Opinions on A-Level Psychology?

If you're not going to do A-levels next year I think after this the specification for OCR psychology is changing, so just be aware that we'll be basing our experiences on the old specification. Good that you're taking your time to think about your choices though.

I did ocr psychology and got an A in every unit for AS and A2 (didnt get the A* overall sadly). A2 is much more interesting but so much more work (we had to learn 56 studies, their evaluation and another research method exam). Our class did forensic psychology as one of the modules and we even got to go to a conference where we met ex convicts (one of the men even went to prison for manslaughter ) .Congrats on the A at AS. If you have any questions about a2 psych, ask me

Psychology AS level is great if you are fairly competent at memorizing information for exams and essay writing (both of which you will most likely done at GSCE). Out of all the subjects i took (geography,biology,chemistry) i found psychology was the least jump up from GSCES, as you can get marks from memorizing strings of sentences - just like at GSCE. Mind you, there's alot of content (including heaps of case studies) that you need to learn and this takes consistent revision from the start in september to get it all to sink in.

I got an A (89% Overall) at AS, and this was purely due to starting revision notes in september, and completing huge amounts of past paper questions throughout the year.

Good luck for AS!

Looking at taking Psychology at A-Level and I would like to hear how people find it and if they did well etc.

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Psychology is a subject you can't take on a whim because its there. So many people in my class failed because they didn't enjoy the subject. I studied psychology on the OCR exam board; the content in year 12 was fine as long as you keep on top of the revision; I came out with an A and didn't even break a sweat during the exams. Year 13 is where psychology get's really hard; we had to learn around 50 smaller studies along with loads of other debates and the approaches. On top of that we had to make sure we knew all the studies from year 12 to use in our year 13 exam. Annoyingly I got a B in one exam and a D in the other in year 13 which made me come out with a B overall. I hope I'm not scaring you off the subject haha, it's really great to study so I would say go for it! You learn a lot of interesting stuff!

Did AQA A and got an A*, with full ums in 2 units...perfectly do-able to get a good grade, but i had to memorise about 30-40 essays for A2 so it can be time consuming. I'll be studying it at uni though now, and i love it

Wow! Must've taken some work, yeah I think the hard work will be worth it though!

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it did but i really enjoyed it so it didn't feel like work. If you need any help/have questions then just pm me

Yes, I've heard its a lot of work but from what I've read it seems so interesting. Thank you, when the time comes I will try that out for memorising information.

The website sounds great I will look that up when I need to.

I am also looking at doing-
Maths
English lit
And Philosophy

I was considering doing Biology but I don't feel I enjoy it enough at GCSE level to pursue it any further.

Good luck with A2!

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That's the best way for it to be! I will do, thank you!

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What year are you going into in September? I am going into year 11 and I am thinking of choosing: English Lit, Philosophy, Psychology and History.

Thank you, I think I'm definitely going to be taking it for A-Level, I'm curious as to how you went about memorising the large amounts of text?

Also I am looking at my options for University as I am eager to go but I'm not certain of which career path I want to pursue yet, I'm hoping I will figure it out by the time I come to apply. Anyway how do you find Psychology at University for future reference? Is it easier or harder than you expected it and how did it compare to A-Level?

Good luck with the rest of your time at uni!

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I'm looking at doing psychology at uni. How much maths is involved?
What type of psychology course did you do? anything else with it?

In terms of memorising text I went through my original essays deciding on what I would be able to learn as easily as possible to shorten them as they can be really long! Then I wrote bullet points of each paragraph with the important information, and highlighted them with different colours so that they stood out more!

I've really enjoyed my university course however I would say that you have to be passionate about your subject to study it at university. There's a lot more essays in Uni and more independent work which you'd have to get used to. Also, you develop more writing skills such as how to reference which can be difficult.

Daniel

Just done Psychology, got a B in it. It is the ****test subject you could ever possibly take. Do not take it, you have been warned.

Just to add some variety to the opinions, I'll be studying Maths at university this September and I'd still recommend Psychology. Got an A, but really would've liked an A*, but my time management wasn't great so I didn't do as well in the second paper.

Anyway, with enough preparation it is possible to do very well in this subject. Not only that but for the most part it is interesting, so when it comes down to revising it doesn't seem as laborious as it can do in other subjects. AS is pretty easy, but A2 is where the hard work really starts. On the AQA A specification, in PSYA3 there were ~21 essays (24 marks) that you had to learn content for, to which only 3 came up, so you have to prepare in advance. With that in mind, if you can sufficiently prepare for them and memorise the essays and have them marked so you have a rough idea of what grade you're on and where you can improve, you stand a good chance at getting a great grade.

So I'd recommend choosing it if you've got a decent memory, because the subject was thoroughly enjoyable at times.