A-level Biology or Chemistry? Please help

Both are pretty hard. A-level biology requires you to learn MORE content as a whole, but chemistry has you learning all these minute details which balances it out. In terms of exam difficulty I think chemistry is more difficult(some of the questions require you to be very adept with your number skills) whereas for biology exam practise and strategic learning can get you the high marks. Both are pretty rewarding to learn. It also depends on what you want to do after A-levels, ie if you want to study Medicine Biology is definitely what you should go for, if you go for only one of them.

Chemistry is a must for medicine. I’m doing biology, chemistry and physics.
Honestly, I’d say do whatever you enjoy the most

Thanks for the fast reply. My sister did both at A-level and found Biology a lot harder. I am also going to do Spanish and English Literature along with one science. I put Biology down but I wanted to change it. Does it change with exam boards as for the sixth form I am going to, both are AQA and I've looked at the specs. I don't really want to be relying on memory and also which would you say involves more practicals?

I did edexcel, both had a similar amount of practicals, I think biology had slightly more. Honestly biology is hard if you don't learn the content early enough and without leaving enough time to repeat it(in my opinion). You will have to rely on memory for biology. Chemistry is easier in that regard.
I think both subjects are similar through each exam board, there may be exam style differences though.

Chemistry is a must for medicine. I’m doing biology, chemistry and physics.
Honestly, I’d say do whatever you enjoy the most

Thank you. BTW I'm not looking at doing medicine. Which do you find more difficult in terms of exams and studying. Any tips?

Yh I just looked it up, quite a few more med schools require only chemistry as a mandatory subject. I'm not sure why they do that tbh, most of my course right now is human biology, barely any chemistry.

Ooh any tips for a successful medical application?

Ahh, well done for getting in!
These should work for any uni.
First of all, keep on track of lectures from the beginning. You don't have to study like crazy at the start(that depends on when exams are for you) but make sure to at least go to all the lectures so that when it does come to revising you can make your notes properly without having to watch them again. Another reason I say this is because you can make notes for understanding the content in real time(during the lecture) by annotating the slides. You can also ask the lecturer any questions afterwards, something you can't do with a recording. Finally, going to the lectures at the beginning will let you decide whether its better for your productivity and learning to go to them or watch them online. I myself went at the beginning, stopped halfway through but have started going back.

Secondly, don't just rely on older year's notes. I've found I learn much better when I make my own notes since they come from my understanding.

Make sure to make a good group of friends that you can chill with, especially when things get a little tough.

Make sure to sleep properly- if you don't, you'll find out just how easy it is to fall asleep in lectures!

Finally- learn anatomy from the beginning!

Side note- invest in a good laptop/tablet. For a tablet, I'd recommend an Ipad air due to the apple pencil, makes going paperless and annotating lectures very easy. If finance is an issue, most unis have tablets/ipads to give to students anyway, so make sure to ask around!

Good luck- it'll be difficult at times, but you got in for a reason. Remember that and everything will fall into place

I just realised you meant to get into medical school😭

Okay for a successful application:

1) Admissions exams- these are not a joke. Prepare for them extensively, UKCAT and BMAT. I did about a month of hardcore prep for both(3-4 hours a day)

2) Interviews- use the 1000 questions book and practise, practise, practise. Make answers up to the question and commit them to memory, so well that you can say them convincingly and not like you just rote learnt them. Get someone to help you so you can get all nervousness out of the way before the interviewers. Make sure to learn key points that can be used for lots of questions ie work xp, why you want to study medicine, extracurriculars
Also for the interview, once you get into there know that its a game. You have to BE the best candidate there. Act like you are. Be confidant and charismatic in your answers, if there's a group task show teamwork and leadership. If there's an acting station, get into the zone and show your sympathy. Be quick thinking and don't let panic take over. The best candidates use the initial panic and turn it into action.
Remember, you'll get what you work for.

Good luck, you've got this.

I did both, and I think the styles of learning are very different. With Biology, there is a lot of content and it's more about learning large amounts of information, which personally I find slightly more difficult. I found the topics about biological systems and photosynthesis etc. a lot easier than the ecology stuff, as even though it's harder to understand, that made it easier for me to remember, whereas the ecology stuff was just a lot of info that I found kinda boring, so it was harder to remember. I would say the hardest thing about biology is definitely the exam papers and mark schemes, as the mark schemes can be inconsistently specific, and so it's sometimes impossible to understand from the question what you need to say to get the marks. The best thing to do is just do practice papers to help you understand the logic of the papers, and that will also help you to pick you random bits of information you may have forgotten.

Chemistry on the other hand is harder in terms of what you're learning (biology was fairly easy in my opinion), but I found it easier to revise and improve. The key to chemistry is ensuring you understand the topic, and then doing LOADS of practice papers. Our teachers made us do every past paper in existence, and it does work, as long as you ask for help on the things you get wrong. Chemistry also has a specific mark scheme, but it is consistent, kind of like maths, so if you do enough questions, you will get there. I did OCR and the unified paper 3 was the hardest and is intended to stretch you, but even then as long as you can recognise links between topics it is ok. With chemistry, if you want to do well, you have to put in the time and work. I felt like even if I didn't have any work to do, there was ALWAYS some chemistry papers that I needed to do, I felt like I was drowning in it. But if you do the work, it pays off.

I felt that both had the same number of practicals. I hated biology practicals with a passion, mostly because they never seemed to work and we had to do full write ups for them, whereas with chemistry we didn't have to do much of a write up, but I think that was because it was OCR. I did edexcel biology.