Maths Teacher ranks the MOST useful A-Level subjects

hey guys welcome back to another video so you guys were asking me about doing kind of a tier list for all of the different a-level subjects and I couldn't really find one that had every single a level subject so instead I'm going to group a few of these together like the languages all into Spanish and things like that um but I thought we'd just kind of go through a tier list I haven't really read through this yet so I thought you'd get more of my genuine reaction um just to see kind of what it's all about so the first one is actually art so art is an interesting a level and I know some of you might think that it's very very Niche and specialist however it does actually open more doors than you might realize so with a lot of subjects like architecture uh product design graphic design Etc having a qualification in art actually suits that pretty well so if you want to go into any kind of creative subject this is actually a really really strong subject to pick at a level so I know that a lot of the time we focus on like the Maths for example opening the most amount of doors I would argue that art opens up almost as many if not as many doors as maths so for that reason I have to put it for all reason a person my personal opinion on the subject is I sucker on I suck at drawing I suck at everything design related so I hate it but I have to acknowledge that it's very very strong it's also very heavily coursework based which means that you aren't stressing over revising free exams as much you have a more consistent workload with exams what happens is and this is completely natural by the way I'm not gonna so letting any of you guys but what happens is you tend to wait until towards exam season and then for a couple of months you're studying absolute Breakneck in truth if you studied consistently for let's say maths you wouldn't have to study super super hard right before the exam realistically but no one ever does that so yeah that's what as I can a to subject even though I personally don't like it biology this is an interesting one in terms of the actual content it's basically love memorization however I will say it's very interesting you do things like genetic engineering you talk about organization of plants and animals and all of that fun stuff Evolution as well was my personal favorite topic along with the immune system so learning about all the different white blood cells although it's quite a lot it's in my opinion very very interesting all the different viruses and stuff however in terms of the usefulness which is what I want to kind of make this tier list about I have to say biology is very very specific you can only really go into medicine and anything related to biology biochemistry bio medical engineering things like that so it's unironically less useful than art um but in terms of a subject it's again it's pretty strong there's a lot you have to memorize so what I'd advise if you're doing biology is to sim quite simply make notes on everything as you go along so every day when you get home from school from a biology lesson I would rewrite the notes in a condensed form just so that way when you come to the exam you don't have to write 100 pages of notes you already have your condensed full notes already next we have business studies um personally I think that this is a bit of a filler a lot of people just pick business out of Interest with nothing wrong with that but it doesn't really open many doors for you there aren't many universities that say yes please have a business studies a level not many I'm not saying there's none there's not that many so in my opinion it's a bit of a filler in terms of what you're doing is Hell level of case studies and some of the exams are pretty damn long too so I'm going to put this in C tip because it's basically a filler that you just do for fun essentially all because you want to be an entrepreneurial multi-billionaire in the future chemistry it's very similar to biology however it is slightly better regarded than biology in the sense that it has more of a scientific component to it so what I mean by that is depending on your exam board you're likely going to be doing this experimental exam where essentially you'll come into school your normal school and you do this experiment you'll get your own results you'll talk about the results Etc et cetera Etc which uh then gets basically graded by your teacher but then also moderated um so pretty useful in that sense because you can talk about the scientific method and the experiments that you've done in order to get into University so for that reason I want to put it I wanted to we'll leave the order yeah we'll leave it like this so chemistry's slightly more useful than biology for sure in terms of opening doors again if you're doing any science based qualification chemistry is a pretty solid Choice computer science now this is kind of going to be a bit of a controversial one because it's a bit interesting so you might think if you're doing computer science at University Computer Science is a good choice but if you actually look at what universities ask for the only thing they ask for is a level maths they don't even ask for a level computer science so for that reason it doesn't really open doors so if you want to do computer science at Imperial for instance they only ask for an a star in maths they don't really care about computer science now that being said in a university interview if you can talk about computer science when you're applying for computer science it's really really useful likewise if you code in your spare time as I know a few of you do then it's pretty uh useful in that regard as well because it's a very easy a level in that sense if you already know how to program then computer science a level is a really easy exam to do but again it doesn't really open all that many doors so I'm tempted to put it around the same as business studies for that regard it's very good if you're interested in it but again it's not going to open up that many doors for you so design engineering I'm going to lump together product design graphic design design engineering all together because they all serve a similar purpose in the terms of what kind of degrees you can go for it's all