Help! I don't know what subjects to chose for A Level!

Do the things you enjoy the most, it helps to know what you want to do when you are older as this gives you directive thus motive. Trust me you will need motivation at certain times when you are muddling through your a-levels. I lost the will because I did't pick the right subjects! So don't think what looks good pick what you enjoy the most as this at times will help you do your revision or work...

Pick what you enjoy and this will open doors and opportunities which will lead to you finding out what you want to do!

The thing is I enjoy economics because I'm interested in things to do with economics but if i don;t pick chemistry I will limit myself to not being able to do medicine and dentistry and being a pharmacologists and i cant be a biochemist either but I also would like to do physics because I'm interested in renewable energy so i thought about doing something with engineering.But I'm not sure which job would be best for me. Even thought economics is useful I don't know if I would need it for any of the jobs I want. I thought about doing law but than if i will want to do law i don't know if its better if I do history instead of economics as I quite enjoyed history.

Try and find work experience in all the areas of jobs you want to do even if it's for a day or talk to someone you know who works for the types of jobs you're looking in to and ask them about their daily routine, how they got into the job in the first place, both things interesting and boring that they've had to do and their experience in their work and anything else you want to ask them and then think to yourself whether you'd be willing to do it for the rest of your life. You don't have to choose straight away but work experience will help u to choose what direction you want to take.

I'm not very experienced myself since I just finished yr 12 and trying to look for more work experience as I want to study medicine but from the little that I know, I think looking in to local independent firms are more likely to accept you and let you come in for a day or two as they need the extra help and for bigger companies, I read somewhere that you could call their human resources department to ask which lawyers/engineers/doctors who are willing to be able to talk to you even for 10-15 minutes to answer any of your questions but I'm not sure... I haven't really tried it for myself but yeah. Keep looking online and see what you can find. But even if it doesn't work out you still have the first two weeks or so (depending on your school) to figure out whether you enjoy studying the subjects or not so that you can change quickly and look at the syllabus if you're still not sure to see if you'd be motivated to study it throughout the year. I took Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Maths thinking I would drop Physics after the first year but it turns out, even though I loved GCSE maths, I hated A-Level maths with passion. The only thing I liked was the algebra but everything else just demotivated me from doing as much revision as I should have so I don't think I did as well as I should have in the exams but fingers crossed I still get an A (even if it's just about ) sos my school allowed me to do A-Level Physics and drop maths but since the sciences are now linear not all schools will do this as not everyone does AS exams in case they want to drop it later. For medicine, as long as you take biology, chemistry and maths/physics you'll be fine and an essay based subject will probably be helpful at uni (I didn't do one because I hated writing essays).
For law, I don't know much about it but from this website: http://www.allaboutlaw.co.uk/law-courses/llb/law-degree-entry-requirements#
any of the subjects you're choosing from will be advantageous whatever route you take and I think it's the same for engineering

Thank you or your advice. I am just wondering if you could give me an overview of what its like studying biology,physics,chemistry and maths at a level? What's the work load like and how hard is each subject and what do you learn and what specification are you doing, whats hard and easy about each subject, is there a lot to remember, do you write lots of essay for any of the subjects, is there a lot of experiments, also what don't you like about maths and what's your favourite subject out of the 4 and why and any other useful information. As I have considered doing these 4 options before myself, so I'm interested if maybe I should do the same?

