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Recently, parents wanting to pave the way for their children to study abroad have been contacting me. Many ask whether they should allow their children to self-study International General Certificate of Secondary Education courses to prepare for going overseas - especially in the UK.

In fact, in Hong Kong, most schools do not offer the option of IGCSE courses.

Some international and DSS schools offer IGCSE courses. These include select English Schools Foundation schools as well as Hong Kong Baptist University Affiliated School Wong Kam Fai Secondary School.

If they want to take IGCSE courses, students studying in schools that do not offer such courses must study by themselves and apply for the examination at the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority.

In these cases, the self-study IGCSE students actually take another course at the same time, such as the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination or International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program.

This raises some important questions.

Is it worthwhile for students to study their own courses - such as DSE courses - in addition to the IGCSE at the same time? How heavy is the workload? Can students cope with it?

Before answering these questions, I would like to discuss the benefits of taking IGCSE courses and whether it can really help students study abroad.

What is the significance of taking the IGCSE exam?

If students want to enroll in top universities in the UK, having a strong IGCSE result will indeed be an advantage.

For example, because Oxford University selects fewer candidates for interviews than Cambridge University, one of the criteria for selecting which students to be interviewed is IGCSE scores.

Or, if students want to enroll in a highly competitive subject such as medicine, IGCSE scores are also an important element in the selection of students for many medical schools.

Obviously. those who have not taken IGCSE courses should not choose to enroll in medical schools that use IGCSE scores as a screening criterion.

However, if students do not choose the most competitive universities and subjects, IGCSE scores may not be a key factor.

Therefore, whether to take IGCSE courses depends on whether students want to study abroad, especially in the UK, and whether they want to study in some highly competitive universities or subjects.

But for those wanting to study in the UK and also hoping for a place in a top British university, such as Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics and Political Science, Imperial College London, University of London, or competitive subjects such as medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine or law, an excellent IGCSE result will indeed be an advantage in university admission.