The Student Room Group

How difficult is Physics & Biology AS & A level?

If you studied physics at A Level, id love to know your experience! Was it challenging even if you thoroughly enjoyed it? Is it an ok idea to take it on without maths a level?

And if you did biology, how did you find it?

Scroll to see replies

Original post by Racheel897
If you studied physics at A Level, id love to know your experience! Was it challenging even if you thoroughly enjoyed it? Is it an ok idea to take it on without maths a level?

And if you did biology, how did you find it?


I took physics and let me tell you taking it was the worst decision of my educational life.

I’m doing maths at uni so I took maths and further maths and I thought physics would be the most obvious third choice because it’s maths-based.

However it’s not maths-based. It’s not even anything based. It’s just awful.

Should point out we had OCR which is generally considered to be the worst/hardest exam board so it might be easier for you if you had AQA or something.

Also I severely disliked my teacher and had physics timetabled in literally the most inconvenient way possible so bear that in mind I will be biased.

But anyway the topics are really boring, especially first year where you spend like a whole term looking at diagrams of strings vibrating because of stationary waves. The course is not challenging conceptually, like the only hard thing to get your head round is how magnetic and electric fields work but other than that it’s just things like learning SI base unit conversions and memorising the wavelengths of all parts of the EM spectrum. The reason physics a-level is hard is because the questions they ask are so confusing and never tell you what they are looking for. Looking back on mock papers Id often find I had dropped marks on questions I was certain I had understood and answered correctly. At the same time a lot of questions I didn’t understand, where I just wrote some random keywords, came back with full marks!

The worst thing is coming into it I was genuinely interested in physics but now it’s just been killed of and I think physicists can go suck a ****.

If you’re interested in the end I sweated out an A but it wasn’t even worth it.
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by Racheel897
If you studied physics at A Level, id love to know your experience! Was it challenging even if you thoroughly enjoyed it? Is it an ok idea to take it on without maths a level?

And if you did biology, how did you find it?


Biology was very stressful (only scraped a C in AQA, by sheer determination and luck in the exam), it depends on what your strongest sciences are. As for Physics, you could study it without Maths, but a Maths A-Level is a lot more generalisable and required for different University courses.
Reply 3
Original post by TheTree0fDeath
I took physics and let me tell you taking it was the worst decision of my educational life.

I’m doing maths at uni so I took maths and further maths and I thought physics would be the most obvious third choice because it’s maths-based.

However it’s not maths-based. It’s not even anything based. It’s just awful.

Should point out we had OCR which is generally considered to be the worst/hardest exam board so it might be easier for you if you had AQA or something.

Also I severely disliked my teacher and had physics timetabled in literally the most inconvenient way possible so bear that in mind I will be biased.

But anyway the topics are really boring, especially first year where you spend like a whole term looking at diagrams of strings vibrating because of stationary waves. The course is not challenging conceptually, like the only hard thing to get your head round is how magnetic and electric fields work but other than that it’s just things like learning SI base unit conversions and memorising the wavelengths of all parts of the EM spectrum. The reason physics a-level is hard is because the questions they ask are so confusing and never tell you what they are looking for. Looking back on mock papers Id often find I had dropped marks on questions I was certain I had understood and answered correctly. At the same time a lot of questions I didn’t understand, where I just wrote some random keywords, came back with full marks!

The worst thing is coming into it I was genuinely interested in physics but now it’s just been killed of and I think physicists can go suck a ****.

If you’re interested in the end I sweated out an A but it wasn’t even worth it.

Well done on the A! Getting such a good grade despite having difficulties and no interest jlis really admirable :smile: and thank you for your input, I will definitely consider it and check the spec etc. I'm already decided on chemistry so I thought another science might go well with it
Reply 4
Original post by AJ_3003
Biology was very stressful (only scraped a C in AQA, by sheer determination and luck in the exam), it depends on what your strongest sciences are. As for Physics, you could study it without Maths, but a Maths A-Level is a lot more generalisable and required for different University courses.

My brother did biology and he also barely scraped by lol, at GCSE it seemed like the easiest science, but maybe that's because my class spent the most time on it
Original post by Racheel897
If you studied physics at A Level, id love to know your experience! Was it challenging even if you thoroughly enjoyed it? Is it an ok idea to take it on without maths a level?

And if you did biology, how did you find it?


I just finished my AS level physics and got an A (I was over the moon) I did edexcel and some stuff is like straight up boring but near the end it's really interesting and the mechanics section is very maths based. It isn't the most interesting at AS but I've started A2 content and it is wayyy better
Reply 6
Original post by steveeem
I just finished my AS level physics and got an A (I was over the moon) I did edexcel and some stuff is like straight up boring but near the end it's really interesting and the mechanics section is very maths based. It isn't the most interesting at AS but I've started A2 content and it is wayyy better

Well done! Does maths come naturally to you?
Original post by Racheel897
If you studied physics at A Level, id love to know your experience! Was it challenging even if you thoroughly enjoyed it? Is it an ok idea to take it on without maths a level?

