What is it like to do 5 A-level subjects?

[dynamicequilibrium]

What is it like to do 5 A-level subjects? e.g Physics, Chemistry , Maths, Further Maths and Biology.

I am still considering being a medical doctor or an engineer so somehow the above subjects give me the best options. However, is this manageable or will this even be a burden to myself?

Should I concentrate on 4 subjects (Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Further Maths) for two years of A-level courses or drop one (e.g. biology) from the above 5 subjects after AS level?

Thank you very much.

You need to check out an up to date version of this table which tells you which Unis need Chem or Biol or both for Medicine applications:

www.thestudentroom.co.uk/university/apply/medicine/medical-school-a-level-requirement

Further Maths could be picked up from scratch in Year 13 at a push of you've decided to go for engineering at that point.

At my school that wouldn’t be possible from a timetabling point of view. Even our very brightest students find four is hard work and the majority find that three is plenty. As pp have said you don’t need biology for either course so if you want to keep both courses open to you I would do physics, chemistry, maths and further maths, there is a bit of overlap between maths and further maths too so it will make it a bit less stressful.

Universities will not be especially impressed by five A levels. They would much rather see three or four top grades and some relevant work experience,in fact that would be essential for medicine.

Assuming you're really good at maths, the hardest of those is chemistry from the reports I've had.

Don't do five. I did five but one was GS so (at the time) pretty much turn up and sit the exam. Chem, Phys, maths and FM will presumably qualify you for both medicine and engineering. Far better to do four and get A/A* than five and have grades slip. Are there any med schools that require biology?

I say FM because it feeds off the maths and therefore doing maths and FM was (in my experience) less workload than doing two unconnected alevels. Whilst you may not technically need FM for engineering I would expect that most students at top engineering courses would have it (unless not offered by school). The degree I did you didn't need maths A-level but only one or two people in the year didn't have it and they struggled.

I have a dd doing a levels at the minute she started doing 4 but at the end of the Easter term dropped to 3 for the following reasons all the unis she’s looking at only look at 3. 3 better grades better than 4 okay ones.

My younger dd looking at a local Grammer school and you can’t do 4 unless you’ve got a 9 in those subjects.

No chance I’d consider 5 in the currenct system. Do 3 plus either EPQ or AS in further Maths.

Oh not again!! The fact that uni web sites say their offers are on three A levels is utterly irrelevant. Top unis will be swamped with kids doing 4 and a good few doing 5 for highly competitive Med, Vet, STEM courses. They select from that highly academically competitive pool and make offers on 3 to that group. That's the time, and not before, to be thinking about dropping to that 3. Be seen to be doing just 3 by the time UCAS comes around and you are already labelling yourself as mediocre in the eyes of the top group of unis and undermining your chances of even getting the offer. Of course for med and vet the other vocational stuff matters.

People need to look at hard data rather than misunderstanding uni admissions sites. Take a look at

www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?s=Medicine

and the UCAS tariff score of admitted candidates. Even if you subtract the odd ABRSM exam you find that the successful candidates who actually got it were doing rather more A levels. Cambridge medicine was 617 averaged over admitted candidates. 3 A* gets you 420 on the scale used on that site with current data. Do the math. (I know things will shift with new A levels etc, but there is a big misunderstanding of principle here). Cambridge maths was 634, electrical or mechanical engineering 617. And that's the average - a good lump of kids have higher points.

A separate point is that with maths the ordinary A level curriculum is so dumbed down these days that it is only by doing full FM you get a decent grounding for Physics and Engineering, let alone maths, at the top unis.

Are all those subjects actually timetabable at your sixth form?
I did 5, many many moons ago. But one was general studies. I had a hours lesson every week. The other 4 (bio, chem, phys, maths) took up nearly all the rest of the timetable - I had about an hour of "study period" a week. I couodng actually have fitted in another subject withoit doing it as a correspondance course.

Concentrate on 4, and get great grades would be my suggestion.

They select from that highly academically competitive pool and make offers on 3 to that group. That's the time, and not before, to be thinking about dropping to that 3.

Cambridge general engineering will make an offer on 4 subjects if that's what you're still doing at the time, so it's too late to decide drop one then! DD was glad she'd dropped her 4th after AS so she could concentrate on a relevant EPQ and getting the necessary grades on the 3 essentials. Nowhere else appeared to give a toss about anything other than the 2 maths and physics for EEE.

Errol, I agree that Cambridge and sometimes Imperial will offer scientists/engineers on four subjects if you are taking four subjects. However no one will know if the ability to handle four subjects helped reassure admissions that the applicant could handle the workload at University. DDs experience is that both the wider knowledge and time management skills come in useful when you get to University.

A number of courses (in DCs direct experience, LSE - economics and several medicine courses) will not consider double maths as two A levels. I personally think 16 is too early to narrow study to simply maths and one other subject. But equally for a bright mathematician to limit themselves to single maths. My understanding is that FM papers can be more stretching, and so, at least for some, more fun.

Getting the place at University is only the start. What you do when you get there is what matters. And Oxbridge is not the be-all and end-all. We encouraged DS to take history to broaden his range. His slightly lower grade may have cost him some offers, but actually the experience of taking an essay subject did him no harm when it came to writing a dissertation, or indeed in terms of being able to structure logic, evidence and argument. (There is concern in economics that the subject has become too mathematical and the social has been lost from the science. Fine in the US where first degrees have greater breadth, but potentially a problem in the UK where kids specialise so early.)

