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Which, from my list, should I take as options for GCSE?

These are the available options at my school:

- Geography
- History
- Business Studies
- Travel and Tourism
- Art and Design
- Textiles
- Woodwork and Construction
- Food Technology
- Computer Science
- Drama
- Dance
- Physical Education
- Triple Science
- Spanish

I am currently considering:
- Spanish
- History
- Triple Science

These subjects are compulsory at my school:
English Literature
English Language
Mathematics
Science
Religious Studies

I would be willing to take up to twelve subjects, as there are multiple that I should hardly find time-consuming in terms of revision.

What would you recommend?

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Okay, here is some advice. Do not do BOTH Geography & History. I did, and it was the bane of my existence. Both have so much content that it's near impossible to learn it all. Do one or the other. As for choosing your subjects, don't get people on here to do it for you. Choose what you enjoy and what you're best at. If you enjoy a subject, you're more likely to excel at it.
Triple Science, Geography, History.
You could do a language if you want and it would look strong on an application, however languages are challenging and require a lot of patience.
The Spanish, history and triple science at a decent grade will take you anywhere you want to go apart from taking a different MFL at A level really.
I really wouldn't recommend taking more subjects than the school suggests as they know the number of subjects which is sensible both work load wise and for A levels and to some extent uni.
Your subjects there show a wide variety of abilities from languages to humanities to STEM which is immensely useful as it gives you a wide choice for the A levels you can take rather than restricting you early. I took French, History, Triple Science plus a couple more creative subjects and they are definitely good in many ways.


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I'd personally do:
Spanish- A language always looks good when applying to universities and college.
History
Triple Science
Computer Science

These GCSE's will keep your future options pretty open.

But in saying that, only pick subjects that you are generally interested in or feel that you will excel in, because there's nothing worse then having to study a subject you hate and regret picking.
Reply 5
Original post by chloerebecca1
Okay, here is some advice. Do not do BOTH Geography & History. I did, and it was the bane of my existence. Both have so much content that it's near impossible to learn it all. Do one or the other. As for choosing your subjects, don't get people on here to do it for you. Choose what you enjoy and what you're best at. If you enjoy a subject, you're more likely to excel at it.


+9999999999 to this. I had to pull out of Geography with 2 weeks to go because I realised it was one or the other. I was on course to fail both.
Reply 6
For my GCSEs i picked History and Triple Science and i would definitly recommend History as long as you are willing to revise all topics. But personally i struggled with Triple Science since i couldnt wrap my head around many topics, yet i did pass all 3 of them with C's so it is possible to pass with good grades aslong you are interested and will revise. My friends did enjoy Triple Science since they were good at science therefore there now taking on a level sciences
Original post by gnewton12
These are the available options at my school:

- Geography
- History
- Business Studies
- Travel and Tourism
- Art and Design
- Textiles
- Woodwork and Construction
- Food Technology
- Computer Science
- Drama
- Dance
- Physical Education
- Triple Science
- Spanish

I am currently considering:
- Spanish
- History
- Triple Science

These subjects are compulsory at my school:
English Literature
English Language
Mathematics
Science
Religious Studies

I would be willing to take up to twelve subjects, as there are multiple that I should hardly find time-consuming in terms of revision.

What would you recommend?
don't stress over it too much gcse's are designed so that they will keep your options open whatever you do. the ones you are considering are all good. you can pick one creative/fun subject like art but I discourage doing more than that
I'm not going to pick your subjects for you obviously :smile: but I can recommend choosing a good balance of subjects that involve a lot of content and others that don't.

Eg. Don't pick geography and history.

I personally do, English Lang, English Lit, Maths, Additional Maths, Combined Science, German, Geography, Product Design, Computer Science and Media Studies.

I like how product design and media are less intensive on the content side of things, and more practical at the moment.
From what other people are saying, I think its wise to go for what you enjoy and what you're good at... :u:
Those options sound quite good.
The only guideline I'd advise you is to pick one subject you'd genuinely enjoy and two subjects you believe will be beneficial for you in terms of what career route you might wanna do. Do you know what you might do in A level because when you apply for college, they might need you to have done a particular subject in GCSE. So if you wanted to do all sciences in A levels, you would be expected to have done triple science as that covers most of A level (in year 11, not when you start GCSE). They might want a language for GCSE if you wanna do that in A level. So if you wanna do German in A level, you might be expected to have taken it in GCSE. History is also one the subjects they might ask for.
All in all, you've picked good subjects. The biggest thing is you enjoy them though because college's often only really care about the grade.
I chose Child Development, Computer Science and Sociology. I would trade Child Development for Art in a heartbeat, find Computer Science somewhat easy and I'm kind of happy with this choice and absolutely love Sociology.

