Why choose Maths and Physics A-level?
Choosing three or four subjects from the several you’ve studied so far can be quite a challenge. One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that you choose the right subjects for whatever career path you choose. Studying maths and physics at A-level provides you with a strong foundation for a career in STEM. However, the problem solving and analytical skills these subjects provide are essential for a range of careers, and thus highly sought after in the workplace.
Key career paths with Maths and Physics A-levels
Engineering
Given that engineering is the application of maths and physics theories to help solve real-world problems, a career in engineering is a great option for maths and physics students. As an engineer, you’ll design, build and maintain different technologies, and seeing a product you worked on succeed is an incredible feeling. Depending on your interests, you could produce renewable energy as a renewable energy engineer, design aircraft components as an aeronautical engineer, or change healthcare for the better as a biomedical engineer.
Although physicists have come up with so many amazing discoveries, there are still many things about the universe we’re not sure about. Thus, studying Maths and Physics prepares you for an innovative career as a physicist. Physicists design and conduct experiments to learn more about the world we live in, working in universities, laboratories and other research facilities. Without physics theories, we wouldn’t have microwaves, the internet or X-rays, who knows what you could discover!
Teaching and education
So many teachers have played a critical role in getting students interested in STEM. Working as a teacher or lecturer, you could inspire the next generation of mathematicians and physicists. Even if you don’t have the most positive memories of your STEM teachers, you could use your personal experience to be the teacher you would’ve loved, coming up with exciting experiments and helping students realise their potential. There’s an immense shortage of STEM teachers in the UK, so not only would you be helping to alleviate a critical problem, but there’s also many bursaries available for aspiring STEM teachers.
Maths, Physics and technology
In our digital age, there’s so many career opportunities for people interested in technology. Studying Maths and Physics at A-level will give you valuable data analysis skills, skills which are sought after in the tech industry. Mathematical modelling and algorithms play a huge role in ensuring technological systems function correctly.
Thus, a career as a data scientist (using software to interpret large amounts of data), systems analyst (improving a company’s IT infrastructure) or forensic computer analyst will allow you to put the skills you learnt at A-level into practice.
Skills development and transferable skills
Although many students who study maths and physics at A-level go on to have successful careers in STEM, you could decide that you’d rather do something else. Luckily, maths and physics provide a range of transferable skills that can lead to successful careers in a range of industries. For example, considering the ethics of your experiment gives you critical thinking skills, while solving tricky equations offers problem-solving skills.
There are a variety of careers that require these skills. You could pursue a career in finance (be that as a consultant, accountant or risk manager). If you’re interested in politics, working as a policy researcher will allow you to investigate some of the most crucial problems for people in the UK, investigations that could well lead to policy reform. On the other side of policy reform, many people think you need to study law to be a lawyer. However, patent attorneys, who help inventors obtain trademarks for their products, need to have studied a STEM subject!
Hopefully this article has shown you the diverse career paths available for Maths and Physics students. No matter what you’re interested in, studying Maths and Physics at A-level will prepare you for a career you love.