Subject with the biggest jump between GCSE and AS Level?

What do you personally think is the subject with the biggest/ most painful step up between GCSE and AS Level?

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Probably biology for me. Not the biggest jump, but definitely the most painful.

"Take a look at the graph in Figure 1.."

Reply 2

lucyx

Original post by Jooooshy

Probably biology for me. Not the biggest jump, but definitely the most painful.

"Take a look at the graph in Figure 1.."

Oh yeah, graphs and data analysis is what put me off taking Biology!

Reply 3

L'ananas

I'd say biology was quite a big jump due to the amount of content you need to know and how much detail you have to go in - I think the first time you do a past paper for AS biology is the hardest. Biology just gets progressively harder over the two years though, like the stuff you learn at the start of AS is just basic common sense for the difficult stuff at the end of A2.

Reply 4

Numberwang

Original post by lucyx

What do you personally think is the subject with the biggest/ most painful step up between GCSE and AS Level?

This isn't quite what you're asking, but History was the most different. For me it wasn't that much harder, for others it was...

Reply 5

Bananaicecream

Definatly religious studies (it seems like a completly different subject tbh but not in a bad way!). Followed by chemistry, it gets very complex. I found the smallest jump in Art, followed by maths. Bio was ok.

Reply 6

xanderarthur

If you've only done Music GCSE (and not studied it outside school like most people do), then it is a massive jump up.

If you haven't had a good basic grounding at GCSE then subjects like Maths and foreign languages can be big jumps as well.

Reply 7

Theaetetus

English is pretty bad to be honest.

Maths was pretty easy, but I had done Additional Maths in Year 11.

Reply 8

JayJay-C19

I was told English Literature has the biggest jump. It does from Year 9 to GCSE actually as well; quite a huge jump.

Reply 9

Saoirse423

For me it was English Lit and Religion. In English you're just expected to write in so much more detail and to really delve deeper into what you read. Religion at GCSE was simple agree/disagree type questions. At AS you make the jump to 7 page essays.

Reply 10

Toriar

French had the biggest jump for me because the speaking controlled assessments absolutely did not properly prepare me for the speaking exam at AS imo. Likewise the writing controlled assessments did not prepare me for the essay section in the exam.

Reply 11

Compost

Languages, beacause you can get at least an A in GCSE without being able to understand much at all - you just repeat stuff parrot fashion for the control assessments and common sense gets you through the exams. At A level you actually need to understand some French (or German, or Spanish...)

Reply 12

p.formanko

I did English Lit, Spanish, Econ and Geography.
Can't comment on Econ because my school didn't offer it for GCSE.
Spanish was easy, same grammar/vocab/cultural stuff.
Geography - BIG step up, lots of terminology, exam technique, things you have to remember though the course spans a massive amount.
English Lit - next to impossible. Suffered for the first term till it all kinda clicked. Everything changes; essay structures, literary devices, the way you analyse poems and plays...

Reply 13

maiella13

For me, Spanish AS was a huge jump from AS even... (OCR)

Reply 14

jwf13

Languages are awful for the jump- in Year 11, my last writing exam was 'My local area'. By October of Year 12, it was 'To what extent is Classical Music important today?'...

English literature is also quite a lot because the assessment criteria are harder to achieve.

I didn't really have a problem with geography, history and RE.

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Reply 15

The Empire Odyssey

For me, English; I did English Language and English Literature at A-level (having only studied English GCSE) and the gap was enormous.

English Lang: way too technical from your similes and metaphors and writing to persuade and inform, etc. Nothing like that. You're getting told about theories that you thought was only studied in Psychology and Sociology and etc. The way you have to analyse and omg, I only thought there was one adjective. But nooo! It turns out there's a ton of different forms of adjectives. The amount of grammar and syntax you have to remember and analyse was almost fatal for me.

English Lit: the reading got way heavier. Esp the texts, I thought were so easy at GCSE, compared to A-level. AT GCSE, I thought making chapter summaries for Of Mice and Men was heartbreakingly tough, let alone ripping to shreds paragraphs after paragraphs of Birdsong! The amount of detail you go into, is so enthralling but very hard. I also learned that it's one of those subjects that if you don't continuously practise at, you will fail. You can follow the same essay plan guide at GCSE at write a dozen essays on different texts and get the same consistent grade. However, at A-level there's a thousands formulaic ways of writing different essays for different genres that will always be a different grade, depending on how much you put into it. The terminology gets a lot heavier and harder, especially for the poetry side of A-level.... Why am I going to uni to study English Lit again? :P

Reply 16

Mindless Behavior

I don't do Chemistry but a few of my friends did. A lot of them got A*s quite easily at GCSE but despite the huge amount of time and effort they put into revision, didn't do as well as they'd hoped at As. So I'd say Chemistry.

Reply 17

tomfailinghelp

Apparently I'm at odds with most on this thread, but I really didn't think English was a jump at all. Perhaps writing essays on unseen texts was a small one, but to be honest on the whole I didn't see that much of a difference between GCSE and AS.

Reply 18

Doomlar

Chemistry I think builds upon what you learn at GCSE; I would say the biggest jump would be the difference between GCSE Maths and A-level Maths. You don't learn **** at GCSE, and at A-level you are taught rules and identities, but no actual concepts so you don't understand things like integration and differentiation unless your teacher explicitly goes through it with you.

Reply 19

RAV 123

If you're bad at maths then maths. I have seen people go from a* and 100% in GCSE to scraping E's and D's in AS.

The 3 sciences also go up a lot, biology not so much as the others.