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How important is the fourth AS level?

To anyone on here who has done a levels and progressed onto university, how important would you say is the fourth as level that you can drop after the first year? I'm doing Biology, History and Economics which I'm all fine with and very much enjoy, but I'm also doing Psychology and it's an absolute nightmare. I thought it would be an easy fourth subject to drop after the first year (our college encourages all of us to take 4 AS levels) but I couldn't have been more wrong.

We don't have January exams anymore so all of our exams are in May/June. With economics and history we've been told we will finish all the content for the second exam by March/April and it will be non stop revision from then on. Biology will be finished by around the beginning of May. Psychology, however... we've not even finished the content for exam 1 yet. We've literally been told that we will only finish exam 2 content two days before the exam. There is just too much to learn. I can't even revise for my other three subjects either because my stupid teacher is insisting that we make revision posters for her to mark so I'm spending all my free time doing them. It's taking over everything. I was up until 3am doing them last night and I'm still nowhere near finished.

So my question is, is the fourth as level as important as my college tells me? If I were to drop psychology and just do the other three subjects, could I still go into most universities? I'm not aiming to go to Oxford or anywhere like that, just maybe somewhere like Kent, Liverpool, East Anglia. What about if I were to do three full a levels then take a year out to do an extra AS? I'm genuinely concerned that I'm going to fail my other three subjects because I'm spending so much time on psychology which I don't actually even like, 90% of it is complete nonsense. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
To be quite honest with you, I don't think it makes a huge impact so long as you ace the three that you choose to keep. I went through exactly the same experience with AS Chemistry last year, struggled hugely with the content and homework/revision took up tons of time and meant that my grades were slipping elsewhere.

I dropped Chemistry, and I've got university offers from Russell Group universities for next year. Good grades and a decent personal statement and I'm sure you'll be fine! You could always pick up an AS subject alongside your A2 subjects if you really want to (I tried this), but if a university only specifies that you need three A Levels then there's no point in adding to your workload unnecessarily.
Original post by RichardPG
To anyone on here who has done a levels and progressed onto university, how important would you say is the fourth as level that you can drop after the first year? I'm doing Biology, History and Economics which I'm all fine with and very much enjoy, but I'm also doing Psychology and it's an absolute nightmare. I thought it would be an easy fourth subject to drop after the first year (our college encourages all of us to take 4 AS levels) but I couldn't have been more wrong.

We don't have January exams anymore so all of our exams are in May/June. With economics and history we've been told we will finish all the content for the second exam by March/April and it will be non stop revision from then on. Biology will be finished by around the beginning of May. Psychology, however... we've not even finished the content for exam 1 yet. We've literally been told that we will only finish exam 2 content two days before the exam. There is just too much to learn. I can't even revise for my other three subjects either because my stupid teacher is insisting that we make revision posters for her to mark so I'm spending all my free time doing them. It's taking over everything. I was up until 3am doing them last night and I'm still nowhere near finished.

So my question is, is the fourth as level as important as my college tells me? If I were to drop psychology and just do the other three subjects, could I still go into most universities? I'm not aiming to go to Oxford or anywhere like that, just maybe somewhere like Kent, Liverpool, East Anglia. What about if I were to do three full a levels then take a year out to do an extra AS? I'm genuinely concerned that I'm going to fail my other three subjects because I'm spending so much time on psychology which I don't actually even like, 90% of it is complete nonsense. Any help would be greatly appreciated!


A 4th AS is always kind of useful. Some unis make offers based on 3 A2's and an AS. Also in terms of ucas points, the 4th AS helps out in that you get more ucas points which is useful if you need a certain amount of ucas points to get into uni. A 4th AS is always useful as well, because if you fail (or do really badly) in 1 AS, then at least you have your other 3 which you can carry on to do for A2 (and you can drop the 4th). Whereas if you had only done 3 in the first place, and you failed or did badly in one, you would be a bit stuck as you would either have to continue doing a failing subject at A2, or drop it at the end of AS and only do 2 A2's. As few people at my old 6th form made this mistake. Thats why my old 6th form always recommended 4 AS's
You could either continue doing it. Which you could do as you have got this far so it would be a shame to give up now, even if you did get a bad grade in it. And theres also the possibility of taking up an AS next year, along with your A2's.

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