Final Year – Subject Choices
Introduction
One important decision that faces many penultimate year students is the choice of subjects/specialism for the final year of their undergraduate degree. The popularity of general business degrees when making the CAO decision leaves a significant number of students with a decision with regards what pathway to focus on in their final year in college. This is an important choice for students which can affect employment prospects, further study opportunities and your final grade.
The structure and timing of final year subject choices will vary by university/institute so it is important to do some prior research and have a chat with your course head to understand the process. Places in certain courses can be very competitive in certain colleges so keeping on top of deadlines for choices is important.
The purpose of this post is to highlight to students the key considerations to take into account when deciding on which subjects/specialism to choose in final year and provide you with some useful steps to be in a position to make an informed decision.
It should also be noted that there may also be optional modules as part of your degree prior to final year (particularly in general business degrees) so this post (and advice) is directly applicable to these situations also.
Considerations
There are a number of issues to consider when you are making your decision, including;
- Have you a career plan? If so, which specialism/subjects would be most beneficial for you?;
- Will you gain all the available exemptions from the relevant professional exams (ACA, ACCA, CIMA)?;
- What subjects are you interested in/good at?;
- What are the assessment structures of each of the modules (e.g. one with CA may be appealing if have a lot of exams already)?;
- Do you want to have a single specialism (e.g. Accounting, Finance, HR) or to mix and match subjects?;
- What are the lecturers like for each module?;
- What professional exam exemptions are available? Could do some CAP1s as an external student or alternatively take the modular route;
- Grades – some modules are more difficult that others and require a lot more effort; and
- Postgrad requirements/plans (e.g. MAcc courses require a candidate to have full CAP1 exemptions; For a masters in finance it would be useful to have some prior exposure to quantitative topics such as econometrics).
Steps
In making any decision there are numerous sources of information that you should utilise;
- Research what options are available to you in final year with regards specialism, optional modules etc early to get an clear understating of the choices involved;
- If you are not in final year consider the prerequisite modules required to take some courses in final year (e.g. to complete “Advanced Financial Reporting” you must have completing “Financial Accounting” in second year);
- Check exemption requirements for professional exams from the relevant website or from CAI’s exemption checker;
- Talk to older students from your course who have gone through that process and have first-hand experience of the modules;
- Have a chat with the lecturer of the relevant module to get a feel for the material, workload and level of difficulty;
- Don’t be afraid to sit in on some lectures (if possible)/ get notes from current students to get an idea of the course;
- Review the entry requirements for any planned post grad you are considering applying for;
- Talk to the careers services in your college to understand what topics etc would be useful for the career path you wish to follow; and
- Consider contacting people working in the career you wish to enter to see which modules/specialism they would advise you to take and would be useful in that line of work.
Conclusion
Ultimately there are no hard and fast rules when making your subject choice for final year. The choice is a subjective one and only you will know what your future plan is, what subjects you enjoy and what interests you. It is important that you don’t feel like you need to take all the required subjects to gain the maximum exemptions from professional exams. There are alternative routes for students with partial exemptions (e.g. 3/4 CAP1 exemptions) which include sitting the remaining CAP1 exams as an external student or sitting your first tranche of exams as a modular candidate (whereby you complete your remaining CAP1 exams and also two CAP2 exams in your first year).
My own personal advice is to focus on what you enjoy, what interests you and what you think would be useful for your plans post college. It is only natural that issues such as what subjects your friends are doing (this factor even still influences people picking where to complete their training contract!), how easy the workload is or the fact there is no final exam are going to come into students’ minds when making a final decision but it is important not to be too short-sighted and take a minute to look at the bigger picture with respect to your desired career path.
As you are researching and deciding on your subjects for final year (or earlier!) feel free to ask any questions you have via info@accountingmilkman.ie, @accmilkman or using the feedback function.