very product designy type thing um maybe even some freelance work that you're going to do in the future it does exactly what it said what it says on the tin right it's design engineering product design that kind of stuff not really not as well regarded as art in the sense that art can get you into so many different types of course at University photography art obviously and also design engineering at the same time so I'm going to put it at the same level as the two sciences that we had before chemistry and biology cool now English literature a lot of people take English which kind of surprised me but that they mostly take it because it's good they're good at GCSE now why are these essay subjects useful so English literature language to a lesser extent law Etc well a lot of degrees at University I like to split them up into three options you have the academic kind of stem subjects like maths engineering medicine Etc you have The Artsy type ones graphic design things like that and the last type is the essay-based subjects and the reason why I lump them together is because there's a lot of cross platform there basically if you do English literature you can go into law if you do English literature you can go into basically any essay-based subject so even things like sociology without having to do sociology so in that sense it's a very useful degree um a really useful a level to to kind of get into various different degrees in the future it also shows very good communication skills you can use it to get into copywriting and things like that copywriting is quite popular online at the moment and to earn a bit of extra cash so in that regard I like to put these kind of somewhat together now some people that do law at University they like to pick English literature law and maybe sociology at a level because they're all essay-based subjects it's not exactly what I'd recommend personally because I like to have a bit of a mixture in my a-level subjects that being said I did do three Sciences of math so not really that much of a mixture but it might be good to do an essay subject mixed in with something a bit more um I either made something like oh maybe something like maths something along those lines because they're shorter exams if you do three essay-based exams it's a a lot to remember uh B it's a hell of a lot of writing if they happen to be on the same day or near the same time you're going to develop RSI for sure um but yeah English literature in terms of an actual course it's probably up there with art in the sense that it opens up a lot of doors now French and Spanish I'm going to put them in the exact same tier which is C it's so Niche it doesn't really open doors for you one two it doesn't really provide any level of fluency and what I mean by that is at school for instance I did German and Spanish for five years and I didn't know any German or Spanish afterwards even though I got decent grades I think I've got an A in Spanish in a Bim in German or something like that because of the way that uh the subjects actually taught they teach them all about grammar rules and things like that so as a result in terms of getting fluency you're better off just like doing Duolingo or memorize or something along those lines but it's good if you have an interest in it it's obviously good if you already speak the language and it's good if you want to so learning another language is a really really useful skill in terms of making more money as well as just quality of life because you can act as like a translator and things like that so especially in international business these are useful Spanish probably slightly more so than French so perhaps we should move this across so I'm assuming that if you're doing a level Spanish you're actually trying to get fluency outside of the classroom so you might be interested in terms of dealing or memorize or you already know the language itself and you just want a qualification and the same with French but it doesn't really provide that many more opportunities again I'm comparing it to things like art sciences and English lit in terms of those it's not as good now I'm gonna do maths before further maths um probably a bit biased but obviously it's an Esther subject best subject in the world absolutely amazing um but in all seriousness in terms of usefulness it's one of the most useful a levels you can get um again to be honest I would put it on par with aren't English Lit but slightly higher because if you're going to University chances are you're doing a technical subject so again computer science engineering medicine anything along those lines architecture anything at all maths helps with it also helps with logical reasoning so if I were to go into let's say law with maths they can the good part matters is that there's a lot of proofs involved which Believe It or Not helps with a law application because you can say that it encourages your deductive reasoning and your logical reasoning and things like that which is a very sought after skill but in short if you just go to any interview and say you're doing a level ads they look at you slightly more impressed even if it's something that isn't necessarily directly related not just that I think that it's probably the one of the best designed a levels out there I'm basing this on the Edexcel kind of um specification here AQA is not not that bad either it's pretty much the same why do I say that because it's completely you can you can self-teach easily online there's plenty of resources because again the specification is so neat and tidy it's so compact that people have produced tons of resources online which means you can self-teach the whole thing and even with in terms of the structure of the exams they're very very similar every single year I've already said uh in my patreon course that the paper three which is stats and mechanics You can predict five out of the eight questions are the same every single year by same I mean they're the same topic unheard of in a lot of a levels so you can really predict exactly what's going to come up that's another thing thirdly is up in 2015 there was a spec change and I put down air quotes for a very good reason where essentially they reject all of the a-level subjects a lot of a level subjects changed the content