Do students doing "harder" A levels get lower offers?

[Sarahcoggles]

DS is in year 13 and is about to submit is UCAS form, hoping to study geography.

Looking at universities, they all state their entry requirements in A level grades or UCAS points.

DS is kicking himself for choosing 3 tough A levels (history, geography and French), rather than choosing subjects like sociology, media etc which are traditionally less demanding. French in particular is incredibly difficult, totally different from the GCSE. He says that his offers will be for the same grades as pupils doing easier A levels, but will be much harder to achieve for him.

Is he right? Or do universities modify offers depending on how challenging a particular subject is?

Please don't accuse me of being snobby by the way. It's just simple fact that further maths, for example, is going to be more difficult than health and social care.

In a word, no. Fwiw I did v similar subjects to your DS and found French by far the easiest, and the smallest "leap" from GCSE to A level.
It's all subjective, really- friends taking 3 sciences thought I was doing "dosser" subjects.

AFAIK health and social care is an extended btec, not an a level.

DS1 needed AAB to do Geography. He kicked himself for choosing maths which he found incredibly difficult (also massively disrupted due to Covid), so we got him a tutor for maths and he did get what he needed, the B in maths. But it was a close call and could have gone either way.
His other A levels were Geog and Business (arguably easier).
His less able friend whose elder siblings have been through this before also needed AAB. He chose 'easier' A levels and a Btec to get what he needed. One being a subject his mum has taught for 20 years too.

Some of those softer A level subjects might be regarded less favourably by high tariff institutions, if it makes you feel any better.

harder or easier depends to some extent on natural abilities so someone who grasps Maths easily will find a Maths a level easier than someone with maybe a bias to languages or essay writing, someone that struggles with English will find English literature or history harder than biology but is it intrinsically harder to do Maths than English almost certainly not but most people find one or other easier.
Some university courses want certain subjects and specify what subjects are acceptable some say maths and 2 out of physics chemistry and biology
others might want two modern languages
some courses are maybe easier for some if they don't do well in exams and it involves more coursework and practicals

Several of DS's friends are doing sociology. He's looked at their work and is sure it would have been easy for him. He's annoyed with himself for doing French, which he finds very hard. Too late now sadly.

French is a very difficult A Level. A huge jump from GCSE for the average student. A flair for it perhaps the leap would not feel as big

The softer subjects can be 'easier'. Not to say there is anything wrong with that but there is a difference between A Level languages and media studies.

Not really, plus those subjects aren't considered particularly tricky, I thought you were going to say he's doing higher maths and physics. Plus geography would be expected for pretty much everyone applying for a geography degree, so everyone's I the same boat with the easy/difficulty of that one.

If he's looking at anywhere that offers in ucas points, it might be worth having a read of what you can get points for. If he has anything like general studies or higher level music exams, that might boost his points.

how would you determine the difficulty of a subject? Your ds’s subjects don’t seem particularly tough to me...my daughter is taking biology, chemistry, maths and further maths.- much harder...perhaps she should get a lower offer than your ds? Comparisons are meaningless.

Maths/further maths was by far the easiest one I did, as there's so much certainty-you just learn how to do it, and you walk out of the exam knowing you got it right.

I don't think there's a universal scale of hard to easy so this would be ludicrous to implement.

The answer is it depends what he wants to do at uni. If he wants to do a media studies degree, he is right, if he wants to do law , engineering etc or something like this then he’s wrong as the a level choice is critical and those in softer subjects will struggle to get an offer.

sounds to me like he is struggling and panicking.

I’d also agree he hasn’t went for the really hard subjects like maths, physics , they aren’t soft choices he made, but they certainly aren’t what are considered the hardest subjects, French aside as you need s flair for that.

as said though I think he’s struggling and panicking

Not really, plus those subjects aren't considered particularly tricky

Yes exactly.

Difficult is very subjective but subjects like Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry are often regarded as very challenging.

I doubt very much that universities ever change offer by subject. They may well make a contextual offer (based on markers of disadvantage) or an unconditional offer (policies vary)

But say the courses applied for are ones which tend to fill up, so that some applicants won't get offers (I don't mean the highly competitive ones). Looking at subjects might make a difference to the likelihood of getting an offer, even if there aren't formal subject requirements.

