• Course Choices

Course Choices

The Right Course

Choosing the right course and right university will have a huge impact on both how much you enjoy your time at university and also how useful it is for you in later life.

Research is absolutely essential; some of the links below will help you to begin that process. Please come and use the vast array of prospectuses that we have in the Careers Department and try to talk to as many people as you can - your subject teachers, tutor, Head of House, and the Careers Department staff.

If you already know the subject area you want to study, start with Brian Heap's Degree Course Offers 2023.  Copies are in each house and the careers library.  

If you have yet to decide on a subject area you should be talking to the Careers and HE Department to help you explore ideas.  The Morrisby Test feedback can be very useful in identifying areas where you have strengths and interest.

Need help choosing a course?

Visit the Uni Guide A Level Explorer to enter your subjects and find matching degree courses:

https://www.theuniguide.co.uk/a-level-explorer

The Right University

Choosing a university can be a simple case of it being the only one that offers the course that you want to do, being the one with a typical offer that suits your predictions, but for the more widely available degree courses there is an important decision to make with regards to narrowing down which institution is the best one for you.

Important factors to take into account are:-

  • Is it a campus university or not?
  • Are there multiple sites?
  • Cost implications of rental accommodation
  • Travel to the campus and home
  • Extra-curricular
  • Data such as employment statistics
  • Quality of teaching
  • Type of teaching- lectures, tutorials, small discussion groups or vast halls full of students from across the city

The Right Five Courses for your UCAS  form

There are some restrictions you must observe.

  1. Maximum of Five Courses
  2. Maximum of four Medicine/ Vet or Dentistry Courses
  3. You can apply for a single course at Oxford or Cambridge but not both.
  4. You do not have to use all five choices.
Remember:
  1. You write only one personal statement so your courses need to be in the same subject area.
  2. The admissions tutor does not see all five choices only the fact that you have applied to their course.
  3. The courses you apply for should have typical offers which are close to your predicted grades.  It is not unwise to have one course whose typical offer is one grade above your predictions but common sense dictates that at least 4 are at that level or below.  One should ideally be at least one grade less than your predicted grade.