maths is identical which means you can go back and do past papers from 1996 and have the same style of questions the same content as 2023 2024 so in short you have a basically unparalleled amount of content you can go all the way back to 2000 if you wanted to because the actual content stayed the same so you have three papers paper one two and three in the old spec that's called C1 c2c3 C4 the C stands for core maths so you can just do that same with the stats and mechanics paper all you have to do is do M1 papers and S1 papers they go back to the early 2000s I'm pretty sure I've seen one from 1996. so you have unlimited resources so it's it's so good because you can just self-teach it if you need to so if you have a bad teacher or you're independently doing it I know a lot of you guys are independently doing it this year because of the grade boundaries shifts um for maths meaning you can't do Mata um sixth form you can self-teach this very very much more easily than the rest of the a-level subjects that I know of so good further maths I'm going to put this straight here because it's very situational um not many universities require it at all even if you want to do maths at University sometimes they just require maths at a level they don't really require further maths so why do people do it uh it looks really good on a CV really really good so maybe in that sense I should put third math slightly higher but it looks really good in terms of if you're going to a top university to do Engineering in order to do maths in order to do physics something along those lines phone last is really useful I will also say that it's um quite good in the sense that you can also so I'm actually going to slide this up whoops it's also quite good in the sense that it follows on from regular maths very nicely which is a big bonus so there's a lot of overlap a lot of tie-in so it's quite it's not an easy a level but at least it's relevant and with respect to the stuff you've already done in a level maths anyway so that's quite important English language so what's the difference between lit and Lang well this is an age-old question the difference is language is analyzing the use of communication devices so you're going to be analyzing things like advertisements leaflets and things like that and how you can use the English language and tone and different language devices in order to persuade people or to encourage people to do certain things as a result it's really good for things like marketing so marketing is a massive field big bucks in it too and it's also quite popular at University which honestly kind of surprising in my opinion um well it's not surprising in my opinion but it's surprising when I found out but then I realized it actually makes a complete and lot of sense so as a result English language is really really useful for that and some people go on to do things like creative writing at University because they want to be authors that in my opinion the reason why that gets a bit of a um is a bit of a struggle is that a lot of authors nowadays don't do English language or creative writing degrees so it's not necessary especially with independent publishing we can make a big thing so as a result it's again one that you're probably going to just pick out of fun or if it is a kind of degree that you want to do it's very very Niche indeed so yeah that's why I'd say for English language law I'm going to put that on the same kind of level as English literature in the sense that it does the exact same thing um in the sense that it opens doors for any essay-based subjects simple as already covered that media studies I'm gonna put this next to language because it's they're very very similar English language can help you get into media related courses and media studies obviously can get you into media related courses as well because they share similar things because it's all about how content is used to drive emotion and get people to do certain things music yeah this is an interesting a level um I might have to put this I'm gonna put this again down here the reason for this is for most people it based on they've all they already know how to play an instrument really well so they're doing music to learn music theory and things like that a lot of people that I know a lot of the students I know that have done music a level find it very easy because they already know everything in music a level they know music theory they know how to play instruments they know how to compose pieces already now there was a case and this is the only time I've heard of it which is why I'm putting music so low again this doesn't mean it's a bad subject by any means necessary I'm just saying it's extraordinarily niche I've only ever heard of one person who was actually in my year group who did music um for a purpose I'm gonna say so she actually went on to a music school right to like learn how to be in an orchestra and things like that and like prodigious stuff like that I've only ever heard of one and I know that it's not exactly super popular for people to go into things like that so and again it's also not necessary you don't have to go to these top schools to do that so I'm gonna put that at the bottom but yeah music is very very Niche um and it's also kind of hobby related so if you're already good at music it might be something that you do just to fill up a slot physics straight up now I'm joking Okay so physics although it pains me is not that useful I want to put at the bottom um it's not that great as an a level to be honest so first of all in terms of physics degrees yes if you want to go into engineering Etc you need to have physics um but it's not as useful as let's say biological chemistry why not say useful again but bio and chem have a lot more overlap with it so for example one of my friends went in to do biomedical engineering without physics a level right I would recommend that you only do physics if it is directly required for your degree and there's a few reasons for this one is it's one of the hardest a levels and one basing that one is failure rate physics has a very high failure rate um part of this is also due to it not being the best design sometimes so for a few of you because this has become less popular over time unfortunately it