I don't know what might be preferred for geography, but to use another subject for comparison, maths isn't always a requirement for computer science, but an applicant with maths might be considerably more likely to get an offer than one without. This isn't because of perceptions of 'hard' but because of relevance to the course. So the best choices come from relevance to what might come next, plus what the DC actually likes studying.

Now it's back to exams, I think it's also back to the old advice of picking no more than two courses where the grades might be a stretch, and including one where they should be comfortably within reach as a fallback.

Both my dc did 4 A levels and most Unis offered slightly lower requirements as compared to 3.

In other words Universities seem to acknowledge the extra work and difficulty of doing 4 vs 3 A levels.

It depends what university you’re applying to. DD took similar exams to your boy and her offers ranged from AAA to ABB.

One student's difficult is another person's easy.

I found A Level Maths and Further maths pretty straightforward. Much easier than just about any other subject - for me.

My dd had a lower offer but this was made clear in the admissions section for her course. In her case, an A-level in maths, biology or chemistry meant the offer was a grade lower.

My dd did economics, Maths and Physics . . She wanted to study economics at university She had wanted to study sociology instead of physics at A level but was told ( by her school) that she would stand a better chance of getting her chosen university if she chose physics.
She took this advice and regrets it. When she got to university she found that several people on her economics course had taken Sociology and Business studies.
She achieved top grades in her A Levels but it was really touch and go with the physics

@Lampzade " dd did economics, Maths and Physics . . She wanted to study economics at university She had wanted to study sociology instead of physics at A level but was told ( by her school) that she would stand a better chance of getting her chosen university if she chose physics.
She took this advice and regrets it. When she got to university she found that several people on her economics course had taken Sociology and Business studies.
She achieved top grades in her A Levels but it was really touch and go with the physics"

This is exactly what DS is thinking. He's wishing he'd chosen sociology instead of french, because he would have found it easier. He would then have been able to focus on getting good grades in history and geography, rather than having to slog to get a B in French, to the detriment of the other subjects.

I'll know better when DS2's turn comes round.

What you and your ds are overlooking is that how "easy" it is to get an A grade etc varies massively between subjects. In French last year, nearly 51% got A or A*, compared to under 27% for Sociology. www.bstubbs.co.uk/a-lev.htm.

Yeah I made this mistake myself. I should have picked easier subjects so I could get more UCAS points. In fact forget A levels at all - BTEC is piss easy and gets you the same UCAS points as A levels! I teach both and I can confirm that the BTEC students are significantly less capable than the A level students but they consistently get more UCAS points. I’ve had students who I’d expect to score D/E if they studied A levels, score the equivalent of A* on their BTEC.

I actually agree that 1 easier A level to balance out 2 tougher ones is probably the way to go. Doing 3 easier ones though I think might result in less offers if there is competition. And also, A levels stay on job applications for quite a while, a B in French is a skill that he can cite the rest of his working life. Not so much an A in media.

No, the entry requirements are the same regardless.

I agree with PP regarding natural ability. I did 2 of the 3 subjects your son did, along with a science. I needed AAA in any subject (in old school A-levels) and got them with those. I chose subjects I was good at.

Personally I would’ve found starting a new subject
from scratch (like sociology) far more difficult and disorientating and I never really understood why people picked a whole new subject they knew nothing about for A-level!

Very best of luck to him! I bet he has chosen well for himself, it’s just a temporary wobble!

I would counter that with the likelihood that students doing A level French are more likely to know they have a flair for the subject, whereas sociology is an unknown factor for most 6th formers. Not that I don't have issues about current MFL teaching, but that's another thread. I don't have any linguist DC, which is probably just as well.

That's because "less academic" students are encouraged to take subjects like sociology, but not subjects like French. Teachers hope that those students might scrape a C in sociology, and enter them with that goal in mind. Meanwhile students who might just scrape a C in French are encouraged to do something easier - like sociology - where they might get a B, or a more comfortable C.