And if you did biology, how did you find it?


Just did Physics AS, fun but really f**king hard. Content isn't too hard but the types of questions you can receive are just stupid.

EDIT : I do AQA
Reply 8
Original post by CMabalot
Just did Physics AS, fun but really f**king hard. Content isn't too hard but the types of questions you can receive are just stupid.

EDIT : I do AQA

Do you think if im consistent with the work & get into the habit of doing past papers, I'll manage to do well? Physics always interested me
Original post by Racheel897
Well done on the A! Getting such a good grade despite having difficulties and no interest jlis really admirable :smile: and thank you for your input, I will definitely consider it and check the spec etc. I'm already decided on chemistry so I thought another science might go well with it

Physics and chemistry work well together. Also, the OCR A physics exams are 40% maths content at least and grade boundaries are usually mid 70% for an A* so if you get the maths right you only need to get half of everything else right. People struggle with the volume of content in physics because they don't make connections between them so they think they are trying to learn a lot more than they actually are
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by Racheel897
My brother did biology and he also barely scraped by lol, at GCSE it seemed like the easiest science, but maybe that's because my class spent the most time on it


Tbh Biology was my weakest at GCSEs but I couldn't have done Chemistry or Physics as they were next level for me.
Original post by yolkie
Physics and chemistry work well together. Also, the OCR A physics exams are 40% maths content at least and grade boundaries are usually mid 70% for an A* so if you get the maths right you only need to get half of everything else right. People struggle with the volume of content in physics because they don't make connections between them so they think they are trying to learn a lot more than they actually are

I'm not going to be doing OCR whew! But thank you i'll keep that in mind
Reply 12
I've just finished year 12, I'm taking physics and planning to take it at uni. Taking AQA, by the way.
Don't underestimate it. Plenty of people taking it at my school are having a bad time because it's... I think "unexpectedly complicated" describes it best. I think it was kind of like the easiest science in GCSE but that doesn't mean it'll be easy at all at A-level. The maths isn't that tricky (no calculus!? come on) but it can get hard figuring out how to approach a question and topics like fields and circular motion are less intuitive and harder to conceptualise. Particles isn't too bad once you accept that nobody actually knows what they are.
There's a surprising amount of memorisation needed. Electricity was the hardest 1st-year topic for me because you just don't really know what's actually going on. Kirchhoff's 2nd law is a lifesaver though.
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by Sinnoh
I've just finished year 12, I'm taking physics and planning to take it at uni. Taking AQA, by the way.
Don't underestimate it. Plenty of people taking it at my school are having a bad time because it's... I think "unexpectedly complicated" describes it best. I think it was kind of like the easiest science in GCSE but that doesn't mean it'll be easy at all at A-level. The maths isn't that tricky (no calculus!? come on) but it can get hard figuring out how to approach a question and topics like fields and circular motion are less intuitive and harder to conceptualise. Particles isn't too bad once you accept that nobody actually knows what they are.
There's a surprising amount of memorisation needed. Electricity was the hardest 1st-year topic for me because you just don't really know what's actually going on. Kirchhoff's 2nd law is a lifesaver though.

Memorisation isn't much of a problem for me phewwπŸ˜… I'm at a bit of a loss, as biology, while not necessary for my dream career, would be more helpful with it compared to physics. But i do enjoy physics more agh
Reply 14
Original post by Racheel897
Memorisation isn't much of a problem for me phewwπŸ˜… I'm at a bit of a loss, as biology, while not necessary for my dream career, would be more helpful with it compared to physics. But i do enjoy physics more agh


I think do the one you enjoy. It's possible for 6th form to be fun. What's your dream career anyway?
Original post by Sinnoh
I think do the one you enjoy. It's possible for 6th form to be fun. What's your dream career anyway?

Forensics!
Reply 16
Original post by Racheel897
Forensics!


Ooo very nice. I don't think A-levels would matter too much for that actually.
Original post by Sinnoh
Ooo very nice. I don't think A-levels would matter too much for that actually.

I need chemistry for the course I'm looking at, and the rest are subjects I enjoy. Biology would be more useful imo, but I think you're right. Its better to do something I enjoy!
Just remember that how hard people find a subject is subjective:wink:
Original post by Toastiekid
Just remember that how hard people find a subject is subjective:wink:

Ahh suppose so! I should have named this thread "tips on physics / biology" in that case haha

Quick Reply

Latest