I'm doing OCR for all the sciences and AQA for maths. It's quite easy at first if you're naturally good at the sciences but on thing I regret not doing is going over my notes just to wrap my head around something in case I didn't get it the first time round in class because I never used to do this in GCSE yet it turned out OK but for A-level I didn't realise how much detail you needed to remember for your exams especially in Biology where the content is so much yet. I liked how all the subjects are linked together as it helped to understand topics better e.g. for biological molecules, chemistry helped me understand the inter-molecular forces between bonds that caused the tertiary structure of amino acids in biology when I got confused the first time round when my biology teacher first taught me. Also, even though the specification changed, doing past papers was really helpful (especially the really old ones) as they helped with getting wording right especially in biology which is very specific otherwise you don't get the marks. The same with physics and chemistry as well actually. My school didn't give a lot of homework so I only had to revise (which isn't very long if you just make revision notes or flashcards for an hour or two a day) but they gave us tests every week or two weeks to make sure that we were revising and if we got bad grades we'd have to take extra lessons to help or one-to-ones with a supervisor if we're really struggling but if you keep up with revision there's no need to worry about this. Plus everything you need to know will be in the books the exam boards wrote for the new specification. They'll never ask you anything they haven't told you about so use your resources to the fullest and they usually explain it with examples to help make it easier to understand experiments especially in physics which is very helpful.
For chemistry, I was fine for most of it because it was mostly calculations but when I got to organic molecules I started to struggle and I regret still not going over what I did in class or asking the teacher to repeat it but once I eventually read the book they gave me it explained so easily and Iwas finally able to catch up with the rest of the class.
Maths was still quite easy for me because they get you to practice a lot. I just didn't like the repetition of the things I already knew and for C2 I didn't like doing trigonometry because it got very confusing and was generally my weakest point. I also didn't like graphs of any sort because they took way too much time to draw and the whole thing seemed really tedious to me hence I didn't put the effort come exam time however I took M1 which helped me to understand the mechanics section at the beginning of physics a lot more quickly.
For biology, as I've said earlier, it's very specific and there's a lot of content (we finished the syllabus only two weeks before the exam) so read every section in the book because all the small tedious information they give you is most likely to come up in exams. OCR used to do essay style questions (like 9/10 marks) but now it's shorter and easier to answer as in all you have to do is spew out everything you remember about a mechanism or the steps for something like protein synthesis or just say everything you see on a graph and you can get all the marks but it's also quite hard because they mark in bands now so if you miss out even one thing you could go down a band. You also get a mark for quality of writing (this is for all the sciences btw). They also included maths in biology now and my teachers said it only requires understanding of GCSE maths but when we were given the spec papers for the first time, it was really hard. It's not like the maths was extremely hard but the way that they word the questions makes it almost impossible to understand what they wanted you to do in the first place. I thought it was just me at first but then other people in my class and even other schools complained that it was too hard as well as most of the biology teachers at my school who couldn't get it the first time round and admitted that it takes a lot of time to do which would be impossible to do in the time limit of the exam so I bought a book specifically for the maths in biology that my school provided called Essential Maths Skills for A-Level Biology (it's a CGP book) but the maths in the actual exam wasn't too bad so don't worry too much.
For physics, I found that once you understand the basics of each topic its pretty easy to get an A as they expect you not to get up to 80% so the grade boundaries are normally lower anyway which is to your advantage but still try and get the higher marks because it makes it easier to answer questions in the real exam under pressure.
Also for all your subjects, I'd print out the specification for each one so that near exam time you can tick off everything you already know and go over anything you're unsure of and you'll be able to see exactly what could come up on the test.
For all the sciences you have to do 12 experiments (only if you're taking A2) so I did six in the first year and am going to do six next year. They were pretty easy and it's pass/fail so as long as there's evidence that you've done it you pass (at least that's what my teachers say) and it doesn't count towards your final grade. However, the experiments can and probably will come up in your exam so you have to remember the steps and for some of them why you have to do a certain step/ what happens if you don't do this step etc. Experiments will also be explained in the new spec books and do the extension questions as they really do help.
Overall, I'd say biology is the most interesting then physics then chemistry to me but even though I like biology the most, it's also the most stress and I'd drop it if I didn't require it for medicine and if I didn't really hate maths. But at the end of the day it was very draining when I had so much to do and not enough time but I still enjoyed it and would do it again since I honestly have no other interest in any other subject as much as I do in science. Also, if you are applying for medicine just know that most people don't get in the first time but I'd apply ten times if I have to get into medicine because I really love the course and love the idea of dedicating the rest my life to helping people in any way I can and if you think you're prepared to cope with the lifetime of stress ahead and with all the issues with the junior doctor contract (which is likely to be worse in the future) then there's not reason not to go for it but anyway, the sciences will open doors to lots of other pathways as well so even if you change your mind on what you want to do, I'm pretty sure you you can go in any field you want with these subjects as long as you can demonstrate your interest to the course you end up choosing with volunteering or wider reading etc. There'll also be lots of opportunities for taster courses throughout the year in yr 12 and you can always get work experience during the half term (as long as it doesn't interfere with studies). Just prepare for failure at first and work your way up because not everyone can keep up with all the sciences at first but you get used to it and get into the habit of studying everyday from the beginning and you'll be fine (making a timetable adjusted to your school timetable helps as well) but even if you can't study everyday, don't worry because it's never too late to start studying properly and no knowledge is lost (as my dad would say) and don't compare yourself with other people around you because the way you learn is different and usually unique to everyone else so go at your own pace and as long as you're making some kind of progress there's nothing to worry about.
Good luck in yr 12 and figuring out what you want to do.

