What Degree Should I Do?

Before starting to research the university course options, it’s worth thinking through how your current A levels/BTEC/IB are going. What’s going well or not so well? How could you use the subjects you are enjoying to help you decide ‘what degree should I do?’ Do you want to do the obvious and carry on with an A level subject or two? E.g. carry on with History or French? Or combine 2 of your subjects in a new way, for instance biology and chemistry in a pharmacology degree? Alternatively do you want to do something radically different, which you haven’t studied at all so far? Examples could be Politics or Linguistics. This self reflection will give you a good basis to start researching from.

Another factor to think through is what do you want to use the degree for? This might sound really obvious, but the answer may well help you ‘refine’ your thoughts about which ‘uni course is for me’. For instance if you are doing the degree to give you professional registration, then you will need to ensure the courses you apply for will give you this – for instance to become a psychologist you need to have an approved first degree from the BPS (https://www.bps.org.uk/public/become-psychologist/getting-started), other examples here would be medical jobs like doctors, dentists and physios and ones like social work. Websites like www.prospects.ac.uk and https://www.ucas.com/careers-advice can be a good way to find this information or will give you links to the professional bodies for you. The university course information will often tell you this too.

If you don’t know what career you want yet, this shouldn’t hold you back from doing a degree! Did you know that about 80% of UK graduate jobs don’t specify a degree subject? So that Ancient History or International Relations degree could lead you in some rather unexpected directions afterwards. Conversely, if you have a burning desire to do a particular subject but are concerned about this narrowing your career options, you don’t need to worry. For instance, a large percentage of engineering and law students don’t actually end up being engineers or lawyers! These degrees will give you ample skills and experience to ‘change tack’ and go in a different direction. Wondering about those 20% of jobs that do need a specific degree? These tend to be ones like medicine or medical roles, engineering and certain science areas!

As for other factors to consider, its worth checking out the careers service, to see what help they can give you during and after your degree. If you have a disability (seen or hidden, including mental health issues), what support will the university give you? You may well be pleasantly surprised! What about accommodation, what percentage of 1st year students get offered something? Which other years can get accommodation too, if any? Some of these factors will be looked at in other blogs!

So, from the starting point of thinking how you are getting on academically, these other factors should hopefully help you in your ponderings about ‘which university’ or ‘what degree should I do?’ for your future.

Here at My Uni Choices we specialise in helping students, parents & educators make the best choices. Review all the Universities & Courses here or discover more About Us & the best uni courses for you, finally if you’re ready let’s take The Test to find out what course or degree you should do.

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