Good websites for helping choose universities and courses?

My daughter, currently in the 6th form is at the stage when she is looking into what university course to choose. I would like to point her in the direction of websites which a) tell her which courses she can do given the A levels she has chosen b) tell which universities offer which courses with an outline of the syllabus c) tell her what sort of grades she needs for these courses. Any help greatly appreciated.

Good websites for helping choose universities and courses?
You will not find good websites, or even any websites, that specifically help you make the decision as to which universities and courses your daughter should choose. This is the internet and there is a lot of crappy websites.





1. There is no substitute for doing your own authoritative


research.





That should be done by selectively and speculative picking institutions and requesting their prospectuses. Read them.





You may pick up ideas for other subjects, so you go further and request prospectuses for specific subjects.





You may pick up ideas to study at another institution, so you go further and request prospectuses for that institution.





2. You should first of all consult: www.ucas.com. Click on http://www.ucas.com/search/index08.html. Do a course search - a speculative search. Search a course you are interested in: e.g. "Marine Biology". Alternatively, click on search a subject and then choose one. Then click on the institutions listed as offering the course, and read their websites.





You can do this "browsing" process by looking at the official UCAS Directory available at your school, on the internet, and at the local library.





You should just browse. Its just like ordering a gift from a catalogue.





(a) You ask for courses she can do given the A levels she has chosen. Thats somewhat the wrong way round. The A levels are there to facilitate being able to do any course at degree level. The question is this: how has doing an A level in sociology, say, contributed to the decision to do a course at degree level? What skills have you learnt? What is it about sociology that interests you to study another degree subject?





So for e.g. if your daughter wants to do a history or economics degree, its recommended you study A level history of course or economics, but its fine if she studied Chemistry, or Biology. The question is, what has persuaded you, having done these subjects, that you are interested in and can commit to three years in History or Economics?





This question (a) is really a question to be asking the university. They will tell you what they need or recommend to study when they give you their prospectus. You just need to start requesting prospectuses and have a look at them. No one is going to do the work for you - no website can do it - and courses and course content change all the time.





(b) You should really start looking at the university prospectuses. I can't tell you "which universities offer which courses with an outline of the syllabus". You have to read the wonderful prospectuses the universities provide. They go into great simple detail about the syllabus.





(c) Again, you should consult the prospectus to find out what grade.





And if you are really stuck, have a start with this link:


http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAnd...





The Government website may help you, but it looks very tedious and really wastes time. You need to get into the university prospectuses.
Reply:www.ucas.ac.uk/
Reply:a) A-levels are just a standard of education they want you to reach, the want specific grades at A-level very rarely specific subjects. Occasionally specific requirements will be required for such courses as Medicine or Mathematics; but to be studying these courses its liekly you will already be doing these A-levels - due to a high itnerest in the subject. For most subjects tehre are no speciifc requirements, i.e. law you do not have to have A-level (or GCSE) Law. The grades and numbers are whats important, usually 3 minimum with the specified grades; so your point A shouldn't really be a concern, unless as said shes after a very specialist degree in which case hopefully she would have been preparing for this for a while.





If she really has no idea what she wants to do then she could click on the 'subject search' tab and scroll through, it alpahbetically list every available subject area so see if something jumps out. Or look for something she enjoys studying currently and work from there, I started looking for Maths (for no other reason than I was good at it and could think of nothing else); then moved to maths with economics; then when looking more into economics decided to do economics with maths; then decided on straight economics; but it was good to have a starting point and I was able to look through related courses.





As for websites:





http://www.ucas.ac.uk/search to look for what courses are available, courses are searched for by subjects and results listed by institution. Clicking on one of the results will bring up entry requirements, some give a breif course description, but for an in depth course description with list of modules etc. then you'll have to visit the institutions own website





http://www.tqi.ac.uk allows courses and insitutions (as found from UCAS) to be selected and then results from the national students survey is displayed, as well as statistics such as what the actual qualifications of students on the course is - this is useful for allowing to see if most have more or less than the published requirements - though it uses the UCAS tariff, different to many institutions themselve. Basicly a good sight full of feedback and statistics.





Also useful to look at when narrowing to the final 5 is the Guardian and Times league tables (below). Using these tables you can directly compare how each institution performs for a specific course, using these and the information from the TQi site allows a good idea of how good the course is to be built up.
Reply:The first thing that comes to my mind is collegeboard.com; I am not sure if you are already familiar with the site.
Reply:http://www.clearingvacancies.co.uk/?gcli...
Reply:there are websites helping for choosing universities and courses but i wouldn't recommend it because above all of this. the decision will be between you and your daughter.
Reply:My son has been given The Russell Group of universities from his sixth form college. These are the top 20 best performing unies in the UK. He has chosen three for his course in 2008. Just google The Russell Group.

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