As the school year gets underway, senior students will begin to consider their subject choices for next year. These decisions are extremely important as they have the potential to narrow a student’s career opportunities. Students face no shortage of advice, from advocates of STEM and STEAM, to universities who provide lists of 'facilitating subjects'. However there is little information available to students on the popularity of different subject combinations.
The visualisation below aims to shed light on students' choices. It shows the combinations of subjects taken by over 100,000 students in Scotland who sat Scottish Highers between 2011 and 2013. Highers are taken in the last two years of school when students are 16-18 years old. Most students take between 3 and 5 subjects in a single year.
Each column represents a different combination of subjects chosen by students. Hover over a column to see the most popular subjects. Click on a button below to see the percentage of students taking at least one subject from that group. Read the article accompanying the data visualisation here.
Notes: Data provided by the Scottish Qualifications Authority. The data contains the subject choices of approximately 113,500 students who took 3,4 or 5 Scottish Highers between 2011 and 2013 inclusive.