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A-Level Results are out – thinking about doing a politics degree?
Congratulations to all students who have achieved the grades they needed to continue their studies at university!
You don’t need to have studied politics at A level to consider taking a politics degree at university, maybe with another subject such as international relations, history or law for example. Or you may already be thinking about a politics degree but aren’t yet sure about the path you’d like your future career to take.
Having a politics degree means that future employers will appreciate that you have many transferable skills including communication, constructing coherent arguments and thinking creatively, and a wide range of job opportunities will be open to you.
Professor Stuart Wilkes-Heeg, Professor of Politics at the University of Liverpool has this to say:
- First, if you’re reading this, you are presumably interested in Politics. To study a subject for three years or more, you ideally need to enjoy it, so being interested is a great start!
- Second, Politics matters. It affects all our lives, every day, in ways great and small. I can’t promise that studying Politics will enable you to change the world, but I can promise that you’ll end up understanding it a lot better.
- Third, and don’t underestimate this one, if you study Politics, your family and friends will always ask you to explain things to them. When there’s an election or some big political event, almost everyone suddenly gets at least a bit curious about Politics. If you can help others make sense of it all, you’ll be contributing to the greater democratic good.
- Fourth, studying Politics qualifies you to do a lot of things in later life. Very few Politics graduates become politicians - rather more become journalists, civil servants, campaigners, regulators or, even, teachers of politics. What you learn on a Politics degree will be transferable to all manner of other contexts and professions.
Finally, there are lots of options for studying Politics. There are 80 or 90 universities where you can study Politics in the UK, and within each of those degrees you will be able to specialise in the aspects of Politics that inspire you most, whether that’s Plato’s political thought, proportional representation, or the study of war and peace (not the book). Whatever it is that draws you to Politics, you'll find it somewhere in a degree course - and a lot more besides.
- Join the PSA as a Student Member for just £10 .
And if you didn’t get the grades you hoped for, we encourage you to both contact your chosen universities to discuss your options, and to check out the wide range of courses available to you through the clearing system.
We wish you all the best in what comes next!