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The 'What's this AH like?' Thread

Well there's a few AHs I'm considering and I know others are too. So this is a general AH thread.

I need to know about AH Maths, Chemistry, English and Geography. How are they compared to Higher. What does the course contain? We need to decide in a couple of weeks and the school is rubbish.

Reply 1

spacepirate-James

18

Woop woop! :woo:

Thinking of taking AH English, Bio, Chem...

Possibly with maths/physics: whichever one I fail more at.

Reply 2

Kirsty59

OP

spacepirate-James

Woop woop! :woo:

Thinking of taking AH English, Bio, Chem...

Possibly with maths/physics: whichever one I fail more at.

4 AH?!?

Crazy person.

Reply 3

spacepirate-James

18

Kirsty59

4 AH?!?

Crazy person.

Meh... It'll be fun in a sadistic kind of way...

Reply 4

chris-carnage

1

AH maths is a boring and pointless waste of 5 hours a week. I wanted to take physics but I had to take higher English instead :'( I love AH chemistry, but I'm alone in this... It is the hardest AH I've taken though - stoichiometry :holmes:

Reply 5

username356927

13

Kirsty59

Well there's a few AHs I'm considering and I know others are too. So this is a general AH thread.

I need to know about AH Maths, Chemistry, English and Geography. How are they compared to Higher. What does the course contain? We need to decide in a couple of weeks and the school is rubbish.

Maths- More of the same, complicated but with practice is easy, just like higher.

Physics-A LOT of maths content, calculus derivatives that you have to know, is seriously difficult if you don't do AH maths. Investigation is worth 25 marks out of 125 for whole year and is very time consuming and difficult to get your head around.

Chemistry-Ditto above without the calculus.

Geography-Similar to higher but with questions such as why build an oil refinery here 35 marks or something ridiculous. Practical component involving some kind of write up I believe.

Advanced highers are designed to be like the first year of uni, you have to want it to suceed.

Hope that helped a little.

Reply 6

CallumFR

9

AH Maths is most definitely not a waste of 5 hours a week. If you are enjoying Higher, I really recommended you take it. It's very interesting, useful if you want to do something science based after school and taking it makes you super cool :smile:

Definitely my favourite course this year!

I know you didn't ask about Physics, but anyway. I was expecting a lot more maths in it, which would have been good prep for Uni, but unfortunately there's only really some basic differentiation/integration. The investigation is stressful and just crap - make you sure pick a topic you find interesting! The course also seems to be lacking content in areas. For example, you get introduced to the concept of electrons being standing waves around a nucleus, but it's not really taken any further than this. The course seems undecided as to whether it "prefers" the Bohr model or this new one.

Reply 7

ChilliChickenWings

AH chem isn't too bad, remember if choose to do AHs there's a dissertation (or investigation, whichever way you like to call it) to do which takes up a lot of time, except for maths. But contents wise, it's more or less going in to more detail of what you learned at higher really. Seeing you're doing higher physics right now, unit 1 of AH chemistry would be a lot easier for you. :smile:

Reply 8

mr Biomedicine

I did Advanced higher chemistry, biology, geography and medical ethics. Chemistry was great, it's a big step up from higher and is very useful if you are going to university to study a science based degree, you should find 1st year chemisty a doddle. Biology advanced higher was the biggest waste of time, nothing I learned in that course was useful for my degree in biomedical science apart from some of the biochemistry you do in the 1st unit. The 2nd unit is mainly ecology and your 3rd unit is either on microbiology or very basic physiology. Geography was another waste of time, it is irrelevant to anything you learned in higher and involves lots of stats, map drawing and planning. Medical ethics was my favourite, it basically involved reading into the ethics of medicine - transplants, euthanasia etc and writing essays on each of these subjects.

With each advanced higher you are required to submit a project. Chemistry and biology projects are generally very good fun and put all the material you've learned into practice. However, geography has 2 projects, one is a research based controversial topic and the other a study such as "How much traffic goes down this street each week?". I believe that the SQA are slightly bais in their marking of these reports, so be careful in what topic your choose.

Reply 9

TheRabbit

17

Kirsty59

Well there's a few AHs I'm considering and I know others are too. So this is a general AH thread.

I need to know about AH Maths, Chemistry, English and Geography. How are they compared to Higher. What does the course contain? We need to decide in a couple of weeks and the school is rubbish.

Chemistry - everyone in my class is enjoying it, but probably not the best if you hate practical what with the investigation and what seems like a 100 PPAs. I'm not finding it any harder than Higher, there is just more to learn.

