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Sixth Form

Choosing a Course

You should think about:

• The course
• The university
• The town or city
• Employment prospects

The Course

You need to spend time looking at the UCAS web site and our courses and universities links to see what courses are available. There are thousands of courses out there so look carefully. You may want to continue with a subject you have enjoyed at school or you may want to branch out into a new area.

You should be aware that there are some ‘Mickey Mouse’ courses available. The question is: can you spot them?

• Australian Studies
• Celtic Studies
• War Studies
• Peace Studies
• Surf Science and Technology
• Acupuncture
• Business Economics with Gambling Studies
• Physiotherapy
• Forensic Science

The BSc in Business Economics with Gambling Studies may well have a good employment record, for example. There are something like 75 applicants per place for Physiotherapy. Forensic Science has become so popular because so few people want to study Chemistry at university and so Chemists have had to come up with more exciting courses.

In other words, you need to do your research! Not all subjects which look glamorous are glamorous and not all courses that look ridiculous are ridiculous. However, some are.

Once you have narrowed down your search you should then look in detail at what the course actually involves. You can do this either by reading the relevant university prospectus or by looking at the university web site, which can be found on a link from UCAS or our own list of university links. Compare the course content with the content of other similar courses.

Specific Advice on Particular Subjects

If you are interested in studying any of the following subjects, you should download and read these documents (all in Word format and 33KB or less):

• Art and Design
• English
• ICT and Computing
• Medicine
• Physics

Employment prospects

Approximately 50% of employers target graduates from any course so it makes sense to do the course you want to do. However, there are some courses which are less likely to land you a job than others. Six months after graduation:

• 10.8% of Media Studies graduates are unemployed
• 10.8% of Design Studies graduates are unemployed
• 7.4% of Economics graduates are unemployed
• 7.1% of Mathematics graduates are unemployed
• 6.0% of English graduates are unemployed
• 5.9% of Chemistry graduates are unemployed
• 5.0% of Geography graduates are unemployed
• 3.7% of Law graduates are unemployed
• 2.9% of Civil Engineering graduates are unemployed

These figures do not tell the whole story, but they do tell part of the story.

For further details ask Mr Peachey to show you the What do graduates do? publication or look at www.prospects.ac.uk.