done FM was definitely helpful. My DH read Maths at Cambridge and did Latin as his 4th subject alongside Maths, FM and Physics, but I'd say that another science such as Chemistry would likely be more useful (there is overlap between the two subjects depending which part of physics she ends up specialising in) than an unrelated subject like French if your daughter is planning to read Physics as opposed to Maths

As for language fluency - our experience with the likes of Duo Lingo has been far better than what we encountered at school with language teaching - doesn't A-Level French have a lot of literature content?

Does anyone have an opinion on whether it would be looked down on for a high-flier to do three subjects if two of them were maths and FM?

Can't remember which Uni open day it was (Durham maybe??) but they said that if you do FM, they basically ignore the Maths A level, so they were looking for a total of 4, simply because they wanted 2 different subjects as well as the FM (i.e. Maths and FM were counted as the same subject not two!).

Also check how your sixth form teach Maths/Further Maths.

At my son's school, for those doing FM, they do A level Maths in lower sixth and FM in upper sixth, so they're not actually doing 4 A levels at the same time, they just do both Maths at a faster pace to get through each in 1 year not 2, which makes it more feasible from a workload point of view than doing 4 different subjects.

French is useful if she can do a course where there is a year out to do French. My DD went to the University of Geneva. So look at courses with links to CERN. She wasn’t a physicist but the university had links I believe.

It’s better to have FM. Do you know what proportion of students on these courses at the top universities don’t have it? Ask them if they don’t publish the info. My suspicion would be that it’s quite a high proportion!

french people will speak better English than she will French to be brutally honest
I would add french as a hobby

DS went to the physics admissions talk at the Oxford open day last year (decided not to apply there). The message given was that if your school offers Further Maths A-level, they would expect you to be studying it.

At his school, the only way to take Further Maths is as a fourth subject.

Plenty of people take Maths, Further Maths, Physics and one other. If someone is applying to study physics at Oxbridge or Imperial then the workload of four A-levels shouldn't be a problem.

the teenage me is horrified to be opining on maths

Mine is doing maths, further maths, biology and chemistry.
It is a LOT of work
He does sport to a high level to and bloody mandarin GCSE so is really pushed

If yours likes Maths then they will love FM as mine does - he says normal Maths a level is lots whereas FM is less but harder content

I think for those courses you may well find that they say FM isn't essential, however they will assume at the start of the course that everyone was up to that level anyway. That's what people who did physics/engineering at those places told me anyway.

If your school doesn't offer it, then they will consider you, as that is a reasonable reason for not doing it. However if the school does offer it you would need a good reason for not doing it.

Do what she enjoys most as a fourth.

I'm a physicist, and would def advise taking FM if it is offered - back in my day (a million years ago) it was def the case that you were expected to have done FM if possible. My school didn't, and it was a lot harder in the first year of my degree.

If she does a 4th, I'd do whatever she enjoys more - I did biology (am a medical physicist), most did chemistry, and a friend from school did french. She then did joint honours physics and french, followed by a low temp physics PhD so it didn't do any harm at all!

DS is doing physics at uni. He did 4 A levels inc. further maths and has found it very useful to him now so even though his final grade was not A or A* he is pleased he did it. Not sure how it affected his applications (he got reduced offers though) and he managed with the workload including doing an EPQ in year 12. I would have thought if your DD is looking at Oxbridge she is capable of the workload and willing to work hard?

We were advised that further maths would be required if the school offers it. Oxbridge certainly requires it - no point in applying there for maths or physics without it, regardless of whether your school offers it.

Could she do 4 to start with and then see how it goes? Dd is doing 4, one of which is further maths, but the advice tends to be to do 3 and get good grades. However, dd reasoned she could try out the A levels in subjects she liked and drop one later. Whereas swapping to a different A level would be difficult once the course had started. Atm, dd is keeping up with the workload and enjoying all her subjects.

I would say chemistry fits in better than French and gives her the option of dropping that or further maths and still having 3 science based A levels.