A typical British style education end compulsory education at 16 and allows students to continue on at their choice to “A-Levels” which since the 1990’s have been modular, limiting a student to 4 or 5 courses in the first year and 3 in the second which culminates in a nationally administered A Level exam for each of the courses taken, so the student ends up with grades for the previous years work. It would be typical for a British student focusing on CS to take maths (which is plural the same reason physics is plural and English is not), physics, and some other sciencey subject like chemistry or maybe English if they’re particularly literate.
I personally love the English language (it’s the only one I’ve got) and I can’t imagine not taking the extensive 6 years worth of English I took, in addition to the also extensive 4 years math, 5 years sciences, and 1 year computer science I took. I would also challenge any graduating Brit to a academic decathalon, but such is hubris. I think the British system is rather limiting, but it’s quite important to realize that the British consider our APs to be comparable to their A-Levels (quite ridiculous if you consider I also took non-AP courses which equally daunting workloads) but such is life, I doubt you or I will change the system.
During A-Levels, the Brits apply to uni via UCAS (the national university application system) and their teachers play crystal ball (or magic 8-ball depending on your teacher, I suspect) with the predicted grades of the student, then the student will receive offers which are generally conditional on them making certain A-Level grades. You can generally do the same thing with AP results, and the grades are quite simple, a 5=A, 4=B, 3=C, 2=D, 1=E… I, having never seen nor taken the A-Level tests will never know how hard it is, but those are the generally accepted 1 to 1s. In the UCAS system, you may only accept two offers, one as your first and one as your insurance. Then during the summer, Brits receive their grades and find out whether their first choice accepted them, falling back to their second choice if not. Otherwise, they go into a process known as Clearing, which is where all extra spots are “cleared” out in August before university starts in September. Unfortunately, if you as an international student are not accepted, you may not go to clearing, this is only for British students.
