A-level choices - when your child wants to do their weakest subjects

[AuntieUrsula]

DD2 is in year 11 and they're supposed to be making their preliminary A-level choices this term. The school has advised them broadly to pick what they enjoy and what they're good at, but what do you do if those two things don't coincide?

DD2 has announced she wants to be a chemical engineer and do maths, chemistry and physics for A-level. I have no idea where this has come from as she's never shown any particular interest in science before and positively hated maths, at least until recently. She's not bad at sciences as such (6/7/8 grade predictions), but she is definitely better at humanities and is predicted 9s for French, German, Latin and History.

DH thinks we should support her in whatever she wants to do, but I am worried she will struggle with science A-levels as she already finds the GCSEs quite challenging! However, having told the kids that we wouldn't pressure them to do particular subjects for A-level (because my parents did that with me and I resented it afterwards) I don't really want to get all heavy-handed with her.

Anyone else's kids done subjects that weren't their best academically and done OK? Or have they regretted it?

[Awkward1]

20+ years ago i did bio chem maths alevels.
I had B at gcse in all of them. I was in top sets and i probably could have done better at maths/biology.
But i had A's in 2 languages.
I got D,D,C respectively.
So yes i probably made the wrong choices for me. As it was a lot of work, it wasnt easy for me. None of the subjects. So struggling with chem affected the other 2.
I agree with Pp it is up to teachers to recruit some will drop out some will do badly. In fact really most of my chem class should have chosen differently.
But i think if i had done the modular papers i would have done significantly better.
I have looked at recent gcse maths papers and they look more like old AS papers so as long as they havent made Alevel harder the doing the higher gcse paper in maths may not be too much a step up.

I dont hage an amazing kemory so languages suit me better as you learn and remember as you go along. I just couldnt cope with so many equations learning for chemistry. (And the logarithms for maths).
I later did alevel language getting an A.
It is hard to pick subjects if people are good at so many and gcse were effectively too easy so you just couldnt comprehend how much harder the alevels were.

[Ginfordinner]

Have a look here

I have filtered chemical engineering courses for a student with CCC at A level, and there are several universities that offer this subject with those grades.

[MatchaMuffin]

IB sounds like a good shout.

If her school offers double science for most and triple for the high flyers, and she's in the triple group and not struggling, that would be a good starting point.

However stellar she is at French, German and Latin, they all lead in a similar direction and if she doesn't want to pursue a language based career, rejecting them for A level sounds pretty sensible to me. And however good she is at History, science and maths would open a lot of doors to degree and career options. But going into maths A level if she doesn't like it or find it comes that easily does sound a bit fraught.

Maybe consider how much support she gets at home or from teachers in particular subjects. If she is getting 6s with 2 maths professors for parents and a fabulous teacher, that would say A level would be a slog. Whereas if she has parents who have a passion for languages and can't remember how to do long division, and she has an indifferent maths teacher & amazing MFL teachers, then I wouldn't put too much weight behind the idea that her real talent lies in languages and anything else will be a slog.

Some students do surprise everyone. I had a dyslexic friend who didn't even apply for uni in Y13 because her predictions were low. She got straight As, then applied for medicine, and is now a hospital consultant. She only took chemistry and maths A levels because she wanted to be a doctor, not because she had any particular like or talent for the subjects.

[caringcarer]

I spent years working as a SIxth Form Tutor and I noticed certain things. Kids who got A/A now grade 8/9 in Sciences rarely came out with A grades at A level whereas kids who got A/A now grade 8/9 at GCSE usually came out with A/A in English, History, Psychology, Sociology, RE, Geography, RE, Theatre Studies, Music, French, German and Spanish. Sometimes a kid would get similar grades at GCSE but then A, A in humanity subjects and a D in Chemistry. I don't think it was poorer teaching in sciences but the A Level specification in sciences is different to the GCSE specifications whereas in English and other humanities it is more similar.

It sounds as if your dd is good at languages. Could she do one language, History, Maths and Chemistry. A girl with Maths, Chemistry a language and History A levels would get offered a place to study Chemical Engineering if her grades were good. Girls are offered slightly lower offers as not many girls choose Engineering and sometimes they can get a bursary too. Universities want to meet their equality targets.

Lots of students realise their mistake after the first year or sooner of they are smart and then switch before Xmas of first year.

I can tell you my son got A* at Maths GCSE with 98% and still found A Level Maths very challenging and different to GCSE. He had to have a tutor every week and 10 hours every half term and he worked really hard to get a B grade at A level. I absolutely know he could have got an A grade for Music as he had Level 7 grade in Music before Year 10 but he wanted a challenge and preferred Music just for fun. My niece who got A for Maths at GCSE and was desperate to study Maths dropped it after first term as only got about 11% on internal test. She switched to Geography A Level and got an A grade.

