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Psychology or Sociology?

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Original post by Purple-Pixie
I'm currently doing both Psychology and Sociology at A2 level. I enjoy both of them but personally I prefer Psychology as I find it more interesting. I've applied to study it at uni :smile: Psychology also seems to fit in better with your other subjects, although I do know someone who did Maths, Chemistry and Sociology at A2.

In Psychology, there are more short answer questions than in Sociology, so that may be an advantage. I do AQA for both subjects and at AS Level, the Psychology long essay questions were worth 12 marks, whereas with Sociology they were worth 20 marks. I hope this helped, let me know if you have any more questions :smile:

20 Marks? That seems like it would really stress me out in the exams, I think Psychology would be better too but my friends say that sociology is better and they're going to pick sociology. Thanks for your help, do you think Psychology would help more with law than Sociology would? Because law is my plan B at the moment.
Original post by Baniazz
like not almost all.there are important theories and stuff.Its your choice are you good at cramming and theory stuff +your expected to write long answers in which they check your creativity.Psychology is a really good subject but its upto you to chose whats right!.:smile:


Considering what everyone's been saying, I think I'll find Psychology more interesting tbh:h:
Original post by Zainab03
I studied both Sociology and Psychology at A Level, both were equally as hard but I found Psychology to be a bit harder (personally not a science person). And both are interesting, Sociology has A LOT more content though! :smile:


Thanks for the help!:smile:
Original post by kesha19
20 Marks? That seems like it would really stress me out in the exams, I think Psychology would be better too but my friends say that sociology is better and they're going to pick sociology. Thanks for your help, do you think Psychology would help more with law than Sociology would? Because law is my plan B at the moment.


20 marks seems daunting now but don't worry, you would get used to it soon enough when you actually start the course :smile: The good thing about Sociology (with AQA at least) is that the timings for the exams are quite generous because at AS we had 90 minutes to do a paper that was worth 60 marks, which is pretty good for an A Level essay subject.

Of course it's tempting to choose based on the subject your friends are doing but try not to, because obviously in the end it all comes down to which subject you think is more interesting. Sorry I don't know a huge amount about law but you can't really go wrong with either of them because for both subjects you would need to learn case studies, an ability you would need to use in law. However, there are more studies to learn in Psychology so maybe it would be more helpful.
Sociology :colone: Not biased at all It's a great discipline that does change how you see the world. I started University with the intention of focusing on politics, but ended up going into sociology because of how interesting I found it.

Psychology complements other science A levels better. On the other hand, sometimes having more of an essay based topic can be a nice break from all the science. My own A levels were Biology, Chemistry and English Literature. This combination actually stood me in really good stead when I applied to social science courses later on, as I had experience both in argumentation and critical thinking but also in problem-solving and issues of methodology and experimentation. If you want to keep your University options open, that could be a way to do it. People are wrong to assume Universities would look down on A level Sociology. But it does depend on what degree you apply for. You should use the entrance requirements as a guide, rather than opinions of your friends or teachers if there are already particular degrees or Universities you have in mind.

Similarly other people can't really predict how hard or difficult you'll find something. Some people find writing and essays difficult. Others find science and problem solving hard. Each of these would be different in which of the two they found hardest. You know yourself best :smile:
Psychology is harder than sociology, sociology is more interesting than psychology. Psychology would be more beneficial if you're doing science a levels and sociology would probably be more useful to a humanities student. Having an essay based subject thrown in (which sociology is) with sciences could prove stressful. It's up to you though! Choose what you think you'll enjoy the most.
Original post by Charley.T
I took both for AS and plan on dropping Sociology for A level.
Psychology has more scientific content (naturally) and as someone also planning to take a science to uni, I find it is more helpful both in applying and in the content of the course.
Sociology I find a very relaxing lesson to be honest. It's, in my opinion, easier but there is a lot of content and not much of each unit actually comes up in the exam (AQA) so you learn all of it when some bits may not be asked about.
As you can probably guess I prefer Psychology, but opinions aside it is likely to be looked onto better than Sociology by unis and has more useful skills (stats and reasearch methods) than Sociology and both have essays.
Either would be a good mix with the sciences though, so take which one you think you'll enjoy more.


I also agrre with everything said here, i did psychology and found it very interesting and more relevant to science than socioogy is. Also as said above i thought that sociology was a lot of information that needed to be memorised so gets very boring where as psychology doesn't have such a huge amount of information - so it doesn't seem so boring! so unless u no that u r already intereste in sociology then i would go fo r psychology as everyone on my psychilogy course who hadn't done either subject before all agreeed that psychology ws more interesting :smile:
Person who got A in both psychology and sociology at AS here. I recommend you do psychology.

Personally, I found both to be enjoyable. However, sociology is less 'clear-cut' than psychology; I was a bit confused about what to write in sociology essays, but in psychology, it was all nice, easy, and logical. I can tell you exactly how I got A in psychology, but I have no idea how I even passed sociology, and since you are a science person, I believe you may find psychology easier because all you need to pass it is logic and a good memory. (Or you can just make up your own studies and hope you get away with it, some people I know did that and they were fine.)

