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I need to start choosing my AS levels now so I need advice on what is good to take. Basically I want to work within the research and development industry. Kinda thinking of doing something with computers, maybe a software developer. However I have been told that this industry is moving to the far east so it will be hard to get a job here in England. Wouldn't mind working with biotechnology. What kind of jobs get paid lots of ££s? What subjects have people had bad experiences with or have regreted taking?
I dunno if its still the case but just before i started my A-levels, there was a big shortage of electricians, plumbers, trade industry jobs really. Dunno if your interested in them or not and you dont have to take a-levels for these either afaik, just get an apprenticeship.
-edit started a-levels last september btw
I wouldn't worry about the outsourcing issue if you are serious about going into IT. Contrary to the fear-mongering it's only really affecting the bottom-of-the-barrel jobs that are the modern equivalent of working in a coal mine. Real skills (ie not HTML, VB, etc) are still very much in demand and will stay here simply because they are often too deeply integrated.
Basically there are three main ways to get into IT :
1) Study Computer Science at university. For this you will usually need 2 or 3 science A-Levels including maths. I would suggest physics and maths as the most important but if you can get better grades elsewhere the university may prefer that (check the prospectuses).
2) Study something else at university and then do a vocational or conversion course to gain an IT qualification, usually in a specific area. It helps a lot if you have some previous knowledge or experience if you go this route but it's not essential.
3) Ignore university, get out there and earn experience by working instead.
Pros of the above :
1) Safest and easiest. Almost guaranteed a job after uni if you pick the right course and do well. Big companies will love you and it's easy to get moving up the career ladder. Easy to get decent jobs in the holidays while at uni.
2) Can be more interesting if you aren't a big IT geek. Gives you a fallback career option if you want to get out of IT later in life.
3) Get a three (or four) year head-start on the graduates. Learn things that uni can't teach and which MAY ultimately make you more valuable in the long-term. Start earning straight away. Much easier to become proficient in many fields.
Cons of the above :
1) Dull if you aren't a big IT geek. You need to pick the right course or it may be almost worthless. You'll probably end up working in a cubicle and/or becoming a faceless middle-manager for most of your life.
2) Working in only one field can become very tedious and often has limits on how far you can progress in a technical role (ie you may end up becoming a salesman).
3) Shit pay to start with. Hard work. You need a natural interest and aptitude. Easy to get nowhere if you don't have the necessary skills. Much harder to do these days as kids aren't exposed to tech in the same way they were 10-30 years ago because consumer electronics is so much more advanced. You miss out on University which can be a fantastic experience.
Obviously there are many variants on the above but IME these are the three most common routes.
wrt AS levels: I did one in statistics which I can't say was ever really any use to me as I use it so infrequently that whenever I've needed anything it covered I had to go reread the books anyway. I actually forgot about it for almost a decade and only recently added it back onto my CV. That said if you are going the IT degree route it would be a very good choice. It may be different now but when I did A-Levels we treated ASs as a sort of safety net incase a proper A-Level came out a grade worse than expected. Concentrating on the main subjects still seems wise to me even with the state of the modern syllabus.
I wouldn't worry about the outsourcing issue if you are serious about going into IT. Contrary to the fear-mongering it's only really affecting the bottom-of-the-barrel jobs that are the modern equivalent of working in a coal mine. Real skills (ie not HTML, VB, etc) are still very much in demand and will stay here simply because they are often too deeply integrated.
Basically there are three main ways to get into IT :
1) Study Computer Science at university. For this you will usually need 2 or 3 science A-Levels including maths. I would suggest physics and maths as the most important but if you can get better grades elsewhere the university may prefer that (check the prospectuses).
2) Study something else at university and then do a vocational or conversion course to gain an IT qualification, usually in a specific area. It helps a lot if you have some previous knowledge or experience if you go this route but it's not essential.
3) Ignore university, get out there and earn experience by working instead.
Pros of the above :
1) Safest and easiest. Almost guaranteed a job after uni if you pick the right course and do well. Big companies will love you and it's easy to get moving up the career ladder. Easy to get decent jobs in the holidays while at uni.
2) Can be more interesting if you aren't a big IT geek. Gives you a fallback career option if you want to get out of IT later in life.
3) Get a three (or four) year head-start on the graduates. Learn things that uni can't teach and which MAY ultimately make you more valuable in the long-term. Start earning straight away. Much easier to become proficient in many fields.
Cons of the above :
1) Dull if you aren't a big IT geek. You need to pick the right course or it may be almost worthless. You'll probably end up working in a cubicle and/or becoming a faceless middle-manager for most of your life.
2) Working in only one field can become very tedious and often has limits on how far you can progress in a technical role (ie you may end up becoming a salesman).
