What is ICT? What careers are out there?

Should I take ict or business? What doors do they open?

• I am currently in my final year of school and need to make a decision for college/sixth form. I do ocr for both courses and am getting a B/merit on ict and a*/distinction on business. Which should I chose and what careers do they open? Thanks:) Also, what career paths do they lead to and which would be best?

• Answer:

  Most young people these days know lots of the content of A Level ICT just from fooling around with computers and the internet. From my AS in ICT, I can remember lots of "What are the advantages of keyboards and on line shopping?" Having also done an A Level in Business Studies, I found it opened my mind a lot more, made me a lot more analytical and helped me think about the different options available to businesses. I learnt to base decisions on many different things (and this can be generalised to life instead of just business - something you can highlight on your UCAS statement). In contrast however, the only thing I could write about ICT was something on the lines of "It's made me think about all the advances in technology surrounding us". It didn't really help me in terms of personal qualities etc. You do have a higher grade in Business Studies so maybe you understand it more. ICT is a lot of definitions and advantages/disadvantages of everything, which can be a lot to remember. But Business Studies is interlinked - all the subsections of the subject are intertwined to make things easier to remember. Finally, ICT is needed in every field as we're so dependent on technology. But it is a very saturated market and every business/organisation already has a huge ICT infrastructure in place with staff looking after it already. However Business Studies includes lots of maths etc. and can prepare you for a career in finance (accountancy maybe), teaching, opening your own business, helping other businesses etc. So many people want to work for themselves now and open their own businesses so there are lots of organisations looking for graduates in business to help advise other people who don't know as much :) Hope that helps :)