Maths- Pure or applied? In applied maths you do statistics/mechanics and a pure maths unit, I'm doing mechanics and I guess I like the mix (though its a bit tedious) - I'm not sure I could stomach a whole AH in the pure stuff.

chris-carnage

AH maths is a boring and pointless waste of 5 hours a week. I wanted to take physics but I had to take higher English instead :'( I love AH chemistry, but I'm alone in this... It is the hardest AH I've taken though - stoichiometry :holmes:

I love Chemistry too! :p:

Reply 10

ukdragon37

14

spacepirate-James

Meh... It'll be fun in a sadistic kind of way...

There're people who's done more, like Meteorshower.

For the OP:
AH Maths is a significant step up from Higher, since for the first time you are introduced to some very pure mathematical concepts (yeah those ones that makes you think "why the hell do I need to know them in real life?" ).
AH Physics can be done with Higher maths knowledge but the project is also quite demanding.

Reply 11

Slumpy

16

Maths-fantastic, everyone should do this(Note, I do maths at uni, so might be biased, but it was a brilliant AH).
Physics-The course is all fun, and all fairly interesting. I liked the LO3s, but couldn't really be bothered with my investigation. Learn underlying theory reasonably well, and it's pretty easy, especially given you get a data book.
Mechanics-If you do Maths and Physics, try to get put in for this too, it's like a free AH. I taught my class for this mostly.
Chemistry-Fairly ok, least fun course wise, but practicals were much more fun than physics. Some of the course is interesting, some is pretty boring. As I recall, you don't actually need to remember that much if you just learn the underlying theory also. Worth learning some equations though, as you don't have a data book. Checked this against some (Scottish) 1st year uni stuff for chemistry, and you do most of it.

Reply 12

lastplace

Kirsty59

Well there's a few AHs I'm considering and I know others are too. So this is a general AH thread.

I need to know about AH Maths, Chemistry, English and Geography. How are they compared to Higher. What does the course contain? We need to decide in a couple of weeks and the school is rubbish.

AH English is much better than Higher :smile:

It's easier, it's more enjoyable... for one thing, the texts you study are set texts so they definately come up in the exam, so there's no panic. There's more time in the exam, 1 1/2 hours for one essay, so that's good. The essays arent that much longer than Higher essays either. There's the choice of doing Textual Analysis or Creative Writing. If you pick the latter, the final exam is only 1 1/2 hours long and you have to hand in a folio on the exam day.

It's a great subject, really :smile:

Don't discount it on the basis of Higher, because they're pretty different.

Reply 13

TheRabbit

17

Slumpy

Chemistry- Worth learning some equations though, as you don't have a data book.

You use the same data book as for Higher though there are some equations you need to know (to do with pH, enthalpy and entropy) for the calculations

Reply 14

ukdragon37

14

Slumpy

Mechanics-If you do Maths and Physics, try to get put in for this too, it's like a free AH. I taught my class for this mostly.

Meh, Stats is better :p:

Reply 15

Slumpy

16

TheRabbit

You use the same data book as for Higher though there are some equations you need to know (to do with pH, enthalpy and entropy) for the calculations

Oh, of course.
But the data book doesn't have any equations, I was comparing it to the physics one :p:

ukdragon37

Meh, Stats is better :p:

You be quiet! When I looked at the camb website, it told me to do mechanics, so I did. It was only later I found out it was easy as anything!
Also, would you like to do my stats now then? I can't... :p:

Reply 16

Alias Grace

Maths: Basically agree with what most others have said, if you enjoy higher then I recommend AH. The concepts are more challenging but it keeps you interested, you just have to get stuck in and keep on practising questions.
Geography: Very different from higher as you're not really learning new facts but putting what you have learnt and found interesting into practise. Doing fieldwork, analysing the data and writing up the report has been enjoyable.

Reply 17

ukdragon37

14

Slumpy

Also, would you like to do my stats now then? I can't... :p:

I'm pretty sure the answer is no, although I might be able to do some if I travelled into the future and have done Mathematical Methods for CompScis in part 1B, which is very stats based. :p:

Reply 18

lauren--c

1

Can anyone tell me about AH German?

ukdragon37

AH Maths is a significant step up from Higher, since for the first time you are introduced to some very pure mathematical concepts (yeah those ones that makes you think "why the hell do I need to know them in real life?" ).
AH Physics can be done with Higher maths knowledge but the project is also quite demanding.

Haha, I think this just about every maths period and I'm still in higher. My teacher will say "this is very relevant to other subjects" and when we ask her which ones, she says "...physics."

Reply 19

Slumpy

16

ukdragon37

I'm pretty sure the answer is no, although I might be able to do some if I travelled into the future and have done Mathematical Methods for CompScis in part 1B, which is very stats based. :p:

Sure? It's only 1B... :p:

The 'What's this AH like?' Thread

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