Choosing A Level subjects, advice appreciated!!

[Looking for help]

I take it all with a pinch of salt. If Russell Group Unis are so great why are some of them languishing in the mid 30s in the league tables, compared with lots of the newer 1994 group which are moving up?

Facilitating subjects discussed are not the be all and end all. There are plenty of others not there good solid subjects like Geography and Philosophy&Ethics. These are not soft options and if people read too much into this, they will stick to a very narrow subject base, and that's not good at all. This is when the Scottish sytem was far better, less involved but a far broader range, and English had to be passed at Higher before being able to go to university. I am not too sure of the current system there though with Advanced Highers, these did not exist when I were a lass.

[Daogroupie]

I think Geography and Philosophy are there as core subjects. We chose Philosophy over English Language and Pyschology as a result of reading the Russell report. DG

[Looking for help]

Yes you're quite right...Geog is there, but I can't see Philosophy.

[daughter]

LFH - regarding Russell group and 1994 group. I think "Russell group" has almost become a term used to mean "good" uni ( but excluding Oxbridge) - and is therefore used in this way. I believe Durham and some other v.highly regarded Unis are not Russell group but are often referred to as so.

[Rob Clark]

Maybe in our generation it was enough to say you’d been to Durham or Exeter or some other ‘good’ university, but I think these days potential employers look more specifically at what you’ve studied and where, and acknowledge that some of the less well-known universities can nevertheless be very strong in some areas.

For example when I was recruiting, I would take seriously applicants who had studied Media or Communications at Liverpool University or Goldsmith’s College, London because I know that those two institutions boasted two of the UK’s leading doctors of semiotics who have written seminal books on the subject. Similarly I know that a lot of the engineers involved in Formula One studied Aerospace Engineering at Manchester University, which is generally recognised as the best place to do that particular course.

And while all the statistics about ‘best’ universities are available on line these days, they still have to be approached with a degree of caution. One criterion is ‘student satisfaction’ which could depend on anything from the cost of a pint to the number of indoor tennis courts. Another is ‘Research assessment’, but academics who are intent on research might be less interested in (and less good at) teaching, and ‘Entry Standards’ is largely self-perpetuating – ‘we’re a top university so we ask for all A grades at A level and then we score highly on a criterion which judges us to be a top university…’

So while some universities have a general cachet, that may not tell the whole story.

[daughter]

Rob I mainly agree with you - however I think the below quotes from TSR sort of illustrate the different decision aspects in making a decision.

'Go to the best university for your course. The important thing is how good you are at the subject, not whether you went to a big name (unless it's Oxbridge).'
...
'Depends on what you want to go into. If it's not related to your course, the name of the university will count for a lot more.'

I think therefore if you are doing a specialised or more vocational course that the reputation and teaching of that particular discipline/ department will be known to future employees and the learning experience may be better than a Russell Group or "good" Uni. However for a more general course e.g. Geog, History, Languages then "better" unis are better.

[Guest55]

daughter - TSR posters are mainly students and they are not always as well informed as they think!

I avoid the website for those very reasons - it does not have the 'quality' information we have on here.

[daughter]

Guest 55 - I am aware they are mainly students on TSR - I was not quoting fact - it is all opinion!
I think the choice of Uni is not a clear cut case and 6th Formers need to be making a decision based on all sorts of things including both the academic reputation of the course with other specialists, their peers and possible employers.
Each student (or potential student) will weight each of those differently along with all the other considerations eg. facilities, location etc.
What I was saying is that those 2 particular students on TSR have hit the nail on the head in my opinion.

[magwich2]

It also depends if you want 3 years living somewhere that resembles a downmarket housing estate in some vile area of some ghastly urban crime ridden city or the full-on punts,river, gowns and dinner in hall and flatmates with double-barrelled surnames as well as the course!!

[hermanmunster]

flatmates with double-barrelled surnames as well as the course!!

all the double barrelled surnames I see in youngsters these days are because the parents have added both their surnames together - neither parent answers to the double barrelled version - chaos abounds!