Chemistry or Russian at A Level?

languages are considered softer subjects...but its totally up to you..
if you're comfortable with it, then fine..

chemistry is surely favourable to the unis you mentioned..

EDIT: so im being negged just coz when i applied to uni 4 or 5 top unis were hesitant to accept it...so damn weird..
well, let me tell that i too do a modern language and chemistry and that's the experience ive had..
and i too have other good a levels like maths economics and physics (dropped chem this year)

If you're equally as good at both I'd choose chemistry. I'm not sure exactly, as it doesn't affect me, but I think that in some universities futher maths is not seen as a whole A-Level. In this case you'd only really have one other science, so maybe doing chemistry would be better?

What kind of universities are you planning to apply to? Maths at Oxbridge/Warwick etc. is so competitive that it might be better to stick with a safe choice. Also, they probably would exclude Russian from your offer.

I keep hearing that Russian would be useful in finance. Would an employer really prefer someone who has done it for A level over a native speaker (of which there are so many)? And what is its use exactly?

By who? I have never ever heard that, and most definitely not regarding a language such as Russian.

OP, at the end of the day, doing Russian will make you stand out from all the other applicants, and it might just be what you need. You'll be that tad more original than most of the people who will have applied, and it will interest interviewers, as well as employers (who care), later on.

You could also have a chance to keep your Russian up at university as most unis have a language centre, so you could reach an alright level in it by the end of your degree and that would make you more employable. I wouldn't trust stats too much, maybe people get better grades in Russian because it's a subject they picked because of their interest in it, as opposed to trying to do Chemistry just to have a "serious" A-Level, as it may be the case.

If you have a degree in mind, for which you don't need Chemistry, go for Russian; if you decide to do Maths, Further Maths seems an obvious choice over Chemistry and Russian. For something like Economics, be careful to which university you'd rather apply, FM may be more useful. You won't know whichever would be easier if you don't try both at AS-Level, and I have a feeling the step so many languague student moan about will also be there from GCSE Russian and A-Level Russian. I don't know how much you've done, but if you haven't learnt about aspects, verbs of motion and participles, you may want to check those out, because they're a level far above cases (if you have, then you know what you're in for).

We've touched upon aspects, and if by verbs of motion you mean adding prefixes like za- pod- pri- etc, then we've pretty much covered that. We've just done some basic stuff when it comes to participles, so I wouldn't say we've covered it. My Russian teacher advised me that AS Russian wouldn't be a huge step up for most people in our class, and I can see myself performing well in the exam seeing as you get an unreasonably long amount of time to do so little .

That said, a lot of people who do Chemistry at my school do it not because they enjoy it, but because they have to in order to pursue medical careers. Therefore, it may be those people who bring the overall grades down and make it seem more difficult. The statistics I'm referring to are as follows: 10/59 got A* and 28/59 got A in Chemistry; 6/9 got A* and 3/9 got A in Russian.

Decisions, decisions.