A-Level help!!!!

It's definitely an interesting subject so I'd go for it if it's something you're interested in

I can only speak for AQA as it's the exam board I've done and I found the year 12 topics slightly more dull than the year 13 topics but the exams in year 12 were far easier than year 13. Year 12 was mainly shorter questions whereas year 13 is long essay based questions. As long as your willing to put the effort in then go for it!

For AQA in year 12 you study things like memory, attachments, abnormality etc... and in year 13 you study things like sleep, aggression, gender, eating behaviour, schizophrenia, depression, media etc... (bare in mind this isn't a complete list and you won't learn all of these and i've missed out some to)

What grades are you predicted at GCSE do you know? Especially in sciences and writing based subjects (e.g. history or english lit)

A-Level psychology isn't that bad. I do AQA psych (I think that's the most popular board)
It is split up into two short answer question exams (PSYA1, PSYA2), and then two essay exams for A2 (PSYA3, PSYA4). PSYA4 has a research methods section linking back to PSYA1 which is not essay based.


The only thing is, you can't rely on the teachers to teach you the content. And honestly (I might get criticised for saying this), Psychology is one huge memory test. As long as you remember the right studies and some basic theory knowledge, you can easily get A/A*.


It is definitely not hard if you revise well and cover all the content during the year. If you find it interesting, go for it... Psych is a very popular course

Psychology is often thought of as 'the way our minds work' which is basically its tag, however there is so much more to it that you need to know, because it's not all just fun stuff - it also contains 'research methods' which is a main unit that all exam boards study - it is the science behind psychological experiments and can contain a large amount of maths/statistics so you must make sure you're fully up for it before taking the subject.

I can only talk about AQA because that's the exam board I study on -
in AS we studied;
Research methods
Memory
Attachment
Social Psychology (conformity/obedience)
Stress
and Abnormality.
Psychology is such a wide area that it contains several different parts and the likelihood is you will look some topics more than others, for example I prefer social psychology to biological psychology, but you will need to study all of it and therefore you need to be motivated enough to work hard at the parts you don't find so interesting

Psychology doesn't really complement Chemistry... Maybe the other way round, but uhh, yeah there's approximately 0% psychology involved with studying chemistry. Anywho, it doesn't matter, your fourth subject need not be relevant. Physics technically would be the best option (major part of some chemistry), but you can live without it.

Lots of people also like psychology so swings and roundabouts. The general gist seems to be: moderately interesting for most people, lots to remember (case studies etc.), not really essay based for AS. There will always be people who dislike stuff, i'm sure plenty people will happily tell you how chemistry was the worst choice they ever made so don't worry about people putting you off too much








Few comments there from a few people, literally just stumbled on an old thread. I thought there might have been a general chat/discussion thread on the Psychology forum to help you, but it doesn't look like so much. There are a few other people asking the same question though along the way so just some example responses there.

I remember doing part of biology AS which had an insight into behavioural response, probably bordering towards psychology side of things, was quite interesting. That was OCR board.