Anyone taking Bio/chem alevels? (4 questions)

Hi I’m on Year 13 and do biology, chemistry and geography. I do the exam board OCR A.

1) I find them both VERY interesting! Biology covers such a wide range of topics that you have to love it! It ranges from biodiversity to the structure of proteins and biochemistry. Chemistry is also very interesting and it goes into a lot more detail than GCSE ever did and there’s A LOT more maths, but the maths isn’t too hard in it.

2) I’d pick the same subjects

3) Best thing for biology is how interesting it is, because you can literally see how it is applied to everyday life which I find so cool.
Worst thing is that there’s an awful lot of content and the textbooks have different depths so I never know how much to learn. They also expect you to know some really random things.
Chemistry is amazing because you learn it in a lot more depth. Bad thing about chemistry is that you do have to do a lot of maths, but that might not be bad for you. (And the maths isn’t too bad anyway)

4) I’d say they’ve definitely opened doors, as for a science degree they normally ask for at least two science A levels. I’m applying for chemistry and a few unis want you to have maths so that might be something to consider, but I’ve still found a lot of unis who don’t need maths.

yr 12
bio chem maths
linear
they're cool but you need to stay on top of them or your grades fall
acc depends on what exactly u want to do
soz about the srsly blunt slang im just on the verge of sleeping - i cant sleep at night lol (insomnia) so i guess im going to be out like a light in the afternoon 'night' OMG THAT WAS BEYOND LAME BUT SEE WHAT I DID THERE

I thought about doing maths with chemistry but I wanted to do something different as some uni courses still accept with just bio/chem luckily

Hi, year 11 here thinking about taking Biology, Chemistry and one other for A-level. I've read through your replies and was wondering how challenging you are finding it. A worry of mine that I will find it near impossible and be way out of my depth. Also, you mentioned the use of maths in chemistry. This is another concern of mine as Maths is my weakest subject, I really want to get a 6 but I'm not sure if I'll be able to achieve this. What did you guys get in your maths? One more thing, what fields are you looking to go into in the future? I am interested in the sciences and can't really see myself doing anything else, however I'm not really sure what occupation I would like to be in in the future. Thanks for reading!

Hi, I got an A* in maths GCSE and also took further maths GCSE and got an A, so my maths skills are quite good - although, I don’t take maths A-Level. I find the maths pretty alright in chemistry, it’s pretty much just a lot of equations you have to learn and tbh it’s more the understanding of chemistry that’s important in those equations. However I do know some of my friends struggle with the maths in chemistry. At the end of the day, if you love science (which it sounds like you do!) you’ll work on the maths, but unfortunately I’d say in chemistry about half of the questions are maths. Even though I did well in GCSE, I was always really down about my maths skills and I’ve found it fine.

yr 12
bio chem maths
linear
they're cool but you need to stay on top of them or your grades fall
acc depends on what exactly u want to do
soz about the srsly blunt slang im just on the verge of sleeping - i cant sleep at night lol (insomnia) so i guess im going to be out like a light in the afternoon 'night' OMG THAT WAS BEYOND LAME BUT SEE WHAT I DID THERE

Hi, year 11 here thinking about taking Biology, Chemistry and one other for A-level. I've read through your replies and was wondering how challenging you are finding it. A worry of mine that I will find it near impossible and be way out of my depth. Also, you mentioned the use of maths in chemistry. This is another concern of mine as Maths is my weakest subject, I really want to get a 6 but I'm not sure if I'll be able to achieve this. What did you guys get in your maths? One more thing, what fields are you looking to go into in the future? I am interested in the sciences and can't really see myself doing anything else, however I'm not really sure what occupation I would like to be in in the future. Thanks for reading!

Maths A level is quite difficult, I got an A* at GCSE and an A in fsmq but I struggled a lot with statistics in maths and ended up with a C in S1, giving me a B grade overall in AS which made me panic a bit because I'm applying for medicine, so I dropped maths :/ biology is probably my favourite subject, there are a few complex processes but if you can memorise well and have good exam technique you should be alright. Maths in chemistry is difficult yes, but it's more learning how to approach calculations and what to do with the data that is the hard part. Solving calculations once you set them up are fine
Basically all science degrees that don't need all 3 bio chemistry and maths/physics, you don't have to do maths a level if you don't want to, and sure you don't have to do chemistry either but i've found its advantageous to have chemistry for the majority of science degrees

You're acc lucky you didn't. It really hard to balance them all because they're all like threads - really hard to separate and if you mess up one little thing you end up with a huge 'mass of mess' THIS WORDPLAY I SWEAR

Yeah I’ve got offers for both biochemistry and chemistry and I don’t need maths. However for biochemistry, Oxford does need maths, just in case you were looking there.

If you have any more questions about revision techniques etc I can give you some advice, I got As in them in my AS so hopefully I can help

Thanks for answering the questions I find them challenging at times but they both are enjoyable and suck at the same time, sorry to hear that ur not enjoying maths , i guess just see how it goes