!!! A level choices - Chem or Computer science

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Fits in very logically with Maths and FM content - some of the topics I covered in CS like the dot product etc were covered in much more depth in maths which made them extremely simple in CS.

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Not the biggest step up from GCSE - whilst it covers more complex content and has a wider syllabus, all of it is relevant to the concepts you learned before and doesn't usually come out of left field. The people who found A Level CS more difficult in my class were those who hadn't done the GCSE and hence weren't as aware of some topics when they came up in the A Level.

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Incredibly satisfying - when CS concepts click, they CLICK. It was a lot of fun learning about stuff like boolean algebra, and going through a problem and watching as it slowly unfolds logically. Kind of like a maths problem when it slowly clicks together to get the correct answer.

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The project is long and quite a bit of work to get a top grade. It tends to rely on report writing skill rather than the actual code you write though, and has prepared me well for university report writing.

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The project is also the only practical bit, and some of the theory in CS can feel a bit maths heavy and, well, boring. You quickly learn what you enjoy and what you don't, and if you love to code, you won't exactly be doing too much of it, apart from the occasional programming project-focused lesson.

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Sometimes, CS teachers can suck. I was fortunate enough to have some great teachers that made my passion for the subject grow - but a lot of my friends HATED computing. These people were either starting from scratch or just generally didn't like the subject but were somehow made to pick it. If you enjoy it, it'll be great - but if you don't, or have not-so-good teachers, it will be PAIN.

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Has plenty of practicals that are really fun to do, and actually consolidate the topics you've learned unlike GCSE. Writing reports for each practical was especially fun and made a lot of sense each time.

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Very well documented - websites like chemrevise are your saviour, and whilst CS has Isaac Computer Science and stuff like that, chemrevise is a holy grail that will explain entire topics to you on concise sheets that make them click instantly. Chem is a much higher profile A Level in terms of how many students take it, and you'll be able to get a lot more help from websites and resources that are tailored to A Level content and its difficulty, compared to CS concepts which may put you at a higher level or might be less reliable as sources go.

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Chemistry throws you in the deep end and, for me, was the subject that really reflected how hard uni was going to be and has made me less of a fish out of water here. I now do a course that's very focused on learning independently and I have Chem to thank for teaching me how I learn best, where to look for help and how to optimise my revision.

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Didn't link to any of my subjects content wise - the work that I did for Chemistry was completely separate to every other A Level I had. If CS and Maths were sometimes useful for each other, Chemistry didn't help make my other subjects easier and vice versa.

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I found the content to be a massive step-up from GCSE. GCSE was very logical and easy to think through, but A Level not only had so much more content, but also didn't typically feed into other modules. Organic, physical and nonphysical were pretty separate and the concepts in each were different and difficult each way, but at GCSE, a concept you learned in an earlier module would usually help make sense of a later module etc.

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Chem involved a lot of memorisation compared to my other subjects. You need to memorise how to draw mechanisms for the exam, plenty of formulas and equations, methods, and reactions. This can get very complicated for organic chemistry especially - in my class you either loved organic and hated physical, or hated organic and loved physical. For someone with a good memory it's a lot of fun though, and when it clicks, it's very satisfying!