Initial, shorter response: Consider the worst case scenario for each option. If you don't pick physics you may not be able to study most types of engineering, but you will be very suited to Chemical Engineering. If you don't pick Economics you won't have knowledge of... economics, but other than that you still won't be as suited to studying Economics at university because a lot of people that study Economics at university have studied Further Maths with a heavy emphasis on Statistics modules (of course not all, but many) - it is not by any means a requirement for any course to study Economics, which is why it is not considered a facilitating subject. I am still doing it, however, because it is a very academic subject. (A little background info on me: I'm choosing physics, maths, economics, further maths and I am planning to study engineering but I could also be well-prepared for an economics degree, I didn't choose another science subject because I don't enjoy other science subjects and I could realistically never cope as a doctor). You can also consider the worst case scenario for not picking Biology

FOR A MORE DETAILED RESPONSE, KEEP ON READING BUDDY

Really, the best way to actually know is by fast-forwarding to the future.

By that I mean actually envisioning yourself in about 10 years from now getting up in the morning everyday to go to work. Do you see yourself going to a hospital every day? How about an office? Open air, perhaps? Up in some spacecraft? A plane?

Now, unless your imagination is suupperrr powerful, you're gonna have a hard time imagining yourself at work unless you conduct some prior in-depth researching about the different kind of careers that are open to you. There are many more careers than you could have imagined and there are many 'A Day in the Life of...'s on the internet, so do use the internet while you have the time.

Here is one way of going about this:

Step 1) Choose 5 different courses that you are considering at the moment.

Step 2) Research the course content for each of these courses and summarise what each course is about

Step 3) Look into the range of careers that could follow from each of the courses and list at least 5 for each

Step 4) Now research a few of the careers and really think about if you can see yourself working in that profession everyday for potentially long hours

Step 5) Cross out the courses and/or careers that no longer appeal to you after all this research. Try to narrow down your choices as much as you can

Step 6) Now try writing the opening paragraph of a personal statement for each of the courses you have remaining. Perhaps try writing about your motivation and interest in the course,as if you were answering Why do you want to study...?

Step 7) Cross out the courses that made you cringe while writing (hopefully that isn't all of them)

Step 8) Now with the courses you have remaining, ask yourself which one(s) you would read a 500 page book about if you absolutely had to choose

Step 9) Hopefully by now you have got the right course, so now look at the entry requirements for it. Choose the subjects that are necessary for that course and don't look back

HOPE THIS HELPED (: BUT IF YOU DIDN'T READ IT ALL, JUST COPY AND PASTE IT INTO YOUR NOTES AND READ IT WHEN YOU'RE BOTHERED (this method was very long, but it helped me)

