A-Level Choices

[BrrItsColdOutside]

My DC wants to do law at university.
They have decided to do History and Law Alevels but need to choose a 3rd from:
psychology
sociology
ethics, philosophy & religion
They are academically very strong.
Any advice?

Which do they enjoy most?

What does the university course they want focus on from that list? I’d say psychology or sociology.

Lawyer here. Don’t pick law at A level. Many of the best law courses prefer to have 3 non law A levels. I appreciate that is counter intuitive.

I agree look at the uni degree courses in law and work backwards from there to determine which a levels.

They haven’t studied psychology and sociology before. They do enjoy EPR.

Thank you, I do know it isn’t a prerequisite but I didn’t realise it might be preferred not to have done it.
I am an accountant & I didn’t do accountancy at Uni so I can see the logic.

@BashfulClamand @FiatLuxAdAstrathanks. That’s a good idea, just perhaps hard to know that at this stage and don’t want to be limiting.

I would say for law you need some wrong academic subjects - they MUST look at the course requirements but as a PP said, not law and from the list RE and/or psychology. History fine.

History and EPR great, plus whichever of sociology or psych they like the look of more. Law not a good choice as PP have said.

What do you mean by ‘wrong’ academic subjects?

They probably mean strong rather than wrong.

Sorry - typo - I do mean strong 😀

Yes law is not recommended - doesn’t teach it to the standard that universities want and can develop bad habits

english history psychology etc that said I did maths psychology and English and was fine - you just need at least one strong essay subject

@Ellmauyes should have thought of that!

Lawyer here. We tend not to care about the actual A-levels as such but they MUST be in traditionally academic subjects (so ideally not law/sociology from that list) and grades are expected to be high. So pick traditional subjects that your dc will do well in. My current trainee’s a-levels were English, History and Biology.

Yeh I also suggest looking at unis and seeing what they say. Cambridge if that's a possibility is quite prescriptive about subjects and says take two out of Eng lit, history, maths and MFL for a humanities subject. Law is listed as a possible third actually. Sociology is not on the list at all. She may not want to go to Cambs ofc.

But in any case my understanding is certainly that law is not ideal. In general it's a good idea to do subjects you will do well at, esp for a competitive course like law. So if (and I know it's hard to say at this stage) she might be looking at (say) a B in eng lit but an A/Astar in ethics and phil then that's the badger.

www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply/before/choosing-high-school-subjects

My dc did history, maths and psychology . Didn't like psychology A level much - too many unethical case studies to learn, but did the best in that subject - and got an A star. So perhaps was the easiest to do well in.

History was the favourite subject of the 3.

I would take a close look at the syllabus for each choice.

History, EPR, sociology

Dd has chosen English literature, psychology and then still toying between history/ biology / sociology. She wants to do a law degree

I did psychology and sociology A levels. I’ve found psychology far more useful and it was a more enjoyable subject to study. Psychology includes a statistics paper and looks at research methodology, which is transferable to other subjects.

Much of sociology is studying the theories of long dead sociologists.

Sociology also has research methods and teaches methodology. There is a requirement to cite contemporary research so those researchers certainly aren't long dead. Of course some are but I'm pretty sure a lot of the psychologists are too...

Thank you, I don’t have any experience of the subjects so it’s useful to hear others options.

You’re correct but there is far more emphasis on stats in psychology A level and an actual exam on statistics.

Are you sure there's a stats paper? Both subjects do research methods (the sociology board I teach has a whole paper on it) and I haven't noticed those who do psychology being more numerate or better. I would say some of my students say they prefer sociology ; some say they prefer psychology. The writer-debater types tend to prefer sociology.

I do know there are an awful lot more one mark and 2 to 3 mark questions in psychology compared to the board I teach for sociology. The content has been reviewed in psychology and reduced a bit. Unlike sociology!

Your personal preferences, of course, may not be the same as everyone else's , including the OP's DD. In all honesty , I think it has a lot to do with the teacher/ing.

I don't disagree by the way that , at A level, psychology is more mathematical than sociology.