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Is A Level History hard but worth it?

I am having to take a new AS level and I've been thinking about taking History but is it too hard or is it worth it in the end?
History is an amazing, rewarding subject. However, it is very hard and a lot of work! If you enjoy reading and learning stats then its amazing! If not then maybe not for you. Personally though I loved history and the AS course happened to be what convinced me to consider it at degree. :smile:
Personally I loved history AS but it's a big step up! I never got anything less than 90% at GCSE so it was difficult seeing 70s in tests! If you genuinely like it and did well at GCSE definitely do it!
I took AS history this year (got A for it in August) and idk how to feel about it. All year I've been E/D/C in the Essays but managed to pull of A A in sources and knowledge paper. So in terms of hardness idek.

It also depends a lot on what topic your doing it on. My school is doing tudors, which I hate. I hate the lesson and somehow coasted through all year, but still got an A.

So I guess it is kinda worth it in the sense that, if you put a bit of work in towards the end you can get an A. But if the topics are **** your gunna have a bad time
The units I would be doing are:
Dictatorship and Democracy in Germany between 1933 - 1963
War of the Roses
Original post by chelseablue1997
The units I would be doing are:
Dictatorship and Democracy in Germany between 1933 - 1963
War of the Roses


History is a great subject, though I'd wager AS is actually harder than A2. It's made a hundred times easier, though, if you enjoy it and get really stuck in. I did The Wars of the Roses for my A2 coursework and it was brilliant. Nazi Germany would be really refreshing to study alongside such a medieval course. I'd say go for it and enjoy! :smile:
It depends on the examination board as well and of course the topics you do. I didn't take GCSE History and for some reason thought that doing it at A-level would be a good idea haha... I do find it interesting but I wasn't used to writing essays, especially source-based ones, so it was a bit of a challenge at first but I got a B overall at AS. I'm gonna retake Unit 2 of my exam (I do Edexcel) coz the sources they gave us were an absolute piss take, and hopefully that will pull me up to an A coz I wasn't that far off. But yeah..... Sorry this probably isn't useful. History is ok, quite interesting and universities value it for its difficulty. If you like it enough to do 2 years of it then you'll be okay.
Reply 7
Very rewarding subject. Definitely take it up to increase your knowledge and learn how much it's had a major effect and shaped our contemporary society to what it is today. :-)


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my exam board is OCR and my choices were media studies or history and I guessed that since I want to go into teaching the humanities that history is more valued but I don't know if schools accept people doing joint honours :/ as I want to study education studies to get into secondary school teaching :smile:
no it's easy, one got an A
Reply 10
It will only be hard if you don't put in the work. For History there are so many dates, historical opinions, statistics and facts to remember along with having the analyse. If you don't put in the time and effort to learn and memorise this then you will suffer. Also learn how to structure your essays early on! I cannot stress how important essay structure is in History. When it comes to exams, having to ability to write a perfectly structured essay can make a difference in grades.

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