January 31, 2024

At the end of secondary school, students have to make one difficult decision after the other. For those who choose to pursue junior college, they are almost immediately confronted with the stressful task of choosing what subjects to study for the GCE A-Level examinations. This choice is more complex than it initially seems, as one’s choice of subjects might end up restricting their pick of university courses in the long-term, yet another challenging decision they will have to face.

With these concerns in mind, students often seek advice from the educators around them. While most might advise students to choose based on their career interests, this might not always be an effective approach. In this article, “Commentary: After O-Levels, the Choice of Subjects isn’t Always Straightforward” (Channel NewsAsia, January 2024), Dr Kelvin Seah (NUS Economics) and Distinguished Professor Ivan Png (NUS Business School and NUS Economics) explore the factors behind this decision-making process by examining how past A-Level cohorts have made this decision.

By analysing data from the National University of Singapore (NUS), the Ministry of Education (MOE), and the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO), the authors identify several factors that shape one’s choice of subjects. They consider the relation between one’s field of study and their subsequent employment, noting that while most students do pursue employment related to their degree, there is a significant minority that do otherwise. While employment prospects remain an important consideration for students, the authors argue that there is more at hand.

The authors found that students’ choice of A-Level subjects was often informed by entry requirements of undergraduate programmes, with students choosing to take up subjects like Mathematics due to its generic usefulness in many courses’ entry requirements. Finally, they mentioned that students should be more conscious about choosing subjects that would be useful not only on paper, but also in developing skills and competencies that could be helpful in the long-term.

Read the article here.