[NetflixAndWine]

Can you find out the maths/physics teachers' track records? If they are known for taking grade 6 kids on to get top grades then I would trust in that. Whereas if they have a lot of dropout and D/E/U then I would avoid.

[Ragwort]

Maths is incredibly hard at A level, my DS got a 7 in his GCSE & wanted to do A level, he had a tutor for the last year of GCSE & both A level years, he really struggled & eventually got a C grade which fortunately got him into his first choice uni (although his offer had been a B Grade). I would think very carefully about choosing Maths at A level.

[Girasole02]

I would advise against a level languages. I'm a languages teacher and my son who got 9 at GCSE chose A level French. Huge jump, which we knew, but it's hard to get a top grade (which he needed for the uni of his choice) as the boundaries are high partly due to the number of native speakers sitting the exam. He changed courses at the start of year 13. From his secondary school, 2 chose an a level language. One remains.

[didnotseethat]

This is a really really bad idea. For starters, to get on a chem eng degree she will need 3 A grades minimum at A level, which she's unlikely to get if they are not her strongest subjects.
Where has she got the idea she wants to be a chemical engineer from?
My DS, who is brilliant at maths and sciences (he got A stars in all his A levels) started a chemical engineering degree based on reading some career guides about how it was highly paid and a great choice for someone with his strengths. He hated it from week one. He didn't struggle with doing the work, but he found it very very boring. I remember asking him about all his peers on the course and he insisted none of them enjoyed it, they endured it. He ended up withdrawing after a few months and going back to uni the year after to do something else (that he loves)

[Awkward1]

I did A level language in 3h a week =A.
Vs 8x40min with lots of homework to get a C in Maths.
And im not good at essay writing.

I wonder how much has changed now with technology which could help many subjects.

[AuntieUrsula]

Awkward, it's interesting you say that about GCSEs having got harder while the A-levels haven't so much, because it's what the maths tutor said at one of the college open evening we went to. He said the main problem was that the pace was just faster, so the weaker students may have difficulty keeping up. DD is in a middling maths set at the moment, but apparently their teacher has told them they'd all be good to do A-level

IB sounds great but neither her current school not any of the colleges we've seen thus far offer it. It does seem a bit mad to expect them to have effectively settled on a career at 15!

Thanks for all your responses. I clearly need to have more in-depth discussion with DD about where all this has come from, but I've been putting it off because she gets so defensive. I guess I'm quietly hoping she'll change her mind again just as quickly. A few months ago they did quite a detailed career aptitude test, which recommended looking at teaching/civil service/law/marketing, all of which I could see her in more easily than science!

[Paddy1234]

Also looking very closely at this thread as my son is looking at chemical engineering purely because he says it pays well.

[FanDabbyFloozy]

A lot of students think that science at uni prepares them for well paid jobs on graduation. In fact, a lot of these jobs require masters or even doctorates in the subject to work in research (say). It can be a long slog..

[WombatChocolate]

If a student has all 6s at GCSE and then takes some A Levels and gets Ds/ and Es, you wouldn't really be disappointed. Those D and E grades could be a good achievement and reflect the best they could do in any subject. However, if a student has a range of grades and chooses the subjects they are weaker in and then gets Ds and Es it would be a disappointment, because they were capable of much more in other subjects.

Choosing subjects you are weaker in, and especially those where very high achievement at GCSE is even more necessary for success at A Level (ie Maths) when you have subjects if strength is closing doors of opportunity to better universities and possibly careers.

When choosing, students need to know that grades at A Level determine the courses and locations you can attend for uni. They need to know how different grades at GCSE predict different outcomes at A Level and so recognise that choosing strong rather than weak subjects can make a real difference to A Level outcomes and to the uni courses they get onto.

Students often don't realise these things and parents don't either. Many think that regardless of starting point, if they like it and try hard, they will do really well. Thus simply isn't the case and students need to know this. If they are middling/weak across the board and have to do sOmeothing, it isn't a tragedy when they perform at that middling/weak level, but when someone has the capacity to be a high flyer and gain top grades, to end up with much lower grades is such a waste of talent.

You do have to play to your strengths. In most cases, people enjoy their strengths more anyway.

Op, this maybe a whim, especially as your DC has never liked maths or shown an interest in science. So I would stay a bit open to multiple changes of mind in the next few weeks. Gather some projections of outcomes at A Level from different starting points from GCSE, along with the grades needed for uni entry to good places and let her see them. She will probably realise the consequences herself and might change her mind several times.

