GCSE options Cambridge national in creative imedia

[Lazybeans50]

DS yr 9 currently choosing options. He likes the look of the creative imedia course and I can see that it’s an area that would interest him and he’s likely to be good at but we don’t really know how the course would be viewed by universities later down the line. To put in context he’s looking at English (2), maths, science (3), humanities (2) and Spanish as his other options so a reasonably good spread. The imedia would be his tenth. The alternative would be a DT gcse (probably graphic products). The school don’t offer computer science otherwise he would choose that. Does anyone have any advice on this? He’ll most likely to want to do maths and science at A level and beyond.

graphic products was much less computer based, as I recall.

iMedia teaches them very clever stuff with Gimp which is very useful, ime.

Would universities really give a toss about the 10th subject with such a strong set of other subjects? I very much doubt it.

I too doubt it would matter given that his other chosen options are traditional options. Good to have a bit of "relief" from an otherwise academic workload.

Thanks! That’s how I feel about it too but I wanted to check.

My top tip would be to check how much course work is involved.

My highly academic DC1 chose Art as the 'relief' 12th subject (yes, 12!). Never again. The course work took up hours and hours every week. Not worth it for the B after all the effort and stress.

DS finished iMedia in 2016. Not a lot of course work at all. DS did zero homework & got a distinction.

If it sounds like a made-up subject that won't impress university admissions people and future employers, then it probably is.

Another poster has commented that there is little work involved. If that's right, then this particular course is probably going to be headed for the rocks fairly soon. In 10 years it may not matter, but equally it may be impossible to explain what it was in a way that makes it sound worthwhile.

I would check out how much actual work is involved in the course fairly carefully.

tbf, DS also got As in English & math having done zero homework.
Just b/c WendyHC hasn't heard of iMedia doesn't mean it's made up.

Some of the stuff DS learnt has been useful for me to ask him about, helps me in my work.

Now that GCSE ICT has been discontinued the exam boards have been developing new courses to replace it. As these are fairly new, that's why some people haven't heard of them. I think Wendy is being far too harsh.
dd took the equivalent course for Edexcel. It was actually quite hard as they had to design a website under exam condition in approx 2 hours.
I would check whether it's a level 2 or level1/2. The level1/2 covers the full grade range for GCSE whereas level 2 means unclassified i.e. U for grades lower than C/4!
Provided he has a good range of academic subjects in at least 8 subjects, having a more applied subject as an extra won't bother universities in the least!
For DT most of the marks are for making the actual products. The design part involves a bit of computer work but not very much in terms of time or marks.

My daughter is doing the imedia Course. She really enjoys it but wants to go into animation or graphic design as a career. I don't think it's an easy course as such they do seem to have to put the work in but they all enjoy it so they don't suppose it is seen as "hard work". I can't see why it would be seen as a soft subject as it's teaching really useful stuff.

Thanks all. Helpful comments. I’ve checked and it’s a level 1/2. DS has been making videos and animations since primary school and is currently designing a website so he wants to choose it as it’s something he would enjoy not because he thinks it’s a soft option.