Dropping A Subject At Year 11

I'm afraid it's not a good reason at all, at the end of the day it is another GCSE to add to your CV ☺️

Personally I think it is, you would need to have a proper discussion with your school though, as they may believe you won’t actually use the additional time to revise.

Doesn’t matter. GCSE’s are there to show you’re well rounded. By that logic you could just do 3/4 GCSE’s in your A-level subjects. Stick with music. The more GCSE’s you have the better it looks. If you get good marks on more GCSE’s it also looks good. There’s a reason my school requires pupils to choose 4 humanities / arts including a language.

I don’t regret for a moment not just doing 11, but Further Maths and Electronics as 12th and 13th GCSE’s. I had little revision time during term during coursework but guess what? I revised during holidays and I had enough time to do great in all of them.

You're doubting your ability before you've even had a chance to go through the specifications of all your subjects or do the mock exams. What kind of message does that send to the university or to yourself, that you're willing to give up so easily and not persevere to prove yourself wrong? Everyone struggles at GCSE's and at A-Levels, that's because they're there to challenge you. What aspect of music are you struggling in? What kind of grades have you been getting?

It's only been half a term. I think you're just panicking at how it's gone so far and assumed it will remain just as difficult throughout the year.

What are your grades in everything else looking like at the moment? Are you sure you couldn’t improve in music if you did intensive revision like most people do during Easter?

I did get 43% in my DT year 10 end of year, but by the yr11 I got the top mark in the mocks and came out with an A* overall including coursework. That’s mostly because I only bothered to revise all my subjects properly from Christmas onwards.

In my opinion, see how your mocks go (do you have them in December?) before making a decision. Your school doesn’t need to enter you for the exam until late January, so just let them know you’re unsure at the moment.

Don’t you have loads of free periods already? 12 of my GCSE’s fit onto a normal timetable and I also did the 13th after school.

I personally think you should persevere with music. A 4 isn’t a bad grade especially when you’re only halfway through your studies. You can still improve it to a 7 and above easily. Because GCSE’s are meant to indicate well roundedness I worry that removing it might not show this - only geography would be the remaining core subject.

Do your best in the next few weeks as though you don’t intent to drop it, and see how that goes. But if you genuinely believe you can boost your remaining 8 GCSE’s to good marks by dropping music then go for it. They’d better be really good though, universities like Oxbridge have candidates who enter with averages of 5 A* equivalent grades (an 8 or above in your case).

Doesn’t matter. GCSE’s are there to show you’re well rounded. By that logic you could just do 3/4 GCSE’s in your A-level subjects. Stick with music. The more GCSE’s you have the better it looks. If you get good marks on more GCSE’s it also looks good. There’s a reason my school requires pupils to choose 4 humanities / arts including a language.

I don’t regret for a moment not just doing 11, but Further Maths and Electronics as 12th and 13th GCSE’s. I had little revision time during term during coursework but guess what? I revised during holidays and I had enough time to do great in all of them.

Meh, can't really comment on that as i got A*'s in both German and French (yes, I took 2). It didn't disadvantage me, but I do understand that some people may despise languages.

But will it
matter if the courses I'm applying for in A-Level are not to do with Music at all?

For example, I'm thinking of doing
Biology, Chemistry and either Psychology or maths

How can I persuade my teacher to let me drop Music?
I want to use the time in music lessons to study for other subjects like science and maths. Music will be no use to me with the career I'm pursuing but is this a good enough reason? Please help! Thank you.