Career path help

[Shadow_mist1]

Hi all, I'm doing year eleven next year and I want to pick the right path to get into a good IT job later on in life. I want to have a job fixing computers, the software side of it, for example fixing computers infected with viruses, corrupted software,wiping & backing up computers and fixing conflicts with programs just to name a few. My plan was to do VCE and maybe go to university after that but my English teacher recommends I do VCAL instead because my English isn't very strong and do a IT TAFE course. My question to you guys is can I do VCAL and still get a good IT job later on in life or should I do VCE?

Thanks for the help

 

[Yami]

To answer this, what sort of thing would you be planning to do at university? If it's IT-related, my answer would be to take the English one.

My experience of university is that someone with decent English skills and not so good IT skills will do much better at fully comprehending and understanding an assignment - and therefore get a better mark in the end than someone with decent IT skills but weak English skills.

University will teach you the important IT skills but you'll lag behind if you have lacklustre English skills.

One question, though - is there the possibility for you to take both?

 

[Shadow_mist1]

I was planning on possibly going to university and try and get a Bachelor's degree in software engineering if I could make it through VCE. The Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) is the more academic side of learning while the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) is more hands on learning so I wouldn't be able to do both. My English teacher thought that I might struggle with the jump from year 10 to 11, I'm really bad at writing essays. So I thought would it be possible to get a good IT job without doing university or VCE, I know it would be a struggle if I can

 

[Yami]

So I thought would it be possible to get a good IT job without doing university or VCE, I know it would be a struggle if I can

That's still a good way of going about things. Do you have any sort of apprenticeships over there? Big firms like Microsoft always have low-level positions going.

 

[Shadow_mist1]

Haven't really looked into apprenticeships but I will have to look into it, I think choosing VCAL and going for an apprenticeship will be the way to go for me, thanks for the help by the way