To ask whether 4 a levels would be too much work?

[donthaveorganiccarrots]

Seen that there is a very similar thread on here at the moment but don’t want to hijack it. Have a dd going into year 12 who would like to study medicine and a few days ago picked her a levels as biology chemistry history and maths to do until AS but is now wondering whether she’d be better off doing all four to A2 as she doesn’t want to drop history and people have told her she needs maths for the best chance of getting offers from med schools. So 3 a levels and an AS in maths or all four full a levels?

I work in an admissions department at a Russell Group university, saw this thread, and wanted to say the following in the hope it might be helpful:

1. The biggest question is whether your daughter can handle 4 A-levels without it taking over her life. To be honest, whilst most students find A-levels challenging and a lot of work, there is a large minority who seem to find them much more straightforward and less time-consuming. If your daughter is lucky enough to be in this category (usually indicated by excellent GCSE results, mainly 7+ with some 8/9 grades) then absolutely I would recommend that she follow her interests into 4 subjects.

2. Whilst 3 A-levels is very much the norm among the entire A-level cohort, it is not the norm among applicants to top universities. Among our applicants it is more common to have done 4 A-levels than 3, and we see quite a lot of students with 5. So if this is the level she is looking at then you should see 4 as normal.

3. Most top universities will prefer 4 A-levels, either explicitly (e.g. some degree courses have standard offers of AAA or AA*AA, so the extra A-level gives more leeway), or implicitly - my institution only asks for 3 A-levels, but when making borderline decisions on students who narrowly missed their offer, students with an extra A-level are at a big advantage. One big driver of this is the average tariff of entrants feeds into league table data.

4. Whilst maths is not required for medicine at most universities, I would strongly encourage her to take it in case she either changes her mind about what she'd like to do of if she is unsuccessful in getting a place to study medicine. People who are interested in medicine usually fall back on STEM subjects in this situation, and almost all STEM courses at top universities will require A-level maths - it's the one subject that opens far more doors than any other (our advice to students choosing A-levels with interests in STEM is to choose maths first, then follow their interests).

5. Disappointingly, we find that schools and colleges tend to discourage students from doing more than 3 A-levels. This may well be because it's not a good choice for the average A-level student. However, if you and your daughter are confident in her academic abilities, you should ignore them (in any case, the average A-level students does not get the grades needed to study medicine).

The bold text wrecked the A-level grades - the bit in the middle should say A A A or AA*AA

I did 4 a-levels

Got almost full marks at AS level

Then at a-level it got much harder and I struggled a lot with all the exam revision and didn’t do as well in final A-levels

But I loved all four subjects so don’t regret it