Choosing your courses

Level 3 qualifications (A Levels, BTEC’s, AAQ)  are subjects taken from aged 16+.  Universities and employers use these grades as part of the entry criteria.  You will be studying these subjects in depth for two years and so it is important that you do your research and make sure the course is right for you.  All students must study 3 courses.  A small number of students take 4 courses and generally have further maths as the fourth choice.

The option blocks at St. Joseph’s are not fixed.  We use the online applications to create option blocks which suit as many students as possible.  For the reason, it is best to get applications in as soon as possible.  any applications after the March deadline are not used in creating the option blocks.

To help in your decision process, you should consider:

  • Your future pathway.  Does the university course or apprenticeship or emplyer require you to take specific courses?  For example, most medicine courses require you to take chemistry plus either one other science or maths.  Some medicine courses like it if your third subject is Philosophy and Ethics.
  • What do you enjoy doing and what are you good at?  If you do not enjoy the subject then you will find it difficult to fully engage.  For example, if you do not like reading then English Literature is not for you!
  • The syllabus of the course.  Is the course 100% exam based or is there a coursework element involved?  Which is more suitable to yourself?  Also, look at the topics covered; are these of interest?
  • Your subject combination.  Do you want to take three subjects which are all long essay examinations?  If you take three very similar subjects, is this limiting your pathway?  Consider any coursework workload implications at this point also.  

Keeping your options open

For many of you, you will not yet know what you want to study at university or what specific apprenticeship you may want yet.  And this is absolutely ok.  In this case, you need to keep your options broad and varied so that you have a range of skills to demonstrate.

There are also eight ‘facilitating subjects’ listed by the Russell Group Universities to help you to keep your options open as well as being subjects which are respected universally.  They recommend to take at least two subjects from this list:

1. Maths and Further Maths
2. English Literature
3. Physics
4. Biology
5. Chemistry
6. Geography
7. History
8. Foreign Language

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