3) Shit pay to start with. Hard work. You need a natural interest and aptitude. Easy to get nowhere if you don't have the necessary skills. Much harder to do these days as kids aren't exposed to tech in the same way they were 10-30 years ago because consumer electronics is so much more advanced. You miss out on University which can be a fantastic experience.
Obviously there are many variants on the above but IME these are the three most common routes.
wrt AS levels: I did one in statistics which I can't say was ever really any use to me as I use it so infrequently that whenever I've needed anything it covered I had to go reread the books anyway. I actually forgot about it for almost a decade and only recently added it back onto my CV. That said if you are going the IT degree route it would be a very good choice. It may be different now but when I did A-Levels we treated ASs as a sort of safety net incase a proper A-Level came out a grade worse than expected. Concentrating on the main subjects still seems wise to me even with the state of the modern syllabus.
Jernau summed it all up really well.
I'm a 22 yr old software engineer working in the R&D department for a major Life and Analytical science company. Mainly working on the companies range of infra-red instruments and software.
I graduated from uni last summer with an 2:1 MChem in Computer-Aided Chemistry. Luckily the job I am in now was also the company I worked at during the placement year for my degree.
I've been applying for other software jobs as my current contract run out in the summer. Most places that pay the equivalent of what i'm on now require 3-5 years programming experience plus a 2:1 minimum in a computer-related degree.
Not had much luck in securing another job yet but once you get that foot in the door it's worth clocking up a few years of experience before moving on.
I'm not sure how many jobs are now available to people without degrees nowadays, out-sourcing is done by meny companies (mine included) but there are disadvantages to that as well.
If you can hack 3/4/5 years more of education then plan on going to uni. You'll probably have a great time there as well
Edit:
Sorry for the really badly written reply, i'm late for a meeting... 8|
landofcake
09-02-05, 16:16
Most important tip:
A good teacher can make any subject good.
A bad teacher can make any subject bad.
For my AS i took Computing, Politics, Economics and English Literature, and dropped Computing after AS because the teacher was a prick.
Well I studied :
AS / A Levels
History
Government and Poilitcs
Business
Economics
Citizenship
dropped citizenship it sucks
Now about to start my law degree but seriously if you ring up a company and tell them how your interested in that line of work and if you get a nice person which 9/10 times you do they will give you some good help
TBh careers advisor peeps suck
But anyways anything is possible if u set your heart on it
interesting, i understand u are talking about the UK Uni's - i have a question then, haven't u got there such subjects as media theory (media philosophy, media analysis, whatever it is called) or some digital media/internet related issues?
interesting, i understand u are talking about the UK Uni's - i have a question then, haven't u got there such subjects as media theory (media philosophy, media analysis, whatever it is called) or some digital media/internet related issues?
Unfortunately we do but you will be laughed at if you try to use them to get a real IT job (he mentioned R&D). If you want to go into marketing I'm sure they are great but I would have thought a labotomy was quicker, cheaper and just as suitable in that case.
Bugs Gunny
10-02-05, 11:48
In 10 years from graduating chances are you won't be doing anything remotely related to what you studied anyway :-)
I studied music and now i'm working in the IT departement of a company.
Unfortunately we do but you will be laughed at if you try to use them to get a real IT job (he mentioned R&D). If you want to go into marketing I'm sure they are great but I would have thought a labotomy was quicker, cheaper and just as suitable in that case.
well uhm ehm... i'm teaching those... :p and i dont think they are that much useless :D
nah, seriously, i'm just surprised as from my perspective such knowledge is much more useful in IT deparment than in marketing. But i'm probably spoiled.
But it is a visible trend, as most of my students are rather humanist types (linguistics, philosophy, art, sociology, anthropology - that kind of studies) - though media knowledge would be more useful to IT people than to humanists, at least that is how i see that.
Economy and marketing people are a different class (they are mostly retarded) so i dont count them as anything important.
No offence meant, I just don't see those as IT roles.
[I also remember by Physics degree course where I had >30 hours of lectures and labs a week and then (at times) as much again in coursework and reading while the media studies girls in the flat upstairs had 4 hours of lectures and almost nothing else.]
I suppose it depends what you mean by "IT" though.
If you are talking about "media" people - web designers, etc. then I wouldn't say they are really IT at all as most of them are simply using tools that just happen to be on computer systems. I have a similar objection to people calling themselves "engineers" becuase they change the tyres on my car.
If you are talking about software engineers (real ones, not the ones who claim the title but just copy/paste VBS all day), integrated circuit designers, DBAs, network engineers, etc then a media studies degree is useless. These jobs take years of training and experience to do with any level of competence.
It may seem (and I accept somewhat) that I'm probably being overly strict here in the way I define these things as mis-labelling people's roles has become so widespread now that most job-titles are utterly meaningless (at my last job I had as many as nine titles at once and most of them were stupid, inaccurate or innapropriate). It's still important to make the distinction though in terms of education as the actual work you'll be able do is very different.
