Would someone help me with AS Levels/ Uni?

So here's the situation... I applied through UCAS to Kent to study Biological Anthropology and missed my offer.

I'm going to be a 2011 reapplicant. The course requires BB with 300 points. I already have a B in sociology and a B in psychology and a C in AS art (giving me 240 UCAS points).

I emailed the admissions and the woman advised me to pick up AS Biology as at the moment it looks like I'm applying for a BA instead of a BSc. Unfortunately I can't do this at college as I got an E in Biology at GCSE. Though I will note that I'm perfectly capable of studying it (I'm now 20 and I'm interested in it, whereas I was a poor student 5 years ago).

I was originally just going to continue my AS art to A2 and pick up another humanities (possibly Law).

However now I'm thinking of still continuing the AS Art to A2 but also doing a Biology A Level by distance learning. If I can't do Biology online I'd do environmental Science.

Does anyone know of a site that...

A) Will let me do the course without a Science GCSE

B) Would possibly let me just do AS - If not then would let me do AS and A2 in one year.

Any help would be fantastic.

Reply 1

katebushfan

OP

13

aprilterri

Do you live in Canada?

No - I just like the flag.

Reply 2

katebushfan

OP

13

aprilterri

Oh lol
If you live in London Westminster Kingsway college and city of westminster college do intensive courses 2 days a week

http://www.cwc.ac.uk/pages/courses/level_2.asp?AreaID=87

if not biology ask if you would be accepted with sociology. Sociology is somewhat similar/related to anthropology.

Thanks, I already have the Sociology A Level and I just checked the site and it says you need a grade B in a GCSE science (which I don't have), it's not really distance learning either. But thanks for looking anyways :smile:

Reply 3

katebushfan

OP

13

aprilterri

Thats ok maybe you can take another course oh and silly me I should have read you said you've done sociology in your original post, my bad. :p:

Good luck I really hope you get your place.

Thanks, the difficult part is trying to find a distant learning biology course :P.

Thanks for your help anyways :yep:

Reply 4

skipp

17

Are there any practical elements to AS biology? If it's anything like Physics the written exams can be learnt from home with good motivation & can be sat at any exam center...but you'd still need an exam centre with a lab willing to take you for any practical elements, which can be problematic

Reply 5

katebushfan

OP

13

skipp

Are there any practical elements to AS biology? If it's anything like Physics the written exams can be learnt from home with good motivation & can be sat at any exam center...but you'd still need an exam centre with a lab willing to take you for any practical elements, which can be problematic

From what I've read on most sites there isn't. Though it's all a little confusing. I'll probably ring round on Monday when they're open :yep:

Reply 6

Bayleee

katebushfan

So here's the situation... I applied through UCAS to Kent to study Biological Anthropology and missed my offer.

I'm going to be a 2011 reapplicant. The course requires BB with 300 points. I already have a B in sociology and a B in psychology and a C in AS art (giving me 240 UCAS points).

I emailed the admissions and the woman advised me to pick up AS Biology as at the moment it looks like I'm applying for a BA instead of a BSc. Unfortunately I can't do this at college as I got an E in Biology at GCSE. Though I will note that I'm perfectly capable of studying it (I'm now 20 and I'm interested in it, whereas I was a poor student 5 years ago).

I was originally just going to continue my AS art to A2 and pick up another humanities (possibly Law).

However now I'm thinking of still continuing the AS Art to A2 but also doing a Biology A Level by distance learning. If I can't do Biology online I'd do environmental Science.

Does anyone know of a site that...

A) Will let me do the course without a Science GCSE

B) Would possibly let me just do AS - If not then would let me do AS and A2 in one year.

Any help would be fantastic.

Hi,

With ICS it is possible to do an A level in Biology without a Science GCSE as there is no pre-requisites. I don't know whether you can do just AS, but with this type of distance learning you have to enter yourself into the exams and you can do this at any time so I don't think there would be a problem doing the course in one year. Or you might be able to buy the whole course and only enter for the first AS exam. I know that you don't have to enter the exams at all as some people buy the courses for their own study and don't wish to obtain a qualification, so I can't see why it would be a problem.

The NEC allows you to do just the AS level. They do state on their website the entry requirements are a double certificate in GCSE Science or GCSE Biology grade C, but when I rang last year to query (I only have 1 Science GCSE) they said it was only a recommendation and I did do the course without the entry requirements.

Regarding the practical elements, there are some practicals but the courses are set up so they can be done at home. They are pretty simple, such as looking at the totipotency of plant cells by cutting a leaf of a plant and burying it in soil or looking at enzymes by putting pineapple juice in some jelly and putting in the airing cupboard. Or cutting beetroot strips and placing in water of different temperatures to look at how temperature denatures cells. Also, with the NEC there are nine experiments although they don't count towards your grade and they aren't all mandatory as it is difficult to buy some of the equipment. However, you are advised to do as many as you can because you are then set a practical which you do at home and the write-up of that one does count towards your grade.

