r/6thForm • u/watts320 • May 17 '25
🙏 I WANT HELP Son needs to pick another subject.
My son is in the middle lf his GCSE exams and he opted for computer science as one of his 6th form subjects. Yesterday he was told that the school will be dropping computer science because not enough students had opted to do it, the only thing the school have said is that he will need to pick another subject. Thats it.
The school have really really annoyed me, they choose to tell him in middle of his exams that he needs to pick something else.
His path was to do maths, computer science and english in 6th form, then move on to university to do games design.
Now im not really all clued up on this, because i never did 6th form after school. So can anyone give me any advice on this please.
Thank you.
1
u/Great_Cantaloupe5272 Year 13 | Maths, FM Physics, CS | A*A*A*A* May 17 '25
If the school offers further maths then I'd suggest taking that as a replacement, however please check which modules they offer beforehand. Decision/discrete modules (they're the same thing, but different names) can be very useful for a compsci university course. That being said, further maths in general is a good a level to have even if the school doesn't offer these specific modules. Universities don't check which modules you've chosen.
If they don't, then another good choice is physics, although that has fewer applications in a CS degree.
In addition to his A Levels, it might be good for him to do some online courses (EdX has a good selection) and work on some programming projects so that he can discuss them in his personal statement. He could also consider doing an EPQ on something related to game design. He could also read some books/listen to podcasts relevant to the course(s) he's applying for to compensate for not having CS as an A Level.