3 A levels or 4?

[Lovemusic33]

Do all 6 forms offer a 4th A level option?

Dd has a open evening for 6 form in a few weeks, she has had some discussions with 6 form teachers but none have mentioned the 4th A level option or wether they do further maths.

Dd wants to take English, maths, computer science and History (history being her 4th choice). She’s pretty sure she wants to do computing at uni so the maths and computer science are her first choices but she also loves English and History. She is predicted level 8’s and 9’s in all 4 subjects (though realistically will be happy with 7’s), she’s hoping to get into oxford or a Exeter uni. I’m not sure 6 form offers further maths which may not be great if she wants to go to oxford?

Dd is refusing to consider another 6 form (She has ASD and change is hard for her, she knows the teachers and they know her). Do all 6 forms have to offer the option of taking a 4th A level?

The ones I’ve worked in have.
There is no benefit to taking 4 unless you want to keep your options open

That’s the reason she wants to take 4. Up until recently English has always been her subject but then she took business and computing for GCSE and now she’s swaying towards computing (which is probably a good thing). She’s not 100% sure what she wants to do in the way of a career.

She wouldn’t be allowed at my school unless it was further maths. No requirement at all to allow a 4th, the government won’t give the school any extra funding to support it.

Would she consider doing an EPQ to research and study an English or History topic or book that she enjoys?

Uni offers are based on three grades. No benefit to stretching yourself to do a fourth and risk dropping grades and not getting in.

That being said if she wants to do computer science at oxbridge/imperial etc then she should probably consider further maths.

I think her worry is that she won’t get a good enough maths pass to get into uni (she’s not that keen on maths although she’s still hitting a 8/9 gcse) so she wants to have the English and history to fall back on to possibly do English at uni. At the moment Oxbridge is 2nd choice and Exeter first.

Uni offers aren’t always three grades - they can be as many as you are doing...also if one of the 4 is FM they can specify the grade in that and ignore the maths!

she’s not that keen on maths

Has she looked at the course structure to see what she would be studying? The Computer Science courses at Oxford and Exeter involve a fair amount of maths.

It's up to the sixth form / college to decide what A-level courses they want to offer, and how many each student is allowed to take. My son is taking four, and coping well with the workload, but the fourth is Further Maths.

English + History = a lot of essays, and possibly two sets of coursework, which may be scheduled during the same term as her Oxford application.

If she is truly undecided between Computer Science and English, I can see the attraction of choosing those four subjects though.

DS school same as noblegiraffe's. 3 A levels plus EPQ is the push.

Ironoaks yes, she knows what the course at Oxbridge involves, before she knew she didn’t plan on taking maths (took me a while to get through to her that she needs maths A level), she loves using maths in computing but just doesn’t like maths lessons at school because she thinks a lot of it isn’t relevant to what she wants to do, she’s still in top set and hitting 8/9 but prefers computing and business lessons. English has always been her best subject and up until a year ago (when she started business and computing) she wanted to teach English, now she’s into coding and programming and hitting level 9 she wants to pursue computing.

We will discus 6 form options at the open evening in a few weeks but the school don’t tend to give advice on what subjects she should take.

The 6th form that my Ds ( year 12 ) has recently moved to seem to encourage students with gcse results of 8/9s to take 4 but Ds has just dropped his 4th A level (History) at half term. He is now doing 3 A levels and an Epq on a historical theme.

Other A levels are all sciences/maths (he got seven 9s and three 8s for gcses so good all rounder ). Like your Dd he originally wanted to keep options open as he enjoyed History.

Ds does quite a lot out of school so it very quickly became a huge workload with the 4 A levels as well. I was really keen for him to drop one and he slowly came around to the same realisation ( was adamant that he were doing 4 at the beginning so I had to tread carefully)

We solved it by visiting a few Uni open days during last half term. This may be a good idea for you and your Dd? There is no reason why you couldn’t start doing this now.

When we looked around and saw the courses in a more close up way, Ds started to realise that he was more excited by the idea of the Science courses rather the History ones . After a few v intense weeks he made the decision just before half term.

That’s as far as he has got-ie knows he wants to do “something sciencey.. maybe chemistry “

You need to look at the specific entry requirements for computer science at all the uni places she would possibly like to attend.

Ds1 is doing 4 A levels but they are maths, further maths, computer science and physics and he wants to do computer science at uni.

He got a 9 in maths (and computer science and all sciences at GCSE) and he loves maths. I think a lot of courses want the maths element at A level due to the high level needed to do computer science.

Thanks change, she has visited Oxford and loved it there but and attended talk for computer science and English, we will visit Exeter at some point as this is her first choice as it’s closer to home.

I think her worry is that she will struggle at A level maths as she might only get level 7 GCSE, without a good maths pass at A level she might not get into computing at Exeter. She will be taking English A level but im not sure what she would plan to do with a degree in English without having another similar A level (History).

Get onto Exeter directly,email them, they'll tell you what she needs to do for any degree she might want to take.

Best of luck!

LoveMusic doing well and getting a good grade in A level maths will be key to her getting a competitive place for Computer Science so she might need the time for that that a fourth A level would take.
Degree level computer science uses harder maths than the computer science that she is doing at the moment so she can’t really know what type of maths is relevant or not.

She should also look at this type of course
warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/admissions/undergraduate/cms/
and computer science at Bath with placement years.
An alternative pathway would be for her to do history, English, maths, continue coding in her spare time and with outside challenges, do a humanity or combined degree and then do a MSc conversion course for computer science.

Computer science at Oxford? She definitely wants to take double maths! If it's not offered she could self teach but I'd advise going to a school where it is offered. If she wants to maximise her chances of getting into a top university she'll be better off specialising so choosing only history or English but not both then spending the additional time doing more independent study in her chosen area.

(I did admission for Oxford -in a STEM subject by the way)

For Computer Science at Oxford she will need to sit the MAT test which is hard! DS had just done it and he's a straight A* student in Maths and FM. Whilst FM is not strictly needed DS said anyone not doing it would be disadvantaged and one lad he knows could not even attempt 2 questions.