These A-levels too much for me?

I'm taking biology, geography, maths and English literature this September at a new college after a few months out of school; as someone with fatigue and who is a slow worker & good at procrastinating, will this many academic AS levels be too much?

I'm hoping to go on to do a biology kind of degree. The subject I would substitute in if I didn't take one of the above would be art.

If anyone has any experience with managing sixth form/college or information on the workloads of these particular subjects, I would appreciate any advice a lot.

Thank you!

Most people do 4 AS levels, so you should be fine. However, I would recommend only carrying 3 forward to A2.

Those are all good options. I did geography and English lit, though I dropped geography after AS. English lit is very light, with regards to work load. Geography isn't difficult, but it does have a lot of facts and case studies so you need to memorise quite a bit of content.

On an ongoing basis, if you are recapping your notes every night from the start of the year you will be fine.

Yeah, I did geography for GCSE and looking at the exams for AS/A they're the same layout with similar questions. With English lit. are there an extortionate amount of essays? Do you have any English essay tips?

I'm taking biology, geography, maths and English literature this September at a new college after a few months out of school; as someone with fatigue and who is a slow worker & good at procrastinating, will this many academic AS levels be too much?

I'm hoping to go on to do a biology kind of degree. The subject I would substitute in if I didn't take one of the above would be art.

If anyone has any experience with managing sixth form/college or information on the workloads of these particular subjects, I would appreciate any advice a lot.

Thank you!

I only do Biology out of the 4 but I used to take maths as well.

Biology

You will be doing the new spec so be prepared for new content. I suggest after you learn a topic make some Flashcards for that topic and go over it. After that give the Flashcards to your friends/family to test you. You could also make posters, mindmaps, try the pomodoro technique while revising or even teach the whole topic to your friends. I think teaching will be the best way. Memorising doesn't really work for Bio. You really have to know the content. Also you will be doing 12 core practicals in Biology and you will be assessed on the practicals in the exams in both yr 12 and 13. You will be doing 6 in yr 12 and 6 in yr 13. There are no coursework for all exam boards since you're being assessed in the exam. You will have to write up your practicals in a lab book. Also during yr 12 or yr 13 a member from AQA will visit your school (it's the same for all exam boards I believe) and they will watch a class doing a practical. If you're doing AQA new spec (7401), in yr 12 there are 2 papers and in yr 13 there are 3 papers. Paper 1 has knowledge questions, application questions and comprehension question which is worth 10m. Both papers in yr 12 are out of 75 and in yr 13, paper 1 = 91, paper 2 = 91 and paper 3 = 78.

AQA - http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/biology/specifications/AQA-7401-7402-SP-2015-V1-1.PDF

OCR - http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/171693-specification-accredited-as-level-gce-biology-a-h020.pdf

Maths skills - http://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/294471-mathematical-skills-handbook.pdf

Edexcel - http://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/A%20Level/biology-b/2015/specification-and-sample-assessment-materials/9781446930915_GCE2015_AS_BioB_spec.pdf

Edexcel Salters-Nuffield - http://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-a-levels/biology-a-2015.html#tab-1

Also since you're thinking of doing a bio degree you will need to get some sort of work experience. It could be in hospitals, shops etc. If you're getting work experience in a hospital be sure to contact them early like if you want to do it next year you need to contact them at least by September/October because a lot of my friends were placed in waiting lists as there weren't enough places. Or try getting experience in a surgery.

P.S. Don't do Biomedical science - the job prospects are quite low for this degree. There are about 37,000 undergraduate courses so really have a think about which course you want to do and since you're only starting there's plenty of time.

If you need any resources please check out this thread.

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3845551

Any more questions feel free to drop me a message. Good luck on Results day

For geography AS, it's very similar to GCSE except there's a lot more content. I couldn't comment on A2 as I dropped it after AS.

The number of essays set on an ongoing basis will depend on your English teacher. Personally, I was set 2 per week which wasn't too bad.

Both the English Lit AS and A2 exams on my spec (OCR) consisted of 2 essay questions.

Essay tips? Well, in your intro you want to briefly summarise the points will will make in your essay and make the conclusion that you will ultimately reach clear from the start. You only need 3 points in your essay, so long as you develop them well. Do one paragraph per point. In your conclusion, weigh up the various arguments you have made and the decision they led you to make, which should logically follow on. You might want to identify which arguments were stronger or weaker than others.

Learning several multi purpose text quotations and quotations by critics is important for lit, too.

Being a lazy arse myself, I found maths pretty easy to deal with. I had pretty much no memory of any GCSE maths I'd done but yet I'd managed to catch that up and still keep mostly on top of learning the new A level stuff as well.

Biology isn't totally mad, there's a lot of content but it's not tooo complex I don't think personally.

I didn't do the other 2 but the people in my year doing geography don't seem to have any complaints about workload.

Overall tho sort yourself out and you'll likely be able to manage any combination of stuff.