As I said initially there are a lot of IT jobs that can be taught as one year conversion/vocational courses and need very little IT knowledge. These tend to be around supporting a single product (eg SAP, Notes, etc) and can be a good way to get into an IT-related job while keeping your future options open.
The line is blurred somewhat around the issue of media/content production where technology and artistic design have to work very closely together but the educational requirements for the technology element are in almost all cases trivial.
As Bugs points out you may well be doing something completely unexpected in ten years time and it would be nice to have that flexibility.
I don't see anyone doing a lot of "R&D" on how to use Flash or Dreamwanker.
Mechanicus
10-02-05, 13:26
ok heres some advise from my own experiance ( almost finished my A levels and im going to uni next year, got offers from 4 of my 6 choices so far :) )
this may sound like a loser or lazy persons approach (well it kinda is) but i think if i took em again i would go with this
take 1-2 subjects you want to specialise in and are good at (like a science or maths) and take the rest as PISS EASY subjects like RE or sociology (psychology is a pretty hard subject in terms of work required so dont take as an easy subject)
after AS if your strugleing in a hard subject drop it, otherwise drop an easy one
this way you will get MUCH better results, and most universitys only demand a grade in 1 specific subject and then the rest can be from any subject, so you can get into a much better uni
if like me you take chemistry, biology, physics and psychology then like me (unless your a super dork) you'll get ok grades in all of em (im getting like BBC or BBC) but nothing amazing, you wont go to a TOP uni.
if you take mostly easy subject and one your good at you'll get like ABB or AAB or at worst ABC, you'll get into a MUCH better uni and have a MUCH easier time at A levels
if your a super brain though just take 4 rock solid subjects and pass em then you can pick any uni and your pretty much getting a place there
after all, A level is just a step up to university, thats where it really matters
i didnt include general studies but thats pretty much an A as long as you go to at least half of the lessons, you do need to know some matieral for it
Argh, I'd forgotten the farce of "General Studies".
For reasons I still can't fathom our school made us take it even if none of the universities we applied to would accept it. I made a point of not attending a single class for it and was most annoyed when they told me I had to attend the exam or pay for the unused exam paper (the one I had told them MANY times I had no use for and no intention to sit :wtf: ) and risk having all my papers rejected for some kind of trumped up BS or other (something to do with the "answers" I gave to the mock paper). Even though I was certain they couldn't do either it wasn't worth the risk so I turned up for the mandated 30 minutes and wrote a small essay for one of the multiple choice questions detailing exactly why the question was wrong and how this reflected the utter stupidity of General Studies.
Somehow, without answering a single question I got an E which tells you all you need to know about the subject. I filed an official complaint with the LEA and demanded I get a fail but they refused. Bastards!
Long story short - GS is a government scam to fuck up this country's once great education system and raise a nation of fucktard chavs with degrees in picking their noses.
I am currently taking:
Biology
Chemistry
Maths
Business Studies (should be Computing but my school wouldn't do it :( )
And hoping to go on to do an MEng in Computer Systems and Software Engineering. The most important subject to have if you want to go on to do something computer related is maths, as they teach you the rest of the stuff you need to know. You also have to remember there are other computer qualifications that you can use to supplement your degree/whatever, like the MCSE/MCP/RHSE/CCNA/CCNP but these are moer directed at people interested in develpoping specific technologies/brands in computing.
Started ASs last Septemeber, and almost completed my courses as far as teaching goes. Fortunately I wasn't forced into taking General Studies, although I am sure I coulde have bullshitted a B out of it.
Good luck in your choices!
Mechanicus
10-02-05, 18:15
how im playing my general studies card is this:
i know i can get an A in it with little to no effort, because basically, its piss easy, if you read the papers or watch the news of go to a few lessons in it every month you get enough matieral for the essay and the rest is just common sence
most 'good' unis dont accept it, but a few decent ones do
so what i've done is instead of picking a crappy uni for my backup i picked a good one that accepts general studies and key skills, an extra 160 points or A is easily enough to get me into it
If your course/uni will accept it then it's a free ride so you may as well take it. None of mine would have so it was a total waste of time.
Our school had some truly daft rules around exams and timetabling because they were both run by a silly old barmpot.
Another one was that we had to apply to both UCAS and PCAS even if we were only interested in one of them (I think they are now the same so that may not mean much to some people). This rule I didn't mind so much as it meant a bunch of legitimate days off school supposedly going to interviews (by crazy co-incidence all my PCAS options were in the wilds of Scotland and I had to take 3 days for each for travel-time ;)).
Dribble Joy
10-02-05, 18:36
My school let us opt out of GS in the second year of sixth form :p, even they knew how useless it was for the vast majority of unis and courses.
In fact no course that my friends applied to, or any job I have applied for have accepted it.
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