Year 9

Hi is anyone else in year 9? What GCSEs are you taking?

i picked my GCSEs in feb, but I did maths, english, english, re , triple science, german, geography, and history. My friends all picked further maths, but that wasn't really for me lolz. don't let other peoples choices affect you though, other year 9s probably have as little clue as you do. i'd recommend talking to someone who goes to your school, my friend talked to me about his gcses (he's doing them this year) and he told me what were good and what wasn't. A lot of my friends wanted me to do subjects with them, but make sure you make your choices based on ur opinion, not anyone elses. have a good day, and don't stress, i did stress and it wasn't worth it.

i picked my GCSEs in feb, but I did maths, english, english, re , triple science, german, geography, and history. My friends all picked further maths, but that wasn't really for me lolz. don't let other peoples choices affect you though, other year 9s probably have as little clue as you do. i'd recommend talking to someone who goes to your school, my friend talked to me about his gcses (he's doing them this year) and he told me what were good and what wasn't. A lot of my friends wanted me to do subjects with them, but make sure you make your choices based on ur opinion, not anyone elses. have a good day, and don't stress, i did stress and it wasn't worth it.

Hi is anyone else in year 9? What GCSEs are you taking?

I know what I want to choose I'm just worried because I'm picking three humanities (Latin, classical greek and ancient history - my school doesn't teach these so I'm doing them outside of school). I'm not sure if this looks bad for when I go to college of if it is ok. Thanks.

Doing more GCSEs is not a good idea - you'll have enough work from school. What happens when the exams clash? Have you got somewhere to sit these other GCSEs?

Hey, I'm in Year 8, I'm picking Triple Science, French, History, Music whilst self studying Computer Science, however I'm still debating if I should include Computer Science in my main options since I want to study it at university.

Hi, I'm in year 11 and I self-studied Computer Science. I'm assuming you're self-studying CS because you want to do an extra subject. If so, I think it is a good idea to self-study Computer Science as it is one of the easiest subjects to learn independently. When I picked my GCSE options in year 8 I was very nervous about self-studying a subject so I told myself that if the workload ever got too stressful, I would drop it. It never got stressful at all and it is one of the subjects that I am most confident in going into my GCSEs. It is now one of my favourite subjects and I intend to study at university. So, if CS is a subject that you really enjoy which obviously you do since you intend to pursue it, it is a good idea to self-study. If you start struggling then maybe consider dropping one of your options and replacing it with CS but if you stay on top of your work, this shouldn't be the case.

Tips for self-studying CS:
- Use some sort of textbook to make sure that you learn all the information needed for the exam
- Ask the CS teachers in your school to send you resources like Powerpoints, etc.
- Have a (trustworthy) friend who does CS tell you what they are currently doing in class so you can stay on top of your work
- As you want to study CS at university, I would recommend doing online courses such as Harvard's CS50p and CS50x that will teach you basic university-level CS and programming (way beyond GCSE level). I have completed the CS50p course and it has helped me massively with the programming paper for GCSE

Hope this helped! If you have any questions feel free to PM me

Thank you so much! This was really helpful. If you don't mid me asking, what grade did you achieve after self studying?

I still haven't done my exam yet (paper 1 is next week) but I'm aiming for a high 9. In both of my mocks I got 9s as well

hi...if you're in year 9 get off this forum...don't place importance on things that aren't important. Don't waste your life like i did.
You don't need to worry about what you'll be and how much you'll earn and u dont need to worry about the future
you have the now....you're young....gcses are for the schoollllll!!!! They'll move things around you if you're not doing well so please just be grateful for your life and don't try and outsmart everyone e