[seaweedandmarchingbands]

A cursory look at Chem Eng courses tells me that most reputable unis are going to want strong Maths and Chemistry A Levels and ideally Physics as well. Lots of candidates will go on to the course with Further Maths. Try not to take this the wrong way, but IME there will also be lots of people coming from abroad with excellent mathematical skills.

Of the people I went to uni with who did Chem Eng, all were highly quantitative. I would talk to her about the degree itself as much as anything else, not just the A Levels and whether she can ‘cope’. She’ll have to do more than cope.

[daisypond]

I know a few who have done engineering, including chem engineering, courses. While universities have their A level grades they say they want, I’ve never known anyone be turned away when they didn’t make the grades. The very worst was that some were asked to do a foundation year first. Went on to do a masters later. Of course, you need the offer first.

[WombatChocolate]

It's not just about accessing those uni courses though is it - but then being able to manage them and do well - not so possible if you've got low grades at A Level.

Especially if you're pretty able in some areas, studying something where you can only achieve at a much lower level is generally not very satisfactory. Scraping onto a course and knowing others are more capable than you and can do much better isn't very satisfactory.

I don't know why people are keen to push or encourage a 15 year old in choices which they haven't shown interest in previously and which are areas they have less ability in, when they have other areas of significant strength. It's not as if engineering had been a passion of this girl for many years and her absolute dream which she had been determined to do despite it not being easy for her. I would question much further if she really wants to do this and why.....chances are she doesn't really want to do it anyway.

Conversations with defensive teenagers aren't the easiest, but you just have to find a gentle way in which won't be a big row. What about whilst driving the car,so you're not looking at each other and it's not so confrontational. Start with questions askimg very generally about options and what she's thinking and the process at school. Don't talk about her specific ideas but about university offers and projections from GCSE results to A Levels etc etc. Just plant a few seeds and acknowledge with her that it's still early days.

[hoodiemum]

Another thing to add to the debate: academics certainly aren't everything in engineering as a career, from what I can tell. I have two friends who had straight A* in every subject inc science, studied engineering at Cambridge, worked as engineers for 10+ years, hated it and eventually changed careers. Another got Ds and Es at A level, scraped into a poly for engineering in clearing (might need to be Cs today, but still...), felt a bit of imposter syndrome in early years of career, and had to retake his professional exams a couple of times. But he's an excellent manager and is now extremely high up at a prestigious engineering firm.

[seaweedandmarchingbands]

They’re not everything, but they are important. You want to avoid a career where you struggle with the core subject matter, if at all possible. All the engineers I know bar one are very numerical and classically academic types.

[BubblesBuddy]

All the engineers I know, DH is one and owns a medium sized engineering consultancy, are practical problem solvers, numerate but definitely not classically academic! They have a few that might be described as this but consultancies need far more than being academic.

However, the likely GCSE grades leading to the required A levels means a certain amount of angst I think. The fast track engineers all do MEng too. 4 year undergrad courses. This fast tracks to getting Chartered. This fast tracks to getting a higher salary earlier. If someone has to do a foundation, then BEng, then Masters (if they are good enough) its a real slog. There is then several years of post grad work for professional qualifications. She needs to know all of this.

The idea that MFLs are one dimensional is utterly ludicrous. Many MFL grads are employed in all sorts of roles that run from Law to Business to Civil Service. My DD who has a MFL degree is a barrister. She doesn’t use her languages at all and, by the way, many engineering grads never do any engineering. They become accountants or work for city banks!

[StanleySteamer]

@AuntieUrsula, I am a retired MFL teacher and tutor to the "elite" sixth form tutor group.
There is a ton of sensible comment here, almost all of which I agree with. However I have noted your problem communicating with Dd so I will pm you.

[Biscuitsneeded]

I think I might favour the "that's really great darling, but keep your options open" approach. It might be that your obviously bright DD has decided she really wants to be a chemical engineer and her GCSE grades will end up accordingly excellent because she'll pull all the stops out, in which case I assume it will be fine for her to do her chosen A levels. Conversely, results day may bring home to her in a way that you as a parent just can't without being seen to dismiss her chances, that these are not her strongest subjects. Presumably the schools will allow her to swap subjects once she has her results? As an MFL teacher I will say don't assume a language A level would be easier - they are extremely challenging and it's very difficult to get an A if you're not a native speaker. Then again I wish more able children would consider languages at A level, as so few do! I'd let her put down whatever she wishes for now; you can always change options later on.

[CampingItUp]

My eldest got a 9 in Maths CCSE , A in Further Maths (highest grade), A* In Chemistry, A in Physics.

Did Maths, Chem and Physics at A level, found Physics really hard as a course, the A level maths exam had able students in tears, but luckily got 3 A’s.

The Physics is v Maths heavy.