Do not worry about the 20-marker and approaches (or theories, if you want to call them that, though they are always referred to as approaches). The approaches are logical and/or easy to understand, so you will have no problem with them. The 20-marker is extremely easy: the introduction is just you making your point by using two studies which show two opposing sides of the argument and giving your judgement, the body contains 4 PEEL paragraphs out of which 1 should be an ethical/social/economic issue, and the conclusion is just you repeating how your examples support your opinion. At AS, psychology has less marks in analysis than sociology, meaning that instead of trying to think up an analysis for sociology, you can just memorise your examples and write an okay, not too detailed analysis for psychology (yes, that is enough for you to get full marks). You barely need to practise psychology essays, really, while in sociology, there may always be something you are forgetting, not to mention the essay structure for sociology is harder.

Psychology is overall easy as there is only a single 20-marker in the exams (this goes at least for WJEC Eduqas psychology). All the other questions only have up to... 10 or 12 marks, if I remember correctly. Most questions have under 10 marks. In the second paper (research methods), the question with the most marks is a 10-marker while everything else does not have an essay form and gives few marks (for example, you would be asked to define a term or write two advantages of a certain sampling method, which cannot be worth more than 4-6 marks at most). Everything is extremely simple.

On the other hand, (at least OCR) sociology has 20-markers in every paper. (Its 20-markers are longer, too; I was instructed to write 6 PEEL paragraphs in the first exam, to exemplify, and my second paper's 20-marker had 7 PEEL paragraphs. This was a bit of an overkill thanks to my teacher, but 5 PEEL paragraphs seems to be the standard, which is more than in psychology anyway.) While they are not astonishingly difficult, if 20-mark essays stress you out in exams, you will be more stressed if you take sociology.

Expanding on what someone else said, it is true that sociology has a lot more content. You will be busy with your hard science subjects, so it would be less of a strain to take psychology. I also found that in contrast to what another person said, I had more studies to memorise in sociology than in psychology. Psychology may seem like the one in which you have more studies to memorise since you are given 8 studies and 3 ethical/social/economic issue per debate in the book (again, at least for WJEC Eduqas it is like this). Even so, in the exam, you only need 5 studies and 1 ethical/social/economic issue per debate! This means you can just memorise 6 out of the 11 examples you are given in the book, which is everything you need to write a good essay. Needing just 6 out of the 11 examples represents about half of the examples the book gives you. Also, the ethical issues are no-brainers; once you learn the handful of major ethical issues, you can use them easily even if you do not know a study (you can even make up a study and get away with it, in fact). This is far from the case in sociology. Basically, psychology looks like it has a lot of studies for you to memorise on the surface, but you only need about half of the studies written in the book, so there is no need for you to bother with the rest, thus resulting in sociology actually being the one with more studies to remember.

In addition, Russell Group universities prefer psychology over sociology. I know at least at Bristol, I once saw some kind of statistics which showed how for politics and international relations, people who studied government and politics, English literature, and psychology were more likely to get an offer than those who had the same subjects, but with sociology instead of psychology.

As for which one is better suited for law, the answer is most likely neither. However, psychology is much more popular choice for law than sociology (I looked it up and in 2012, 28.6% of law applicants did psychology while 18.7% did sociology).

Overall, everyone I know who did psychology and sociology loved psychology waaay more than sociology.

OP, I also did not swap sociology for history because of friends. I now wish I had taken history instead. Do not let your friends be a factor in what A-level choices you make, for it can turn out to be a huge mistake.

Good luck! :smile:
(edited 7 years ago)
neither
Original post by Michiyo
Person who got A in both psychology and sociology at AS here. I recommend you do psychology.

Personally, I found both to be enjoyable. However, sociology is less 'clear-cut' than psychology; I was a bit confused about what to write in sociology essays, but in psychology, it was all nice, easy, and logical. I can tell you exactly how I got A in psychology, but I have no idea how I even passed sociology, and since you are a science person, I believe you may find psychology easier because all you need to pass it is logic and a good memory. (Or you can just make up your own studies and hope you get away with it, some people I know did that and they were fine.)

Do not worry about the 20-marker and approaches (or theories, if you want to call them that, though they are always referred to as approaches). The approaches are logical and/or easy to understand, so you will have no problem with them. The 20-marker is extremely easy: the introduction is just you making your point by using two studies which show two opposing sides of the argument and giving your judgement, the body contains 4 PEEL paragraphs out of which 1 should be an ethical/social/economic issue, and the conclusion is just you repeating how your examples support your opinion. At AS, psychology has less marks in analysis than sociology, meaning that instead of trying to think up an analysis for sociology, you can just memorise your examples and write an okay, not too detailed analysis for psychology (yes, that is enough for you to get full marks). You barely need to practise psychology essays, really, while in sociology, there may always be something you are forgetting, not to mention the essay structure for sociology is harder.

Psychology is overall easy as there is only a single 20-marker in the exams (this goes at least for WJEC Eduqas psychology). All the other questions only have up to... 10 or 12 marks, if I remember correctly. Most questions have under 10 marks. In the second paper (research methods), the question with the most marks is a 10-marker while everything else does not have an essay form and gives few marks (for example, you would be asked to define a term or write two advantages of a certain sampling method, which cannot be worth more than 4-6 marks at most). Everything is extremely simple.

