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.

Yes agree that it’s ‘easy’ maths compared to physics. It was just ime. I found biology easiest, chemistry close second, then maths and physics toughest.

Aargh, I knew I had forgotten one but couldn't remember what it was. Thank you @Withholdingvitalinfo.

Medicine surely also very oversubscribed? Or maybe not oversubscribed as weaker students self-unselect and don't apply?

Lol yes medicine vet med dentistry and pharmacy are a given as massively oversubscribed every year

Why do you think that media and business students are not up to scratch?

I never said that.

I merely pointed out that there is a huge difference in A Stars awarded between Alevel Business Studies (very low) and Further Maths (very high).

I don't believe that the lower grades achieved in Business Studies is due to the course being more difficult!

What is it due to in your opinion?

In the case of FM it's obvious - schools won't let students take it unless they've done very well at GCSE. So the distribution of ability is bound to be different from subjects with no, or lower, requirements.

Agree, especially as further maths is taken by most able maths students.

I’m interested in pp opinion on why business students don’t get good grades.

The grades are comparable to those taking business studies, if say 10% of students gained 7,8,9s then the numbers of As achieved will reflect with this. For those who received high GCSE results the pull to Economic is usually greater.

Another factor skewing the distribution is that quite a lot of selective sixth forms don't offer media or business studies.

What is "easy" is very subjective. I did French, Maths and Physics and found them easy getting high marks with less effort than GCSEs. I'd have struggled with "easier" subjects such as business and sociology and would absolutely have failed drama ... Which is why I chose the "easy" subjects for me.

I’m interested in pp opinion on why business students don’t get good grades.

As I said earlier, selection bias. Those students who choose Further Maths or Maths tend to be talented in Maths, hence they receive, on average, high grades. Same with MFL - only those with natural flair or benefitting from a bilingual upbringing choose these, hence grades are relatively high.

Business studies does not seem to attract such students. Many academically selective schools don't offer the subject. Hence grades tend to be more mediocre.

So no, I do not believe that the lower A level grades achieved in Business Studies is due to the subject being more difficult!

“Same with MFL - only those with natural flair or benefitting from a bilingual upbringing choose these, hence grades are relatively high.”

Its the native language speakers skewing MFL grades.

He's looked at their work and is sure it would have been easy for him.

Right....

And you take this as gospel?

A subject’s difficulty is based on an individual’s skill set. Eg I’m rubbish at English lit. Dislike essays, prefer sums. Etc
Different for others.

I’m not into putting down young people’s achievements by dismissing some subjects as easy or not difficult. I work with this cohort and it saddens me to read some of these.

Gosh it really is Mumsnet Top Trumps on this thread as it’s commonly believed on MN that Sociology is not a proper subject and only taken by thickos - same way that Sociology at Uni isn’t really a proper subject sigh.

Essentially different people are good at different things. My dd is doing Chemistry and finds it very challenging - equally friends of hers find Chemistry a breeze but find other subjects more challenging. Dd would undoubtedly have got a higher grade if she had chosen a different subject but that’s just because she would have been more suited towards it. Her school require a minimum of a 7 to study any subject at A level so the pool of students studying all subjects are broadly the same.

also, when looking at another subject and declaring it “easy” in comparison with what you’re studying there is a rather hefty chunk of “the grass is always greener”.

But yes on MN sociology is always easy and for thickos and clever children always study sciences and preferably 4 a levels just for good measure.

As I said early … sigh …

Lol exactly re sociology. Try telling that to the people studying it @ Oxbridge or esp LSE - check out their entry requirements for BSc Soc - they aren’t interested in those that have done the Maths/FM combo 😂

Having a high grade FM A Level is one of the best predictors of who in a particular subject cohort will achieve a first class degree. This is true even for subjects with little or no maths content, like Sociology or English.

I don't know why this should be, but it's an odd statistical fact.

Another reason to do at least two facilitating subjects is that sometimes employers are older people and they want to see the difficult or traditional subjects they remember from school.
Eg my father did Physics, Chemistry and Maths in the sixth form (with English as a subsidary subject in those days too) - he read medicine. I did English lit, History and German (the first two traditionally quite useful for law as there is a lot of essay writing etc involved ) and I am a lawyer. My 4 lawyer children all did at least 2 of the traditional facilitating subjects. Their private schools also advised them to do that.

If you look at the A levels offered by the better state grammars eg at www.hbschool.org.uk/sixth-form/ although Art and Music appear most pupils will be doing 2 or 3 of the traditional subjects on offer.

In some careers employers look at A level subjects even after students have a degree. Indeed law firms want to see GCSE grades too and marks in each year in every module of the university degree.

I think @xenia’s comments are probably only relevant for law.

Dd did two non-facilitating subjects at her high achieving state grammar (Psychology and RS) and she got offers from all the RG unis she applied to. Her offers were lower than other people’s due to our postcode. Nothing to do with hard or easy subjects!

@clary that's very kind of you. I don't know really, I think he just finds all of it difficult. The school where he did GCSEs don't have a 6th form, so he's at a different college, and is realising that his GCSE teacher taught them to pass GCSEs. They weren't prepared at all for A level, which is so much more detailed. Covid didn't help either, they missed a lot of the speaking component.

I didn't think there was such a thing as "facilitating subjects" any more. There are required and recommended A levels for certain degree courses, but I believe the term "facilitating subjects" is no longer used by universities.

Yes, the term has been dropped. But the underlying concept - that some subjects generally carry more weight for certain courses even when not formally required - holds good.

Before the term was invented, families with a tradition of sending DC to university every generation just knew this stuff.

Having an explicit explanation of which subjects carried greater weight (some even largely disregarded) was designed as a de-mystifying guide, putting families with less of a university-going background on a fairer playing field

I’m not sure that was ever the point of facilitating subjects? Wasn’t it simply a way of highlighting the subjects that were more general and allowed access to more degree options? So if you weren’t sure of a degree or career path, you’d keep your options open?

Facilitating subjects were subjects which facilitated other A Levels - eg maths facilitates physics, computing, economics and so on. No art subject really facilitates another quite so much but they did add a few for balance. Although a very very few unis mentioned them (and it really was very few) parents and schools begin to feel these were the only valued and valuable A Level. This wasn't so. The clue was in the word itself - useful to and for other things. Most grammar and private schools now offer a much wider range of subjects - graphics, business, psychology, film studies , media, music technology, etc etc. I always find it amusing how art seems to never be dissed - simply because it has been around so long and is linked to 'talent' but it certainly isn't facilitating.

Very few A levels have actually ever been on excluded lists - general studies as one of the three was common and then others tended to be subjects that they didn't want in combination, or defunct subjects. No uni EVER said they expected all 3 to be facilitating.

There are a lot of myths and misapprehensions. Sociology , for example, can be found on a 'preferred' list for many Cambridge degrees.