any a level regrets/advice?

Take 3. I swear to you, it puts you at no kind of advantage if you take. Take 3 and ace them.

My biggest piece of advice, is make some form of written revision after each unit. So, after a chapter of history, or after a unit in psychology. Do not leave it till later, it piles up stupidly fast. Good luck.

ill definitely take the advice but i’d just like to note that my school expects everyone to take 4 a levels (minimum of 3 in y13) so should i pick four then drop one in y13 or should i stick with three all the way through?

could you see yourself doing something else other than biology? when I was picking my choices, I thought about whether I could see myself doing any of the other options- I couldn't see myself not studying what I'm doing right now- definitely think of it that way! also, will A-level biology benefit you in what you want to study at university? if you want to do something science based then bio and chem are definitely necessary but if you're looking into studying the Arts and Humanities then is it really worth you doing bio at A-level? think of both short term and long term. If you somewhat like biology and find that in your GCSE lessons, you yearn to find out more about a certain topic (for me it was the renal system...I wanted to know more bout it structurally and functionally) then i would definitely take Biology because for me, it's literally the most interesting and relevant thing you could do. hope this helped

i’m guessing that learning the case studies was the toughest part? (( but i might just take it as an AS

yea! there's a ton of case studies! in fact, i'm just looking at my bedroom wall right now, i have over 20 case studies alone from the topic of memory. i had my internal mock exam for psychology last year, and we had to know around 7 topics for it and we had them all chucked into one massive paper which was pretty brutal buuuut good news! it wasn't too bad having revised a whole bunch! so if you're interested in psychology, it's defo worth looking into it, especially as an AS. however, personally, i still keep wishing i'd kept my interest in psychology solely to documentaries or other psychological books, hahaha

BIGGEST sigh of relief there, i’m fine with maths i just didn’t want it to be an overload of more sciencey mathsy stuff on top of my other options lmao

Also- i have absolutely no clue what i wanna do in the future it genuinely fazes me how people make big decisions/know what they wanna do like it would be so much easier if i could make up my mind but i’m absolutely clueless about the future

honestly got no clue whatsoever which doesn’t help my cause at all, and i KNOW this sounds really nihilistic but i genuinely don’t know what i enjoy anymore. if it’s a case of what i’m good at, my options aren’t really narrowed down so no specific careers have stood out to me so far

I think if you wait until results day for your GCSEs and see what you did best in and pick those subjects for A Levels, that would be good. Also, you should pick subjects that are applicable towards a lot of things which are called facilitating subjects. It's basically just maths English science all those main subjects, if you pick any of those then you have a broad choice of future paths.

so i’m considering taking physics, maths, psychology, english lit, biology, chemistry, (not all of them obviously)

anyone have any regrets about taking them or any advice regarding workload/spec content/difficulty of exams etc.

cheers for the advice, my school’s application deadline is december 15th i think, and they went on about “not being able to change your courses” once you picked them, but i haven’t asked around if that’s actually true, i suspect not

It won't be true because you usually need to get a certain grade to do an A Level so not everyone is going to be able to do what they want after their results come in so yeah you'll be able to change them

Heya!

Firstly, I'll just mention that it's all down to personal taste, so I could be completely useless, but I'll try to give you my opinion!

I did two of the subjects you listed, Maths and Psychology (I also do Creative Writing and Graphics).

I hate maths. My issue with it isn't that I find it difficult - I'm actually okay with it, and I can do it. I just find it boring. I've come to the conclusion that things I enjoy usually have some sort of meaning behind them - to me, maths seems pretty pointless. There's nothing to it apart from formula and method (don't get me wrong, it's challenging, but there's just no context or anything behind it). And there's a ton of graphs (and don't even get me STARTED on logs, blergh).
EDIT: just reading over what people have said, what I will say is that doing maths means I get lower offers at uni, and it does look good.

Psychology, on the other hand, I'm in love with. Probably along the same lines of the "having meaning behind what I learn" thing. There isn't anything we've done that I haven't found insanely interesting, and I always wanna know more. I'm actually applying to do psychology at Uni at the moment. I didn't do it before A level but choosing to study it was one of the best choices I've ever made (not like that's difficult, I make awful choices).

Another thing I'll definitely mention is that although they always say "don't choose your subject based off your teachers", I think teachers are a pretty important thing to consider. If you have a way to find out who teaches each subject, I'd definitely do that. I nearly dropped Graphics since the work load was insane, but my teacher really helped me and pulled me through. Boring teachers are the worst (maybe that's why I hate maths so much, too).

Rambling over! Hehe.

(side note: i’m so annoyed i wrote a three para response then the app refreshed RIP)

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! this has probably been the most useful advice i’ve gotten.

in terms of subjects i know i wanna take (physics maths), im pretty sure i still like them ? we’re on a rotation for the sciences so i haven’t had physics since the end of y10. both the teachers i had for maths & phys have left and they were so irritating and inefficient (among many other things) but i still really enjoyed the subject so i think ill cope ))

as for psych, i’ve never taken it before so i cant really tell but the open evening presentation for psychology was the most interesting, to me. my attention span is super short so i’m kinda scared of getting bored of the case studies altogether, half way through the course :///
(also sorry for rambling on this must be such a pain to read but thank you for taking some time out for this) i’m still confused about the uni offers thing & how that works

Taking Physics at A level , I hated it , glad to say I did end up at a RG uni but could have went to a much better uni had I not done Physics!

Oh noooo I've been there, it's so frustrating! Rip in pieces.

Hehe, you're welcome glad it was useful.

If you like them, go for it. That's definitely something I should've said - you're doing these subjects so much more often than you were at GCSE, so make sure it's something you're gonna want to do. Usually, at college (with the exception of my maths teacher) they're a lot more enthusiastic about their subject and so shouldn't be as rubbish as your past ones have been.

I'm one of those people who starts a hobby and then keeps it going for maybe a week and then gives up and moves on to something else xD I am terrible at committing to things but Psychology is something I've always wanted to throw myself into.

Also, even though your teachers have been like "oh no you definitely can't change subjects once you've made a choice" they said the same thing to us and yet I'm pretty sure over half of my year group changed. Don't worry too much.

No worries for the "long" message - I can ramble for hours, trust me, I'm totally chilled with long answers. Besides, it's usually me apologising, it makes a nice change! (although I am sorry for this one too hahaha)

As for Uni, well, your college will give you a lot more info about the application process and this message is long enough - if you do wanna know more, feel free to PM me or check out some of the forums on here

Ok, if you have no idea what you want to do then that's fine, I'm in year 12 and most people I know don't know what they're doing either.
TIP!!
-DEFINETLY pick subjects that open up many doors
Basically all of the subjects you've listed ar quite good maybe expect for Literature (hence why I dropped it after 2 weeks)
- Pick power couples! Eg if you do Maths then I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you do physics; I can't stress that enough
Why?
My boyfriend does physics but not Maths which he really regrets so he has to do a foundation year at uni to do maths.
eg. bio and chem ( fun fact: at the moment in Biology we're basically doing chemistry! Because I do Chemistry I'm finding that I understand it better than someone who doesn't do chemistry)
eg. bio and psychology
- Do at least 2 science's maybe
It may not be that important but a lot of degrees that I've looked at require at least 2 science's

Taking Physics at A level , I hated it , glad to say I did end up at a RG uni but could have went to a much better uni had I not done Physics!