A Level

Choosing Your A Levels: What You Should Know (and Ask)

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Christopher Fear

16 August 2024 - 6 min read

Some people are blessed with a clear understanding of just what they want to do with their life. With a laser-like focus, they know what career they’d like to do and how they’re going to get it. When it comes to choosing qualifications like A Levels, they know exactly which ones to pick.

For the vast majority of us though, choosing which A Levels to study can be a bit of a challenge. There are so many on offer, covering such a broad range of topics, that it can feel hard trying to narrow down the option best suited to your future plans.

To help you do just that, in this blog we’ll be exploring some of the key things that you need to know about A Levels and also some questions that you should ask to help you pick the right qualification for your needs.

What are A Levels?

The term A Level is short for ‘Advanced Level’.

As UCAS describes, A Levels are ‘subject-based qualifications’ that can lead to opportunities for additional study or work. They’re usually studied by school leavers, graduating into college, sixth form or other Higher Education establishments.

A Levels are commonly studied in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – Scotland offers different qualifications. There are also internationally-recognised A Levels too. These are known (unsurprisingly) as International A Levels.

A Levels are available in a broad range of subjects. At ICS Learn for example, we offer topics like:

What should you know about A Levels?

1. A Levels help you specialise in an area

With a huge variety of subjects available to study, it’s likely that – whatever your career interests – you’re likely to find a course that can be applied to your plans.

Imagine, for a moment, that the only thing you’ve ever wanted to be is an accountant. There are several A Levels that would be relevant to this: A Level Mathematics would give you a solid grounding in advanced mathematics techniques that would be broadly applicable to a career working with numbers on a daily basis. Likewise, A Level Business would help you to develop the entrepreneurial skills to set up and run your own business – a useful skill if you ever considered setting up your own, private accountancy or bookkeeping practice.

2. A Levels are versatile

Whilst courses are focused on individual specialisms, there’s no denying that A Levels have a versatility all of their own.

A lot of the skills that you’ll learn whilst studying an A Level can be readily transferred to other subjects, outside of the one that you’re studying. For example, take A Level English Literature. Whilst, at first glance, it might look like this A Level is literally just about reading books and poetry, when you dig deeper, you’ll discover that actually you’ll cover things like critical thinking, analysis, creating an argument, using primary and secondary sources and so on. Rather than just being an opportunity to read books, A Level English Literature actually equips you with a versatile range of critical-thinking skills that you can deploy in a range of other contexts – from roles like journalism and the legal system through to HR or business management.

3. They can be studied online or in person

You might assume that because A Levels are generally associated with higher education, after secondary school or high school, they need to be studied in a college. That’s not technically the case though.

Thanks to the development of digital technology, A Levels can now be studied entirely online. This allows you to fit the qualification around your own schedule – perfect if you have a full-time job that you need to fit your study around, or you have caring commitments. With online study, you simply access your course materials online and work through the qualification at your own pace. With reduced overheads for the course provider, online qualifications can often be cheaper to study than in-person ones, too.

Of course, online study isn’t for everyone. If you thrive on learning with others, online learning can seem a bit lonely. It can also call for a lot of self-motivation: you’ll have to find the willpower to work through your course by yourself, for the most part (although a tutor will be on hand to help answer any questions you have).

If choosing between in-person/ online study wasn’t enough for you, some learning providers You even offer hybrid A Level study too – combining in-person study with online study.

4. There are a range of reasons why people study A Levels

There are lots of different reasons why people decide to study A Levels, and decide to study them.

Most people want to study an A Level through a learning provider because they’re looking for a greater degree of flexibility in your studies.

Generally, most people study A Levels because they give you a specialist grounding in a particular subject area whilst also developing your transferable skills. They provide a good foundation from which you can start to specialise your skillset in a particular area and they’re particularly suited to setting you up for further study in your chosen field.

Some people study A Level subjects just for the fun of learning – exploring a particular subject in detail and learning more about it.

Key questions to ask yourself when choosing an A Level to study

1. What subjects will benefit your future career?

One of the most essential questions you need to ask yourself when you’re trying to choose an A Level is what particular A-Level subjects will help you gain your future career.

There are so many A Levels to choose from that you’ll probably be able to find at least one that’s broadly suited to the rough career that you had in mind. Bear in mind that A Levels mostly open up routes to further study and specialisation in your chosen field, so successfully completing one might enable you to take a related subject at university or gain an entry-level/ traineeship, for example.

Often, you can find that whilst A Level subjects are focused in one particular area they also have a lot of transferable skills and knowledge that you can bring to other areas too. A qualification that you thought might only be relevant to one specific area might turn out to have a broader use, across multiple roles and industries.

Take A Level Mathematics as an example, again. Whilst it might seem that maths is a very technical, specific subject, when you look closer at it you can see that it be applied across a broad range of fields and industries – so much so that you’re bound to be able to find an area that interests you and that also calls for maths skills. Whether that’s as a vet, an accountant, a doctor or an architect.

2. What are your strengths?

If you don’t have any idea of what you’d like to do as a future career, don’t worry. You can help move the process of choosing a path on by asking yourself what your natural strengths are when it comes to particular subjects. This can often give you a rough indication of potential careers that you might be good at, and the types of A Levels that you might be suited to studying.

Try asking yourself some of the following questions and see what answers you can come up with:

What am I naturally good at?
What do I find easy?
What do I enjoy learning about?
Where do I see myself in 5, 10 and 20 years?

There are limitations to choosing a career based solely on what you’re good at (which we explore below) but asking some simple questions like this can help you to We’ve explored how to pick a career from scratch in some other blogs that might be worth a read if you’re currently struggling to find what A Levels to study.

3. What interests you?

Of course, it’s one thing to be talented at something. It’s another to be actually interested in it. Being naturally good at mathematics is all well and good but if the thought of quadratic equations bores you to tears you should probably think carefully about if a career doing just this and only this all day is really suited to your interests.

Finding the sweet spot where both your interests and your talents meet can be really useful when it comes to thinking about your future and choosing the right set of A Levels for you.

After all, you’ll end up devoting a significant amount of your life to your job so logic says you should try and pick a career that you’re at least vaguely interested in.

4. How do you want to study?

As we outlined above, there are a few different ways that you could choose to study an A Level. Traditionally, you’d usually study an A Level in person, working through the course with others in a further education setting, like a college. Nowadays, you’re able to study A Levels entirely online though.

The main differences between the different study formats are degree of flexibility, cost and style of learning. If you have no problem motivating yourself to do a particular task without others around, studying an online qualification should be fine for you. If you find that

The exact option you can choose will obviously vary, depending on the learning provider that you choose to study with too. Bear that in mind when you’re shopping around.

Craft your career with A Levels

One of the strengths of A Level study is that you can mix and match qualifications and study multiple qualifications at the same time. This can allow you to customise your skillset whilst studying and improve your knowledge of a range of areas.

There’s obviously a lot of choice available but try not to get overwhelmed. Focus on the things we’ve covered above and you should be able to navigate the process without getting bogged down. We hope you’ve found this blog useful when it comes to choosing which A Levels you’d like to study to advance your career!

Develop your career from scratch with an A Level qualification that you can study 100% online. Download your free A Level course guide.