Fin

Thank you for your response. I just have one problem its just I really want to be good at maths I enjoy maths when I know how to do it but even though I try my best Im going to 11 next year and I have been stuck on a C grade since year 9 and there seems to be no progress. I really enjoy history I would not mind reading a 500 page book about it but I feel there are little to none career prospects in history. I really enjoy watching documentaries to do with science so its something i enjoy watching but I have no clue what field in science I would pick at one point in my life i really thought I could be a surgeon but what put me off is the many years of study and the fact in the Uk they're not as well paid as in the usa but then I could never live in the US as its not a place for me, also I would be limited to only working in english speaking countries because if I wanted to work abroad for example japan i would not be able to pass the medical licence, as i do not speak the language. And I do try and imagine my future but it seems so bleak and I cannot picture anything I am so sacred of being unemployed and homeless and it feels like i can't imagine myself doing any specific job anymore and I searched the internet for many jobs, and I cant make my mind up or the fact I'm not good at maths stops me from pursuing that career. I would love a job that enables me to to travel but I would not be a pilot as apparently you just fly a lot but you don't really see a lot of the places you fly to and you just go and sleep in a hotel and then go to work the next day and also there is no job guarantee! I think whats most important for me is job security/guarantee and a good salary I'm not talking hundreds of thousands but at least maybe 50,000 per year I hope that does not sound greedy, but I want a nice lifestyle too.I looked at many courses but I cant pick 5, I think one thing that stops me from being able to pick is I don't want to pick the wrong decision, I don't want to feel like I regret my decision or to be one of those people who are 40 years old and realise they chose the wrong job and end up quitting their jobs and going back to uni to study for a new degree and looking for a different job completely, it scares me that that it might happen to me.

You sound like the perfect person to become a lawyer (solicitor). Honestly, if you think doing a History degree has low career prospects you are very very very wrong! History is a non-specialist degree that provides you with the skills that make you employable: analytical skills, clear and concise writing skills, communication skills, clear judgement and so much more. On taking a History degree, you can enter the legal profession (a very lucrative profession with good hours, contrary to what people believe) via taking a GDL (a law conversion course) and trust me with hard work the rest will play out fine. The type of subjects you should be doing are History, English Literature, Philosophy, Government & Politics, Psychology, and even Economics because your strengths are clearly here.

Look into the legal profession with a clear, unbiased mind and I know you will find that it is right for you because I've seen this happen to many people (older than us) before.

A law firm I've been to myself as part of a work experience type thing and it was amazing because of the environment and the type of lawyers that actually work their. Explore their website for yourself: http://graduates.hoganlovells.com/

*the legal profession is very broad and as such, there are many undesirable parts of the law, those of which you will have to look up yourself

