[J.C]

I'm currently in Y12 doing maths, further maths, physics and chemistry AS's. I'm hoping to do chemical engineering at uni and so I definately want to do chemistry, physics and maths next year. I'm still on the fence about continuing FM and doing 4 next year. After exams this summer, I'll have done C1, C2, S1, D1, M1, FP1, M2. With M1 probably contributing to my A2 maths.
If I do FM next year, I'm thinking FP2, FP3 and M3 or S2. I don't want to do D2 because I hated D1, even though it was meant to be easy, I wasn't keen on it. I like mechanics and I am grasping M2 well now and it's a late exam (22nd June) so I have lots of time for that. FP1 I am actually feeling confident in. S1 I don't really know where I'm at, I can do really well on some papers but some of the permutations and combinations questions I hate, along with some of the rubbish wordy questions. That's why I'm unsure of S2. Really I just want advice on S2 vs S1, and M3 vs M2?

Also some advice on whether it is worthwhile going for FM and doing 4 subjects even though it's the 3 A-levels that get me into uni. I'm thinking of Cambridge though, and I know for other engineering FM is great, but for chemical? Opinions from experience would be great.

These modules are OCR btw!

[NightBear]

I'm in no position to comment on M2 or M3 seeing as I haven't done either.

As for D2, I can say it's nothing like D1. I absolutely hated D1, but loved D2. D2 is quite a short module as well in comparison to the other modules, imo.

S2 and S3, again, are nothing like S1. The wordiness is still there, it's statistics after all
I also found the mathematics and theory in S2 a lot easier to understand than I did for S1.

Whether or not you want to do 4 is totally up to you and I'd say decide upon that once you get your AS results. I did 5 AS (sciences and maths) - dropped Physics and was on the fence about dropping FM but decided to take it up in the end. Can't say I regret my decision, but, it's taking up a lot of my time and I feel it's diverting me quite a fair bit from my other subjects, but, again, that's just me - it'll vary depending on your capacity.

[J.C]

Yeah I'll see how well I do before deciding, particularly in S1 and M2. I think if I do well, I will go for it as I may regret no doing it and could always drop it if it was really a nightmare.

[Ree69]

I took S2 and found it a lot easier than S1. To be honest, S2 and S3 are completely different to S1 so I wouldn't worry about S2 if you're unkeen on S1. (All the probability and perms/combs stuff goes out the window until S4!)

S2 is still wordy though, probably more so than S1, but generally it's easy to understand/explain if you get your head round it. S2 is a very easy exam if you prepare well. (I'd say the easiest statistics module).

I've always hated mechanics, but if you're doing well in M2 than there's no reason why you wouldn't cope with M3. IIRC, the only thing I struggled with was simple harmonic motion. If you enjoy it, go for it - it'll probably help at uni anyway.

But tbh I think S2 is miles easier than M3.

[Coulson72]

So far ive done all the ocr modules but S4 (well learnt them at least, not going to do exams in the later ones)

Personally I'd say see how D1 comes out and if you do well go for D2, it's a nice easy one and its not anywhere near as dull as D1, not to mention the books about half the size of all the others due to its lack of material

Ive not done the M3 and M4 exams but i'd still advise against it because, for all theyre really interesting, with the interest comes difficulty along with simple limits even in M4 which is a LOT of difficult, mulkti stage integrations

S2 is a bit dull but way better than the first one, then S3 gets better again and looking at S4 it looks like statistics just keeps getting better, also none of it's too challenging, just little bits of integration here and there.

And dontn forget both FP2 and 3 could be done to replace an unwanted applied module, I personally found them both incredibly nice with FP3 somewhere between the difficulty of M2 and M3 so you may want to be careful if you arent completely sure in your FP modules.

Overall i'd say go for whatever you want, but anything with a higher number generally is harder to get a better grade in due to the fact that only the best of the best get round to the likes of an M4 exam, but dont let that put you off if you really enjoy it.

[J.C]

Yeah, thanks for the opinions. I'll see how my results for M2 and SI go and then I'll decide, but I think I'll do FP2, FP3 and S2 or M3. I'm not sure whether I may end up doing 4 nodules or not so I could end up doing both but I'll have to speak to my maths teacher about that.