Five is fine if you are bright. You might consider dropping something post uni offer to try and optimise your grades in the light of an offer.

Universities offer on the information that they are given. If you state at the time of submitting your application via UCAS that you are taking 5 A levels, your school predicts grades for 5 A levels etc, then this is what the universities you have applied to will base their offer on, even if you only get an offer based on grades in three out of the five. If you subsequently drop a subject, the universities which have made you an offer a) must be informed and b) are perfectly within their rights to alter the terms of the offers that they have made (after all, you declared that you were taking five subjects - 'look at clever old me! Look what I'm capable of! And now you are only doing four? Perhaps you're not so capable after all? Perhaps your referee allowed him / herself to be 'persuaded' into inflating your predictions?). If you decide not to tell them, your Firm and Insurance universities get your results a few days before you do, anyway - plenty of time to decide how to deal with the question of the 'missing' A level.

The stats on UCAS points can be misleading and don't take account of the recent changes. Unis care more about quality and subject choice than quantity.

For medicine Chemistry plus one other Maths/Science is the norm. There are around about 7,000 medical school places subsequent to the recent expansion. Last year less than 9% of Chemistry A levels were awarded A* of the 63,000 candidates ie 5,500 students, not all of whom want to study medicine.

If you intend to apply to medical school, remember that significant work experience in different settings will be required. So doing 4 A-levels (Maths, FM, Chemistry and Physics would be the obvious ones, though Biology instead of FM would also be OK, though more time consuming) would be more likely to leave more time for weekly volunteering in term time, and longer stints during the holidays, than keeping up with the homework for 5 would.

I don't know enough to know what the balance is between 3 + lots of work experience (and maybe a relevant EPQ) and 4 + less work experience. Does your school still do ASs? If so, 4 to AS level, take all 4 with top grades + work experience, drop 1 to maintain same level of work experience while working towards A-levels would seem like a possibility?

DS just got offered a place to read engineering at Cambridge based on 4 A levels. He started on 5, but just could not keep on top of the content for German as well as M, FM, phys and chem. All the universities he applied to, and most he looked at wanted FM if your school offered it.

My son is in his first year of medicine at Uni of Nottingham. He studied Spanish to AS level and studied, maths, chemistry and biology to A level. All the uni staff I spoke to when he attended interviews said that 3 A levels with excellent results were favoured over 4 or more with mediocre results.
My son did the EPQ and not one of the universities we went to were interested in it.
Getting high results in the UKCAT or BMAT were also v important.

Ohwiseone. Yes but what did they say about 4 a levels with excellent results? Why is there an assumption that taking more than three impacts on grades. Yet the same assumption is not made when a bright student is Head Boy/Girl, or plays sport or music to a high level.

Maths A level is not particularly stretching for a good mathematician, and it can be easier to get the A* in Maths if you are taking FM than it is if you are taking Maths alone.

Medical schools use different criteria. Bristol, where DD studies, cares not one jot about BMAT, and not that much about UKCAT.

From personal experience medicine without A level Biology is not ideal.

If you’re a strong mathematician you will almost certainly find that Maths, Further Maths & Physics work very well together. You can then add one more subject, Chemistry being the obvious choice for medicine.

Don’t do 5 if there is a significant risk of the workload diluting your grades below A.

Several high-achieving students at our school (5 A-Levels at A* - A) had trouble getting the university courses they wanted as they didn't have time to do any co-curricular activities or really contribute to their school community. They fell down at interview stage because ALL they had done in 6th Form was study.
An academic student will find 4 more than enough AND have time to do other things that make them a more appealing candidate as a human being!

I did 5 A levels but 24 years ago. I did Maths Further Maths Physics Chemistry and business studies. I then went on to do dentistry. Biology wasn't a requirement for the dentistry course but I found my first year at University much harder than the people who had done biology (most) because there was so much for me to learn. If you are going to do Medicine I would recommend you do Biology but this massively increases the amount of information you have to learn and might make 5 more difficult.
If you are really good at Maths then doing 5 with the Maths, Further Maths and physics isn't that bad. Also my business studies was 80% coursework so I could get a lot of this out of the way before exam time.
At my sixth form college if you did further Maths you didn't have to do PE and this freed up time on the Timetable.
I also managed to hold down a Saturday job for all my time in sixth form but I was super motivated.

This had the same discussion we are having with our dd she is 1st year a levels and has taken maths further maths physics music and Welsh bac. She has been told she needs to trim it down to 3 for the next school year but has to keep Welsh bac. She wants to keep them all

I did 4 (a long time ago!) and I reckon I could have fitted in another one (I was a bit ‘bookish’ and loved doing school work, though!!) I don’t see why those who are able shouldn’t take 4 (some schools only allow 3).

NB I still had tine to do extra curricular stuff like sing in choirs, play in orchestras and dance. Looking back, I’m not sure how I did it!

DH is a nuclear engineer, he refused to do AS levels so did 3 subjects. History, geography and chemistry. Quite how he then became a expert on nuclear reactors is anyone’s guess!