At the moment I'm doing my GCSEs (geography, sociology, product design + core subjects), I'm predicted A-C in all of them and I'll be going to 6th form/college at the end of this year. I'm thinking of taking:

• ICT (AS/A2)
• Product Design (AS/A2)
• BTEC Creative Media Production Level 2 diploma - four units I'll do are Deconstructing Computer Games, Computer games testing, 2D computer game engines, 3D computer game engines ("broadly equivalent to 4 GCSEs")

Do you think these are good choices (especially that BTEC, not sure if that will be usefull)? If not then what would you recommend? 

Any advice at all on getting into the gaming industry and level design is much appreciated.

Why do I want to be a level designer?

I spend countless hours in every level editor/maker I can get my hands on, love building environments and I have a shitload of ideas. 

:(

HAHA. Im in school for game programming, but i couldn't really tell you whether or not those are good classes to take because i have only taken one level design class. I will say that getting good should be your main priority if those classes will help you improve then take them and get better.

How did you get into it? Are you taking a game programming/design course at uni?

Your only 15! You have time until college, so I say study your balls off for the SAT and get into a good school for deigital/graphic design.

Do not try to specialize so much, if you find yourself disliking it (what you enjoy as a hobby, you may not enjoy as a career), then you're pretty boned.

As for college, don't waste your time on that BTEC. The best plan when you go to college is to get a wide variety of a-levels, and then go down the path you enjoy most at Uni.

At my college, I could take 4 A-Levels (+ general studies 1/2). After the first year, most people dropped one (and just kept the AS grade), but if you didn't want to, you didn't have to. Going by this, and knowing you want to spend time in the game industry:

1 - Math
2 - Computing (forget IT, pointless).
3 - Humanities/Language Course
4 - Art/Design Course

If you're good at a foreign language, take that up as an A-Level, if not, stick to a humanity. As for which humanity, up to you. I find both History and Politics fascinating, but require good writing skills. Economics is probably the most important humanity out there (in my opinion), and most courses don't require amazing writing skills - if you flunk out on maths, some lesser unis will accept economics as a proof of numeracy. If you're really interested into getting into gaming, you might want to consider looking at AI programming, in which case, philosophy will do you really well, going into uni.

If you find pure maths boring, it would be acceptable to switch it into physics, most unis accept that (physics is NOT an easy course, though, don't be under that impression).

Anyway, these are my recommendations as they give you the skills you need to go to uni and study many courses relating to game development. At the same time, it also gives you a couple of fall back courses in case you find that you don't really want to do it full-time, after all.

As long as you have a good A-Level in maths (or related), you will be able to take 60% of uni courses out there (providing you don't flunk other modules), an A-Level that proves your ability to write will probably open up the remaining 40%.

He's British, so college and uni are actually separate institutions. You start college at 16/17... looking into at 15 is very much the right thing to do.

You start college at 16, then when do you enter/finish high school?