On the other hand, (at least OCR) sociology has 20-markers in every paper. (Its 20-markers are longer, too; I was instructed to write 6 PEEL paragraphs in the first exam, to exemplify, and my second paper's 20-marker had 7 PEEL paragraphs. This was a bit of an overkill thanks to my teacher, but 5 PEEL paragraphs seems to be the standard, which is more than in psychology anyway.) While they are not astonishingly difficult, if 20-mark essays stress you out in exams, you will be more stressed if you take sociology.

Expanding on what someone else said, it is true that sociology has a lot more content. You will be busy with your hard science subjects, so it would be less of a strain to take psychology. I also found that in contrast to what another person said, I had more studies to memorise in sociology than in psychology. Psychology may seem like the one in which you have more studies to memorise since you are given 8 studies and 3 ethical/social/economic issue per debate in the book (again, at least for WJEC Eduqas it is like this). Even so, in the exam, you only need 5 studies and 1 ethical/social/economic issue per debate! This means you can just memorise 6 out of the 11 examples you are given in the book, which is everything you need to write a good essay. Needing just 6 out of the 11 examples represents about half of the examples the book gives you. Also, the ethical issues are no-brainers; once you learn the handful of major ethical issues, you can use them easily even if you do not know a study (you can even make up a study and get away with it, in fact). This is far from the case in sociology. Basically, psychology looks like it has a lot of studies for you to memorise on the surface, but you only need about half of the studies written in the book, so there is no need for you to bother with the rest, thus resulting in sociology actually being the one with more studies to remember.

In addition, Russell Group universities prefer psychology over sociology. I know at least at Bristol, I once saw some kind of statistics which showed how for politics and international relations, people who studied government and politics, English literature, and psychology were more likely to get an offer than those who had the same subjects, but with sociology instead of psychology.

As for which one is better suited for law, the answer is most likely neither. However, psychology is much more popular choice for law than sociology (I looked it up and in 2012, 28.6% of law applicants did psychology while 18.7% did sociology).

Overall, everyone I know who did psychology and sociology loved psychology waaay more than sociology.

OP, I also did not swap sociology for history because of friends. I now wish I had taken history instead. Do not let your friends be a factor in what A-level choices you make, for it can turn out to be a huge mistake.

Good luck! :smile:


OMG thank you soooo much, that literally helped me to decide which subject I want to choose. I'm definitely picking psychology now, thanks for all the advice, it really helped!:h:
Psychology definitely
i did sociology a level before i dropped out due to illness (restarting next year) and really loved it. psychology is more relevant for science seeing as the brain is just one big bag of science (chemistry and physics are super relevant). this could potentially lead to stuff like neuroscience! but if you like the look of sociology it is an amazing n interesting subject.
In general psych is supposed to be harder for many as it covers complex theories, however it depends on the student. In terms of being relevant i'd go with psych as it's really relevant to biology, giving a new interesting perspective on it. Not sure if it's that relevant to physics or chem, but then neither is sociology, at least not directly. Honestly if you want it to balance out the hard science of your other subs then you want something fun, so choose the one you find the most interesting. If you don't know which that would be, deffo have a good look through the specifications etc. If I were to totally stereotype and make an educated guess, though, I'd say you may prefer psychology as it's closer to a hard science than sociology which is more like a humanity, if you're already interested in hard sciences.
And if you want someone's personal preference, I find psychology generally more interesting as I'm always curious as to how the mind works- it's a very personal subject, whereas sociology has a wider perspective, looking at whole groups of people.
Remember that both subjects can be studied at uni even if you don't hold an A level in them.
Original post by kesha19
Which one should I pick for A levels?


sociology is what i do, and i am not loving it, people say it is easy, it is a lot of content.. they both are, id personally choose pyschology
Original post by SabbyCat
In general psych is supposed to be harder for many as it covers complex theories, however it depends on the student. In terms of being relevant i'd go with psych as it's really relevant to biology, giving a new interesting perspective on it. Not sure if it's that relevant to physics or chem, but then neither is sociology, at least not directly. Honestly if you want it to balance out the hard science of your other subs then you want something fun, so choose the one you find the most interesting. If you don't know which that would be, deffo have a good look through the specifications etc. If I were to totally stereotype and make an educated guess, though, I'd say you may prefer psychology as it's closer to a hard science than sociology which is more like a humanity, if you're already interested in hard sciences.
And if you want someone's personal preference, I find psychology generally more interesting as I'm always curious as to how the mind works- it's a very personal subject, whereas sociology has a wider perspective, looking at whole groups of people.

thanks for the answer x
yes it is intresting! And I think you`ll nail it!.Good luck.:smile:
Original post by kesha19
OMG thank you soooo much, that literally helped me to decide which subject I want to choose. I'm definitely picking psychology now, thanks for all the advice, it really helped!:h:


You are welcome! :smile: I am glad it did :blush: If you have any question about AS psychology, feel free to ask me.^^
Original post by username2953612
Which one should I pick for A levels?


Sociology

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