Course choices

It is essential that you pick the right courses if you want to go to Oxbridge. Check individual course pages for detailed advice.

STEM (including economics and PPE)

All STEM courses (including psychology) will expect you to have studied maths A level. Most will expect further maths. Generally, we find that students who study further maths have a vastly higher chance of securing an interview and a place (in 2024, only one of our 13 successful STEM Oxbridge candidates didn’t study the full A level Further Maths course). This holds true for other competitive institutions such as Imperial College, Warwick and UCL. In 2024, all students who received interviews for economics or PPE studied further maths too. 

Look up the courses you’re interested in. In addition to the minimum entry requirements, most subjects have a statistical breakdown of A levels studied by successful students in previous years. Use this to select your programme of study at the Sixth Form.

While top universities may list further maths as preferred but not required for many subjects, Farnborough has one of the biggest and best further maths departments in the country and top universities will expect you to study it here (and it will make your life easier when you get there).

Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

You should be studying at least two challenging A levels. For Economics/PPE-based courses, maths is essential. Cambridge recommends taking two of these A levels:

• English Literature

• A language - we offer Spanish, French and German

• History

• Mathematics (especially for law, PPE, economics).

Here are some other relevant subjects you could take. Some of them are particularly important for certain courses so make sure you check particular course entry requirements:

• Economics

• Further Maths

• Geography

• Politics

• Law

• Music

• Philosophy

• Psychology