Degree ideas for DD please…

[MonkeyTennis34]

DD Y12 is doing Sport, Psychology and Biology.
She really isn’t sure what she wants to do like so many youngsters.
She doesn’t want to do a straight Psychology degree..that’s all I know.
We looked into Sports Psychology and found that the job opportunities were very patchy.
She’s happy to do a gap year and travel but would like to secure a uni place first.

I was in her shoes, and heartily wish I had not gone to uni at all! I would have been much better taking maybe three years to work in different jobs and get to know what I liked. Then decide whether to do an apprenticeship, college, or uni course depending on what career I wanted.

If she doesn't know what career she wants, and she isn't hugely passionate about academia/ learning for the sake of learning, then uni isn't for her at the present time. She can do it later if she wants to. If it's the student experience she wants, which is valid, the same thing can be done with college courses etc.

Sports science

I agree with the first reply.

Doing a degree is difficult and expensive enough with a subject you actively want to do, but doing one and getting good results for the sake of feeling you need a degree is going to be hard.

Has she considered apprenticeships at all?

UCAS would be a good place to start. I put Sports into the Search facility but obviously she could search any subject:

https://www.ucas.com/explore/search/apprenticeships?query=Sports%20

Medicine? Loads of opportunities with it in various directions. Could go down psychiatrist route, enter sport related treatment roles

The obvious choice is physiotherapy.

What about Occupational Therapy.

Yes, agree with pp, physiotherapy

Occupational Therapy. Audiology. Lots of non doctor jobs. What about Environmental science? No Geography or maths though which would have given far more options. What about HR or some type of management course? These might be ok?

Unfortunately, these A levels really point her in limited directions unless she’s prepared to do Biology or Psychology related degrees. Sports jobs can be difficult to get that pay well (too many grads) and the same with psychology. Massive over supply. So I might be inclined to look at the jobs market and look at where grads actually get work. At the moment that’s probably the NHS.

Sports Science wold give her the opportunity to study several different aspects with the opportunity to specialise later.

However if she is really unsure then a gap year might be good.

My daughter is studying sports science, however she applied aged 22 after working for 3 years in a different but slightly related area and because she knows what she wants out of it is very motivated and has a real purpose.

Sports science can be a very iffy regarding work after the degree though.

Really? Everyone we personally know who has a sports science degree has a pretty good job ranging from working in Fintec to a medical instruments company to a nutritionist to working for a football club.

My own daughter is an ex dancer and wants to work on injury prevention. To progress into that career she needed a degree.

I wouldn’t be encouraging uni at all at this point, saddling her with potentially upwards £50k of debt without having any kind of focus or aim? I’d suggest she takes a year out, takes some time to look for entry level work and ‘play the field’ employment-wise, so to speak, and work out what she wants to do, and IF that requires a degree.

The obvious choice is one she decides on herself….god help me if I’d have to have my mother to sort out what degree I was going to do!

Prosthetics or orthotics? Only a couple of unis offer it but it’s a role where you are highly likely to secure a job from what I understand. It gets the nhs bursary too.
It’s not just limb fitting but rehab side too and perhaps bringing in more psychological side eg dealing with people after accidents.

This. Absolutely this.

i went to uni with no clue. Pushed by my parents who thought if I took a year out I would get “out of the habit” of studying, and never go to uni at all, I picked biology, as I had no clue on careers and thought it was like picking a’levels.

while I enjoyed my degree, again it didn’t inspire me to a career. Few years of working and I’d learned so much about jobs and opportunities, and the ones I wanted my degree didn’t qualify me for.

couldn’t afford to go back and do a second undergrad, so stuck. One of my biggest regrets.

Definitely physiotherapy

I agree with her not going to Uki for a year but not with securing a place and travelling. She woukd be much better working from when her A’Levels finish. That way she’s going to have more of an idea of what she does and doesn’t want.

@Comefromaway Lots are employed in gyms at lowish wage levels. Many are not grad jobs. Many degrees are oversold in terms of employment.

So, so many. It’s almost criminal how sone Unis churn out Grads each year for almost non-existent jobs in that their field.

@Whatsgoingonherethenagain Loads of adults are retraining via apprenticeship schemes. It’s great if employers sponsor employees like this in order to change careers. The downside is lack of these apprenticeships for 18 year olds making them hugely competitive because career changers take the majority of these apprenticeships.

Getting a job can be hugely difficult now too. So trying out different jobs before a degree can be challenging. Also a degree doesn’t always wed you to a career. Options arise and you can try various routes of employment. The key is finding something you like for three years and understand about job possibilities afterwards.

Hi, OP -

Something on this thread or elsewhere might light a spark in DD. That would be fantastic.

No worries if it does not, but as an academic, in that case I really would encourage her to postpone university until she has a good reason to attend.

As PP have said, there is no longer anything remotely like a guarantee of s good job upon graduation, so that’s no reason to attend. For me, though, the biggest concern - and I have seen this play out countless times - is that students without a strong purpose often don’t do very well. They burn out easily, they have poor attendance, they don’t take advantage if the opportunities that make the difference between a mediocre CV and a strong one, etc. They are vulnerable to MH problems. And they tend not to have a very good time.

As you can imagine, all of this is likely to lead to an undistinguished degree, which then makes it difficult to get a good job, etc. The right time to attend university is when you are excited about a degree programme.

Best wishes to DD

I’m not an academic but what you say is our experience of our DC and their DFs and is played out every day on MN.

@MonkeyTennis34there was a thread some time ago about unusual degrees. I’ve always fancied Viticulture and Oenology

With those A levels I'd go for Physiotherapy.

Again everyone is saying similar things and I don’t think you get the view on the wide range of careers out there.

for example-dietician. Can come at it from many angles, vast majority of sporting bodies with have dieticians on board to assist with everything from performance athletes to young children’s needs, especially in early start sports.

then there is an enormous area around food and psychology. In sport and out. Eating disorders, weight etc.

pharmacy
Radiotherapy/radiology
clinical science
pharmacology
microbiology
research and academia.
vet physio
paramedic
nursing
physiology

those are just healthcare
there are other careers- psychology is a good basis for policing for example, or teaching.
criminal psychology, forensics, counter terrorism etc.

anthropology

she needs to sit and troll through job ads as if she were job hunting and see what catches her eye.