I'm doing OCR for all the sciences and AQA for maths. It's quite easy at first if you're naturally good at the sciences but on thing I regret not doing is going over my notes just to wrap my head around something in case I didn't get it the first time round in class because I never used to do this in GCSE yet it turned out OK but for A-level I didn't realise how much detail you needed to remember for your exams especially in Biology where the content is so much yet. I liked how all the subjects are linked together as it helped to understand topics better e.g. for biological molecules, chemistry helped me understand the inter-molecular forces between bonds that caused the tertiary structure of amino acids in biology when I got confused the first time round when my biology teacher first taught me. Also, even though the specification changed, doing past papers was really helpful (especially the really old ones) as they helped with getting wording right especially in biology which is very specific otherwise you don't get the marks. The same with physics and chemistry as well actually. My school didn't give a lot of homework so I only had to revise (which isn't very long if you just make revision notes or flashcards for an hour or two a day) but they gave us tests every week or two weeks to make sure that we were revising and if we got bad grades we'd have to take extra lessons to help or one-to-ones with a supervisor if we're really struggling but if you keep up with revision there's no need to worry about this. Plus everything you need to know will be in the books the exam boards wrote for the new specification. They'll never ask you anything they haven't told you about so use your resources to the fullest and they usually explain it with examples to help make it easier to understand experiments especially in physics which is very helpful.
For chemistry, I was fine for most of it because it was mostly calculations but when I got to organic molecules I started to struggle and I regret still not going over what I did in class or asking the teacher to repeat it but once I eventually read the book they gave me it explained so easily and Iwas finally able to catch up with the rest of the class.
Maths was still quite easy for me because they get you to practice a lot. I just didn't like the repetition of the things I already knew and for C2 I didn't like doing trigonometry because it got very confusing and was generally my weakest point. I also didn't like graphs of any sort because they took way too much time to draw and the whole thing seemed really tedious to me hence I didn't put the effort come exam time however I took M1 which helped me to understand the mechanics section at the beginning of physics a lot more quickly.
For biology, as I've said earlier, it's very specific and there's a lot of content (we finished the syllabus only two weeks before the exam) so read every section in the book because all the small tedious information they give you is most likely to come up in exams. OCR used to do essay style questions (like 9/10 marks) but now it's shorter and easier to answer as in all you have to do is spew out everything you remember about a mechanism or the steps for something like protein synthesis or just say everything you see on a graph and you can get all the marks but it's also quite hard because they mark in bands now so if you miss out even one thing you could go down a band. You also get a mark for quality of writing (this is for all the sciences btw). They also included maths in biology now and my teachers said it only requires understanding of GCSE maths but when we were given the spec papers for the first time, it was really hard. It's not like the maths was extremely hard but the way that they word the questions makes it almost impossible to understand what they wanted you to do in the first place. I thought it was just me at first but then other people in my class and even other schools complained that it was too hard as well as most of the biology teachers at my school who couldn't get it the first time round and admitted that it takes a lot of time to do which would be impossible to do in the time limit of the exam so I bought a book specifically for the maths in biology that my school provided called Essential Maths Skills for A-Level Biology (it's a CGP book) but the maths in the actual exam wasn't too bad so don't worry too much.
For physics, I found that once you understand the basics of each topic its pretty easy to get an A as they expect you not to get up to 80% so the grade boundaries are normally lower anyway which is to your advantage but still try and get the higher marks because it makes it easier to answer questions in the real exam under pressure.
Also for all your subjects, I'd print out the specification for each one so that near exam time you can tick off everything you already know and go over anything you're unsure of and you'll be able to see exactly what could come up on the test.
For all the sciences you have to do 12 experiments (only if you're taking A2) so I did six in the first year and am going to do six next year. They were pretty easy and it's pass/fail so as long as there's evidence that you've done it you pass (at least that's what my teachers say) and it doesn't count towards your final grade. However, the experiments can and probably will come up in your exam so you have to remember the steps and for some of them why you have to do a certain step/ what happens if you don't do this step etc. Experiments will also be explained in the new spec books and do the extension questions as they really do help.
Overall, I'd say biology is the most interesting then physics then chemistry to me but even though I like biology the most, it's also the most stress and I'd drop it if I didn't require it for medicine and if I didn't really hate maths. But at the end of the day it was very draining when I had so much to do and not enough time but I still enjoyed it and would do it again since I honestly have no other interest in any other subject as much as I do in science. Also, if you are applying for medicine just know that most people don't get in the first time but I'd apply ten times if I have to get into medicine because I really love the course and love the idea of dedicating the rest my life to helping people in any way I can and if you think you're prepared to cope with the lifetime of stress ahead and with all the issues with the junior doctor contract (which is likely to be worse in the future) then there's not reason not to go for it but anyway, the sciences will open doors to lots of other pathways as well so even if you change your mind on what you want to do, I'm pretty sure you you can go in any field you want with these subjects as long as you can demonstrate your interest to the course you end up choosing with volunteering or wider reading etc. There'll also be lots of opportunities for taster courses throughout the year in yr 12 and you can always get work experience during the half term (as long as it doesn't interfere with studies). Just prepare for failure at first and work your way up because not everyone can keep up with all the sciences at first but you get used to it and get into the habit of studying everyday from the beginning and you'll be fine (making a timetable adjusted to your school timetable helps as well) but even if you can't study everyday, don't worry because it's never too late to start studying properly and no knowledge is lost (as my dad would say) and don't compare yourself with other people around you because the way you learn is different and usually unique to everyone else so go at your own pace and as long as you're making some kind of progress there's nothing to worry about.
Good luck in yr 12 and figuring out what you want to do.

Since u already choosen biology. Its time to choose physics and chemistry and economics. I know u said u want to be a lawyer but u are still young and if u want to do engineering u wont be restricted.

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