College or Job/Apprenticeship?

Good idea on the B-TEC...A Levels are ten a penny these days. I'd suggest forget Art as it's not particularly useful, and in fact i heard on the Radio the other day that ICT students were surprisingly low these days.

Why not do both? Enrol, but keep looking for decent opportunities. Just because you start a course doesn't mean you need to finish it and you could secure a future for yourself if they agree to take you on once you finish your education, thus getting ahead of the pack and securing a job well in advance.

Oh thanks for the advice about ict students being rare that makes me feel a bit more confident .
I guess I have to enrol tomorrow anyway just in case I can't get a job.

I suppose A and distinction in two ICT courses will look quite nice on my CV to an employer if ICT college graduates are rare like you say (:
just for an apprenticeship that is.

Well "rare" may be a bit of an overstatement but the impression i got from Radio 4 was that everyone assumed there'd be loads and so didn't do it. That meant that in reality all those people assuming that there were loads of people doing it and then not meant that actually numbers weren't as high as they'd expect.

TBH anything is better than Art in these days of overeducation.

[quote name='xist' post='3068211' date='Aug 24 2010, 11:45 PM']TBH anything is better than Art in these days of overeducation.[/quote]

I dunno, there are hundreds of ditzy blondes studying for hairdressing degrees here in Coventry. Which is laughable really when nearly all of them look like they styled their own hair with a hand grenade.

Isn't a distinction an overall A in all aspects of the subject. For instance in ICT we had 4 units, I got an overall U as I refused to take part in the lesson because I hated my teacher. Anyway just go for the subject you have more passion for.

[quote name='giratina16' post='3068221' date='Aug 24 2010, 11:49 PM']Isn't a distinction an overall A in all aspects of the subject. For instance in ICT we had 4 units, I got an overall U as I refused to take part in the lesson because I hated my teacher. Anyway just go for the subject you have more passion for.[/quote]
Yeah
What we did was compulsory ICT which was marked:
-Pass=C
-Merit=B
-Distinction=A (which I got for compulsory)
And then I also took normal full course ICT which was marked normally and I got an A in it.

[quote name='xist' post='3068182' date='Aug 24 2010, 11:32 PM']Good idea on the B-TEC...A Levels are ten a penny these days. I'd suggest forget Art as it's not particularly useful, and in fact i heard on the Radio the other day that ICT students were surprisingly low these days.

Why not do both? Enrol, but keep looking for decent opportunities. Just because you start a course doesn't mean you need to finish it and you could secure a future for yourself if they agree to take you on once you finish your education, thus getting ahead of the pack and securing a job well in advance.[/quote]

Call me a "traditionalist" but why do you think everybody is doing A Levels? They're the educational benchmark to which universities and most employers base you on. BTECs are known to be easy (or easier than A Levels) that's why most universities don't accept them. Not to say that there's anything wrong with BTEC, I did one during my GCSEs. BTECs are the more vocational one of the two and would most probably be liked by employers in some sectors. Also don't just do 1 BTEC because you will be bored to death, do an A Level as well.

xist's idea of attending college and looking for a job at the same time is the best path to choose.

Step 1) stop calling it ICT. He who decided to coin that term over IT has more coming to him than he who made the allen/inbus bolt.

Apprenticeships are very odd in the current incarnation- they are certainly not the apprenticeships from the days of your parents. In many ways they are almost a government sponsored tax dodge (they get to show decreased unemployment) but I do have very good things to say about the nuclear apprenticeships* (BAE less so but not enough to truly badmouth them). Even so competition is usually quite strong.

*this was shortly before this "modern apprenticeship" thing kicked off but I doubt they dropped their standards.

BTEC has been on an albeit slow downhill slide for years (still above city and guilds), if you just want CV padding (and maybe the chance to learn something) there are a load of distance learning courses at varying levels. Stay the hell away from an IT skills training courses you see advertised on TV though. I will side with xist on A levels being worth less and less as time drags on although I will say if you are doing an "equivalent" course summon a copy of the syllabus for the A level and be prepared to be quizzed on it.

Similar IT enrolment may be down (do note maths, physics and some other sciences are often feeder courses to higher level IT even over IT courses themselves) but it was perhaps artificially high as some fool said you can make fortunes in IT and it was always a cut-throat occupation. You also have problems in that many IT jobs are degree in it or nothing (even really low level stuff like helldesk work) which is a pity

To this end I have no advice but just a few things to consider along the way.