Oh, and Monday is a bank holiday so they might not be open till Tuesday.

Hope this helps. :smile:

Reply 7

katebushfan

OP

13

Bayleee

Hi,

With ICS it is possible to do an A level in Biology without a Science GCSE as there is no pre-requisites. I don't know whether you can do just AS, but with this type of distance learning you have to enter yourself into the exams and you can do this at any time so I don't think there would be a problem doing the course in one year. Or you might be able to buy the whole course and only enter for the first AS exam. I know that you don't have to enter the exams at all as some people buy the courses for their own study and don't wish to obtain a qualification, so I can't see why it would be a problem.

The NEC allows you to do just the AS level. They do state on their website the entry requirements are a double certificate in GCSE Science or GCSE Biology grade C, but when I rang last year to query (I only have 1 Science GCSE) they said it was only a recommendation and I did do the course without the entry requirements.

Regarding the practical elements, there are some practicals but the courses are set up so they can be done at home. They are pretty simple, such as looking at the totipotency of plant cells by cutting a leaf of a plant and burying it in soil or looking at enzymes by putting pineapple juice in some jelly and putting in the airing cupboard. Or cutting beetroot strips and placing in water of different temperatures to look at how temperature denatures cells. Also, with the NEC there are nine experiments although they don't count towards your grade and they aren't all mandatory as it is difficult to buy some of the equipment. However, you are advised to do as many as you can because you are then set a practical which you do at home and the write-up of that one does count towards your grade.

Oh, and Monday is a bank holiday so they might not be open till Tuesday.

Hope this helps. :smile:

Thankyou so much for this. I will give the NEC a call on Tuesday then and see what they say. I'd rather not do a full Biology AS/ A2 in one year as I've heard it's really, really hard. Would you agree with this or do you think it could be done? As I said, I'm perfectly capable of learning Biology, I'm just worried about the workload and stuff.

Reply 8

Bayleee

katebushfan

Thankyou so much for this. I will give the NEC a call on Tuesday then and see what they say. I'd rather not do a full Biology AS/ A2 in one year as I've heard it's really, really hard. Would you agree with this or do you think it could be done? As I said, I'm perfectly capable of learning Biology, I'm just worried about the workload and stuff.

What I found most difficult was probably the practicals. It took a while to get the equipment, then the practicals took longer to set up then writing them up took a while as there was quite a few questions to answer. Although it probably didn't help that I started doing them in January and my tutor needed them before he gave me my coursework task, which was due in March. If you did them as you went along (as advised in the book) then it probably wouldn't be too hard.

The actual syllabus I didn't find too hard to study time-wise, although I only took 3 AS exams in the year and I did these as a full-time student so I did have a lot of time to finish the course.

If you are only doing that and A2 art then it would probably be possible. With the NEC you can buy the materials separately which is good as you could just buy the AS and then decide in a few months whether you feel you are able to cope with doing the whole A level.

On the NEC website they say it'll take 300 hours to complete the full A level course (150 hours for each, which I'm not sure about as I always thought the A2s were harder and so take up more time), excluding assignments. I'm not sure how long I spent over the year, although I think it was longer as I spent a lot of time making notes and revising.

For the AS level I have a breakdown of hours for the units. The times for topics are about right if you don't make notes or only brief notes. Although as I said the practicals took a lot longer then I expected.

For Unit 1 (topics in first exam) they expect you to take 46 hours (26 on the topic Lifestyle, Health and Risk and then 20 hours on Genes and Health
For Unit 2 (topics in second exam) they expect you to take 44 hours (22 on Voice of the Genome and 22 on Biodiversity and Natural Resources)
They also expect you to spend up to 10 hours completing the practicals (although it doesn't say whether this is altogether or per unit. I assumed it was altogether, but if it was per unit then that would probably be what I spent).

That leaves 30/40 hours which I presume are for coursework and perhaps also exam preparation, which to me seems low.

If your planning on buying the full A level now, then I would probably make a timetable of how much time you have available and see whether you can find the time to spend at least 300 hours on Biology. Excluding practicals and coursework, it probably took me around the same amount of time as I spent on Psychology, perhaps a little bit more as I did find it harder to grasp. If you feel that you could fit the time it takes to do the whole Psychology A level plus time for coursework and experiments then you would probably be able to do it.

Edit: Sorry for the long post, I didn't realise I'd wrote so much!

Would someone help me with AS Levels/ Uni?

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you