M2, FP2 and FP3 or M2, FP2 and M3

Yeah. We finished lessons in December and I didn't do any work until 3 days before the exam.

Who knows, it might be an area thing. My school does AQA, the college my brother goes to does AQA. Edexcel and AQA do seem to be the two most common exam boards though. OCR seems to be common for chemistry. Most do chemistry A though - I did chemistry B for AS. Hahaha, I'm down to just AQA: AQA maths, further maths and physics.

So I've just started my AS-levels (biology, chemistry, maths and further maths) and while I don't want to think about it too much since I want to get year 12 out the way first I was wandering what route I should take, here's why:
I want to be a palaeontologist, unfortunately I was unable to do biology, chemistry, physics (I love all natural sciences with a passion) and maths (another subject I love), so I took further maths. Now I do not regret this because its awesome and still beneficial. At my school, we have fixed modules except A2 further maths.

Here is the module structure:
AS Maths: C1, C2 and S1 which sounds pretty common IMO.
AS Further Maths: FP1, M1 and S2 which is AMAZING.
A2 Maths: C3, C4 and D1. Ew Decision maths.
A2 Further Maths: M2, FP2 and either FP3 or M3.

Now, I've heard FP3 is A LOT HARDER however it would be very beneficial as a lot of the maths in earth science is in the C and FP modules (*cough calculus, complex numbers, matrices, numerical solutions, trigonometry (and therefore probably regular geometry), hyperbolic functions, ordinary and partial differential equations (whatever they are) etc). Now, despite not taking physics I'm not that bad in mechanics (70% in my first test...no bragging intended, 75% in my first FP1 test) however I don't think it will be as relevant (I still love mechanics and am grateful I am able to study a 2nd module) as FP3.

Any opinions?

Haha 2 days for me

FP3 and M3 are the hardest units you can take (excluding M4 and M5 since only child prodigies of the student room take these two). M3 and FP3 are similar in difficulty level in my opinion however FP3 is more fun! If I were you I would ditch D1 and take both M3 and FP3.

I think the main hurdle with D1 is finding the motivation to study it

So I've just started my AS-levels (biology, chemistry, maths and further maths) and while I don't want to think about it too much since I want to get year 12 out the way first I was wandering what route I should take, here's why:
I want to be a palaeontologist, unfortunately I was unable to do biology, chemistry, physics (I love all natural sciences with a passion) and maths (another subject I love), so I took further maths. Now I do not regret this because its awesome and still beneficial. At my school, we have fixed modules except A2 further maths.

Here is the module structure:
AS Maths: C1, C2 and S1 which sounds pretty common IMO.
AS Further Maths: FP1, M1 and S2 which is AMAZING.
A2 Maths: C3, C4 and D1. Ew Decision maths.
A2 Further Maths: M2, FP2 and either FP3 or M3.

Now, I've heard FP3 is A LOT HARDER however it would be very beneficial as a lot of the maths in earth science is in the C and FP modules (*cough calculus, complex numbers, matrices, numerical solutions, trigonometry (and therefore probably regular geometry), hyperbolic functions, ordinary and partial differential equations (whatever they are) etc). Now, despite not taking physics I'm not that bad in mechanics (70% in my first test...no bragging intended, 75% in my first FP1 test) however I don't think it will be as relevant (I still love mechanics and am grateful I am able to study a 2nd module) as FP3.

Any opinions?

Yeah I hope I can convince my school to let me remove D1!

As a first year Earth Scientist, I'd say that (for Edexcel, anyway - I can't judge other boards) FP3 is more useful since our Maths course for the first few weeks is basically the FP3 syllabus. Having said that, I don't think it's a hugely important decision since even if you don't do FP3 you'll still be taught the maths since many people will not have done it and M3 is also a challenging, respectable unit (it's very relevant to Earth Sciences too and it's the first properly tough Mechanics unit), so neither is a bad choice.

You may as well do it. It's probably the easiest module and doesn't take much time, so you'd probably be getting a high UMS mark for little effort.

Oh snap that is true I don't want to risk losing a chance for an A/A*.

I'll...regretfully keep D1

In my experience, people do a lot worse than expected on D1 because a) it's very, very easy to make silly mistakes and b) it's boring. It's not the end of the world if you have to do it (I did it) but if you can swap it for M3, it'll be harder for sure, but it would be better in my opinion.

Yeah it does feel like the grade boundaries will be mere marks away from each other because of its simplicity.

To be fair the grade boundaries are very high for all Edexcel units, I don't think D1's unusually high.

What'd you get? I got 93.

You can learn most of it in a weekend.

I know because I skim-read the entire book in a weekend last September. I thought we were going through it really slowly and I decided that I might as well learn ahead and use the lessons in school as revision. When we went through it in class, I remembered a great deal of it.

If you do not like it or aren't too motivated, it does not take too long to learn.

True. But I really found decision maths dull. Hence why I chose to do M5 instead of D2

M5?

Which modules are you doing? Are you doing additional further maths, as well as maths and further maths?

82. What about your other modules?

No, just maths and further. I'm doing M3, M4, M5, FP2, FP3 and S2. I did A2 maths last year.