Best A levels to pick for computer science

[MOFS]

Hey guys, I'm going to be doing first year A levels this September and I'm wondering which A levels will be the best for me to do. I'm planning on doing computer science at A level which would be the job I'd like to go into afterwards.

They offer computing in my school which I am taking and maths (stats) I just don't know weather it would be more beneficial to take another maths course (mechanics) or do physics and chemistry.

Thanks for any advice, Math

I guess the best idea is to find the university you wish to go to and check their admissions policy. UCL requires an A at A-level in Maths, and then another AS-lever A. You can search for those online, although Cambridge and Oxford would be slightly more difficult as you have to apply for colleges.

 

[r1ch4rd]

My advice would be to do two A levels you need (Maths and Physics say) and then just pick another two that you will really enjoy, but they don't necessarily need to help. If you find that doing 4 is too much, just drop one after A/S level.

I did Maths, Computing and History and I have an A/S in Psychology. I graduated from CS at Manchester University 4 years ago. The same A levels got me places offered at Durham, York and Edinburgh too.

Yeah, I'm not aware of institutions frowning on prior experience from CS or similar A level courses. I've already pointed out that Cambridge doesn't, so I can't imagine many (if any!) do.

At Manchester it was a plus, you could skip some of the first year courses (and do something more interesting) if you had a Computing A Level (not for ICT though).

 

[Mord]

I took maths electronics and physics and they served me very well.

Maths is just essential and electronics is very useful and relevant, I do computer science at the university of york and 1/4 of the first couple of years is hardware based.

I'd definitely recommend avoiding ICT, universities don't care about it as it's no better than a basic course on how to use word and excel, everyone I went to school with that did it hated it.

Computing is also pretty useless, it's an incredibly outdated course and everything you need to know from it will be covered in the first term at any decent university.

 

[spaceboots06]

Not sure if this helps but I neglected to take any form of math for my New Media Interactive Development major my first year of college and was unable to take certain courses the second year of college without first taking the math courses I refused to take.

 

[yg17]

Computer science requires physics? Never seen that before.

If you're going to be a programmer at a gaming company, then yeah, physics are a big deal to make games realistic. But I'm a programmer and I think the most complicated equation I've ever had to deal with when writing code is i++

 

[ranguvar]

I guess most of the courses like physics and chemistry serve as weed-out courses (although interesting).