Good luck with your decision making :smile:
(edited 6 years ago)
As long as you don't want to go into languages I think those choices are great. Languages can look great on uni applications though, but only if you can commit time to them.
Reply 12
Original post by user202
Those options sound quite good.
The only guideline I'd advise you is to pick one subject you'd genuinely enjoy and two subjects you believe will be beneficial for you in terms of what career route you might wanna do. Do you know what you might do in A level because when you apply for college, they might need you to have done a particular subject in GCSE. So if you wanted to do all sciences in A levels, you would be expected to have done triple science as that covers most of A level (in year 11, not when you start GCSE). They might want a language for GCSE if you wanna do that in A level. So if you wanna do German in A level, you might be expected to have taken it in GCSE. History is also one the subjects they might ask for.
All in all, you've picked good subjects. The biggest thing is you enjoy them though because college's often only really care about the grade.
I chose Child Development, Computer Science and Sociology. I would trade Child Development for Art in a heartbeat, find Computer Science somewhat easy and I'm kind of happy with this choice and absolutely love Sociology.

Good luck with your decision making :smile:


I'm considering pursuing a career in the Linguistics field - however, I have made the decision to study the three sciences, as they are conducive to my personal enjoyment. I additionally will be taking on another language for an option (Spanish will be taken early), so I will result with ten GCSEs. Unfortunately, I am puzzled as to which qualification to take for my ninth subject. These are the available options:

Business Studies
Catering
Textiles
Drama
Art
Product Design
Textiles

Any advice?
I recommend Geography personally, but if you do History, its best not to do both as they both contain quite a few facts to remember.
WHATEVER YOU DO DONT TAKE ICT AS ITS THE HARDEST THING
Let's see
Drama, Art, Product Design and Textiles are all creative subjects in my books if you're into that.
None of my friends take catering, so I'm kind of unsure about this subject :tongue:
Business Studies seems to be a good option for learning about, well, how businesses work. It'd be a beneficial subject to get into being a market researcher and stuff.
None of these seem to be explicitly related to linguistics or science. The only one that comes close to linguistics is drama because of the fact that you'd be required to be able to articulate yourself well but other than that, they don't exactly go hand in hand.
Product design seems to encourage innovation. Science encourages innovation in a similar manner, but there would be more analysis of the practicality of a product in product design.
Which subject do you seem to leaning towards most?
Do the ones you're considering; you've got a language, a humanity and triple science which will keep basically all doors open. Plus, you seem to enjoy then which is really important.

I do English Language, English Literature, Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geography, French and Religious Studies. If you took the options you're considering, you would have a similar workload to me; it's varied, enjoyable and comfortably manageable.
Well I'm choosing this year and I've pretty much decided on

Geography
Spanish
Triple Science
Drama

(I may swap out drama for french but probably not)
Reply 17
Original post by wastedcuriosity
Okay, here is some advice. Do not do BOTH Geography & History. I did, and it was the bane of my existence. Both have so much content that it's near impossible to learn it all. Do one or the other. As for choosing your subjects, don't get people on here to do it for you. Choose what you enjoy and what you're best at. If you enjoy a subject, you're more likely to excel at it.


I did both and cooed fine
I do the basics with triple science plus French, computer science, history and music. Altogether I’m getting 9 GCSEs and 1 BTEC equivalent (which is a manageable workload). I’d recommend computer science as I personally find it quite simple, there’s not a lot of content to learn; and I love history and music. I can also vouch business studies is interesting but hard work.

If I were you, if I had an artsy talent I would take one practical subject (drama, art, music) and then Triple, Spanish and History. If you want one more or aren’t artsy, business or computer science.
Original post by tooschool4cool
Well I'm choosing this year and I've pretty much decided on

Geography
Spanish
Triple Science
Drama

(I may swap out drama for french but probably not)


Sounds like a good plan. Unless you want to go into languages, don’t swap out drama for French, it’s a relief to have a subject that doesn’t require so much memory.

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