First Sniff on Universities

*sniffs*

So half of sem 2 is gone. ._. it's incredibly scary that time is passing SO fast. The mid-sem report has once again come in. I got a 40/42. :)
Got 7s for everything except English (which falls back to a 5). I misinterpreted the unseen text ENTIRELY wrong. :(
Now that there's only one more examination left toward my predicted grades, it goes without saying that I have to buck up on my English. Plus this is only mid-sem, I'm still very unsure about all my Higher Levels. :(  haih. How can one ever be sure about anything.

I guess I must start sniffing around universities for real, as I have to apply around September?
I'm very (like veryyy) set on a linguistics degree. Well I actually want to do speech therapy. But UK universities (the ones that I'm looking at) don't offer a specific speech therapy degree as an undergraduate course. The closest I can find is linguistics. But linguistics is not speech therapy. So I'm confused.

Do I go for the specific course that I want, or do I study a more general field in the country that I want? Cause there is a speech degree at HKU, but I've always wanted to go UK, and indeed it is exactly that dream that motivated me to get scholarships to go. So it would probably feel like a let-down if I didn't go there. :/

I've got all the UK universities in that JPA list that offer linguistics or something very close to it narrowed down during the holidays.

• Cambridge -Linguistics
• Edinburgh -Linguistics /Linguistics&Psychology /Linguistics&EnglishLanguage
• UCL -Psychology & Language Sciences /Linguistics
• Warwick -Language, Culture & Communication
• Lancaster -Linguistics /Linguistics&EnglishLanguage

I'm only interested in the first three though. Oxbridge is because of its reputation and architecture (I love ancient, traditional buildings!). Edinburgh is probably my most hoped-for university because its linguistics programme is consistently one of the best in UK (and I think the world?), and recently ranked first, topping Oxbridge. And also because it's very pretty and is significantly more possible for me to get in. UCL is great too, they have an actual psych and speech sciences degree (which is the closest I can get). If I get both UCL and UoE, it would be really hard for me to decide lolz.
But I guess I'll be applying to all of them since I have five spots in the UCAS. :)

(Manchester offers Linguistics too, but apparently they do not accept English Literature HL. They want English Literature and Language HL. Zzz)

I can't apply for Aussie anymore, cause the timing is very different. I'm a bit sad cause I wanted to try USyd or UQ, but I guess it's not going to happen. And I'm not going to apply to US (I'm quite, quite sure) cause I've always wanted to go to UK and the US application system is too demanding for me to care (esp as it's not my first choice you see).

Actually I don't even know why I'm taking IB. There's university advanced credits given to IB students with good grades in Aussie, US and HK, and I'm going somewhere where they don't really care about the difficulty of IB =.=
Sometimes I think I'm better off studying A-Levels and stop tormenting myself.
But then I'm not doing it for advanced credits, I'm doing it for myself, so that's invalid anyway lol.

It would be risky to only apply to UK, cause they might all reject me or something :'(
I hate how they all gave offers so late next year cause then if I don't hold any offer, I'm doomed. .__.
Or I might stupidly have firm and insurance choices with the same conditional offers. =.=
:(
I'm worrieds! Time to work really really hard on all those IAs .____.