Which A-levels to take for an engineering degree?

What A-levels are best suited to studying for an engineering degree?

Often it’s helpful to have an idea of what degree you might be interested in when choosing your A-levels, as you want to make sure you meet the subject requirements for the course you want to study!

Also, if you’re already studying for A-levels, it might be good to know where your subjects might give you advantages/disadvantages for specific engineering degrees, and how to make use or compensate for this!

This blog post will answer of these points more, so read on for a guide to A-level subjects for engineering degrees!

Maths and Physics

To start with, maths and physics A-level are basically essential for every engineering degree. These subjects teach you fundamentals that you need to move on to the more advanced (but still fundamental for engineering) topics like mechanics, thermodynamics and more. Hopefully if you’re interested in engineering you’re taking these subjects anyway as they will be most similar to the content of your actual degree

Further Maths

The relevance of further maths A-level may depend quite a lot on the specific degree you’re interested in - as a general rule, the more mathematical the degree, the more further maths will be helpful. For example, Aerospace Engineering tends to be very mathematically dense, and so further maths not only prepares you for this, but also shows the admissions team that you can handle a lot of maths. On the other hand, design engineering tends to be quite less mathematical, and you might be better off swapping further maths for a more practical A-level

D&T

Speaking of practical A-levels, D&T is king in this category. As well as giving you much more hands-on making skills, it teaches you a lot about manufacturing, which is important to consider in any engineering discipline. Again, the precise relevance depends slightly on the specific degree, but D&T is definitely not going to hurt with preparing you to study and work in engineering. However, it is worth noting that very few courses have D&T as a requirement, so just double check with the degree that you won’t be missing out on a required subject by taking D&T

Chemistry

Chemistry A-level has a lot more relevance to many common engineering degrees (Mechanical, Aerospace etc) than most people think. Fundamental topics like thermodynamics are covered first in A-level chemistry, and the A-level also gives you a lot of help studying Materials through understanding of polymers. However, these parts of chemistry represent a relatively small part of the A-level, so is not worth taking if it’s not otherwise a subject you find interesting.

Computer Science

The modern day engineering spends a lot of time simulating engineering phenomenon using software, and most engineering degrees will have at least two computing modules, with sometimes more numerical methods modules on top. This makes computer science a very helpful subject to study at A-level. Again, like D&T, computer science is generally not a requirement, so keep that in mind when choosing.

Hopefully this initial guide has got you thinking about which subjects you might want to choose to help you reach your dream engineering degree. There is a huge diversity in degrees, so we weren’t able to give advice for every degree here. However, our cohort of Imperial students/alumni have studies many of these degrees and have relevant and recent experience to share with you!

STEM Tutors team