wasn't unpopular when I did it for some of you you're going to have something called an emperor or an externally marked practical assessment basically you're gonna have to do an experiment or multiple experiments in my case I'm so happy about that where they're going to you literally it's the same as chemistry except so bad it's way worse and I'm really ragging on this it really annoys me because so many people have lost grades on this but anyways where you essentially go in do an experiment and then later on you're doing exam paper on it talking about your results and then similar results as well this has mostly been replaced by something called a paper three it says three papers for um physics a level at least for most exam boards which replace it so you don't have to worry about it so why is this bad sounds alright I mean it makes sense test your experiments the problem is is before you do it your teacher has to do it in order to get all of the results and send them off to the exam board and those results are what they compare your results to and if you're off by fractions of a decimal point you get the answer wrong so what's the problem with this well a couple things is one do you trust your teachers actually get the answer right which I know that's a bold statement but it's possible right if your teacher makes a mistake it screws all of you over especially considering how busy teachers are they might rush it and might not go well but two and is the bigger thing school funding is not that good so as you can imagine you're trying to share a bunch of equipment now when I did this my voltmeter didn't have enough batteries in it but not just that when it did have batteries in it it wasn't calibrated and I noticed this by the grace of God somehow and I handed it in to the invigilator they just messed around with it for like 10-15 minutes I'm sitting there wondering what the hell to do so I just took someone else's after they were done which technically should have disqualified me which I know right and finished it off um but yeah in short I'm saying what about your equipment so if your teacher's using one piece of equipment what about all of the other pieces of equipment that you guys are going to use are they all the same are they all as good are any of them broken or any of them damaged those are all things I can genuinely cost you marks and the problem is getting it remarked that's not going to do anything because they're going based on the data that your teacher gave you so why do I say this is bad well for you know austerity reasons take a guess what a star was for that particular paper when I did it it was 48 under half marks for the highest grade that will give you an idea of how stupidly low the grade boundaries were because of how stupid the exam was again for AQA OCR and Ed Excel you don't have to do it anymore but there are like alternative examples like OCR B and Salters horn as approach and all this weird stuff that may still do um practical experiments uh practical exams but for most of you that's not an issue hopefully you do aqaedxl.ocr anyways psychology this is gonna you're going to hate a lot of the psychology students because or and psychology students are going to hate everyone else because they're obviously going to say oh yeah what do you think's on my mind what am I thinking of right now and it's gonna be this thing where they tell you to draw a house and then the way you draw it imply certain things oh it's going to be amazing you're gonna love this both of you people that do psychology and people that don't do it you're gonna love it um not that useful really um but also people take psychology because they think okay so I should probably bump it up a little bit um universities don't ask for it specifically but but what they do ask for sometimes is one other stem subject psychology is a stem subject so people say well I hate biochem physics so I'm going to do psychology because that's the easy one and then they get ruined psychology is such a hard a level it's unbelievable you have to memorize something like 30 case studies memorize like the whole thing incredibly difficult but also they seem to forget that maths counts as a stem subject which means they could have just picked maths or if they already pick maths and they don't need to do psychology which is kind of annoying so I'm going to put it higher because it does have a use it is useful to an extent but it's a lot harder than people think which makes them fail a lot more sociology again I'm going to put that like next to uh psychology in that sense as well again I want you to I want to reiterate this one more time because I know I might get angry comments about this I'm not saying that like English language is worse than these subjects I'm talking about basically opening doors and also um kind of how well the actual a level is structured theater studies again it's the same as music it's useful if you're going to acting school but then to get into acting school you don't necessarily need theater studies so it's kind of kind of a toss up on that in that regard so I hope I covered I know I haven't covered every single individual a level but I wanted to group a lot of them together the one the main one that I haven't done on this is economics now economics is a very interesting a level because it counts as stem it's very maths based it's basically maths but applied like that's how I describe it and the problem is is actually very Niche not many people not many universities ask for it and even if they do ask for it like for example lse one year it asked for economics to be your fourth a level and you needed to get a D in it like it's very odd like that so it would probably be at the bottom of beat here however it's incredibly popular loads and loads of people pick it so take that with what you will um yeah I hope you enjoyed the video I hope it provided some insights and I rambled on a lot about this but uh I wanted to kind of get out and see what you guys uh thoughts I I know that I wanted to use this time to explain all these different types of a levels and everything and again don't take these rankings personally again I'm not it's not literally better or worse it's just kind of in terms of usefulness but I will see you in the next one