A level choices and things.......

It is normally 4 hours per subject per week at college, and they expect you to do an additional 4 hours per subject per week at home.

So basically if you were to take up your four AS subjects, that would be 16 hours timetabled lessons, plus Critical Thinking/General Studies added on to that, but I'm not sure how long this would take up as a friend of mine had to do it last year and only spent an hour a week in lessons for it.

Your workload would be manageable as long as you keep up with work set in class and do some revision notes as you go along so you aren't rushing them a week before your exams - you can get away with night-before revision at GCSE but you can't at A-level!

The step-up is manageable, providing you listen in lessons and put the work in

5 AS is OK. I didn't have any frees at school with 5 subjects. Tbh, I didn't actually think it was a lot of work, the real jump seemed to come from AS to A2 now. It actually seemed like less, because there were less subjects. I took Maths, bio, chem, English lit and physics.

From what I've seen, Geo seems to be very essay based which might add to the workload. If you're comfortable with the workload now, you should feel the same about AS. Does Critical thinking have a lot of homework?

I suppose because my 5th AS is only GS/CT, in my eyes i'm only taking 4 AS's I don't really care about GS/CT :P so hopefully I will have a few frees because GS/CT won't take up as many lessons as the other subjects per week.

I am ok with the workload now, the only problem is art really but then thats what you get when you take that...an endless amount of time consuming work to do.
Thanks for the reassurance as I've read lots about people struggling and what not between GCSE and AS (e.g. going from an A* to a E) (which is obviously not what I want to happen to me). I guess if I keep up with the workload then all should be ok...
And I don't think CT has much homework...and if it does...well I can't imagine I'll be spending too long on it

On a side note...how difficult is chemistry? Out of your 5 AS subjects which do you find the hardest/easiest or which has the most/least workload?

thankyou

It all depends on how good you are at the subject. Apart from geography (which does require hard work), you seem to be going for ones in which some people have that natural ability to cruise through. If you have this then you will not need to put in that much work. There was one boy at my school who did all his homework in other lessons and so rarely did work at school or at home. If you are more like me, then i did at least a couple of hourse every night on school work. Often with coursework you here the stories of people not getting to bed til the early hours and their true. I always set a deadline of half 12 though.

At AS, I thought Chemistry was pretty easy. At A2, now, I think it's the hardest. It all depends on opinions though - I intensely disliked mechanisms at AS, as you had to learn those by heart, but others liked them for some reason.
At AS I thought biology was harder, but not too bad.
Our English teacher was nice and didn't give us any homework, though coursework was a ****load of work. Geography will probably be similar from what I've heard - it depends on the teacher.

I hope you get to take everything you want

Ahh ok I guess the hardness of each one is subjective.
Sorry for all these questions but are the ISA's particularly hard and do you know the percentage of the as level they are worth?
Thankyou

What are you going on to do after you complete your a levels?

Hey
I'm in year 11, so about to make a level choices.
I'm pretty set on Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Geography and from there I would like to go into a biological field of some sort.

My question is basically with the subjects biology, chemistry, geography and maths, and critical thinking/general studies (compulsory and school chooses which one you do), what is the workload roughly like?

For example, how many hours per night/per week do you spend in frees/outside school on work and how big of a step up is it from GCSE's (for a basis I'm doing 13 and aiming for high grades)?


Any input about the a levels themselves or workload or anything really is appreciated, thank you

Natural Sciences (Physical). Applied at Durham, UCL, Cambridge, Bath, and Nottingham.

At the last university fair I was at they all said I could do pretty much whatever science/maths course I want (I'm self-studying FM though, you need it for the purer maths courses).

You should be able to do anthropology(physical and maybe the others) and the like because of your geography. Nothing too humanity based, but the science and the 'crossover' subjects. You can't really do anything with "engineering" in it without physics. FM ad physics are also good for any maths or compsci stuff.

For Edexcel each practical is 60 out of 600 marks, so 10% of total A-level. That's for biology , I'm pretty sure it's the same for the other sciences.

For AQA it's the same. (each practical/ISA is worth 10%, so 20% of the whole A-Level for both together)

EDIT: just PM or whatever if you have more questions. I need help procrastinating

I'm in Year 11 too, and i'm going to do all of the same subjects, except Physics instead of Chemistry I'm also quite curious about workload etc. Unfortunately the subjects don't come so naturally to me, but with some effort things will hopefully be okay! Good luck with all of your choices!

Cool...apart from the fact I don't particularly like physics haha

How are your GCSE's going? and do you know what you want to do after A levels yet?

Sounds good! I am interested in Natural sciences, but biological instead of physical It's just the lack of places that do it that concerned me..as I will not be able to afford living in london (esp. with rising fees ) and I think Durham's too far away and I live in Birmingham but want to move away etc etc you get the idea :P
Have you got any offers? (aside from cambridge which you won't know yet?) Good luck!

Hey
I'm in year 11, so about to make a level choices.
I'm pretty set on Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Geography and from there I would like to go into a biological field of some sort.

My question is basically with the subjects biology, chemistry, geography and maths, and critical thinking/general studies (compulsory and school chooses which one you do), what is the workload roughly like?

For example, how many hours per night/per week do you spend in frees/outside school on work and how big of a step up is it from GCSE's (for a basis I'm doing 13 and aiming for high grades)?


Any input about the a levels themselves or workload or anything really is appreciated, thank you