A Level options; Chemistry or not?

I’m a Year 12 student currently doing A level Biology, Psychology & French and I’m not very sure what I want to pursue in university. I looked into Biomedicine as it’s quite interesting, so I picked my options based on that. However, my family is very eager on me pursuing actual clinical medicine, and I’m not sure if I’m totally against that idea. I don’t want to keep my options closed in the medical field and by not doing A Level Chemistry it really really narrows it down….I’ve done some research and quite a bit of people say that Chemistry is not very content heavy compared to Biology, you just have to understand it. I’m just a bit afraid of it considering that compared to Biology I didn’t do as well in GCSEs (8 in Biology, 6 in Chemistry). However, I do think I could’ve done better had I not had the disadvantage of an unorganized Chemistry teacher with absolutely not teaching skills- which meant I had to teach myself the whole curriculum from scratch. It also wasn’t very helpful that I was a chronic procrastinator, which meant I left all my revision till last minute lol. I feel that it’s beneficial for me to keep French as a less stressful A Level to balance out with the STEM subjects as I’m fluent, so I’m not very much in favour of dropping it. This means that I’d have to drop Psychology, or potentially do Chemistry as a 4th A Level…I’m just in a big dilemma because I’m so unsure of what I want to pursue. What should I do?

Did you enjoy Chemistry at gcse? I acknowledge that you mostly self-studied but I would still note that a 6 isnt a particularly high GCSE grade for progressing to a level- did you find the subject challenging or has it just a case of not covering all the material due to your situation?
What I would say is that there are some options in both biomed and med if you dont have chemistry. If you’d rather study french and psych then stick with them. I wouldn’t advocate for doing 4 subjects as that’s a lot of work and if you are aiming for somethign in the med field you need to focus on high grades and good extra/super curriculars.
Its your decision, not your family’s so pick what interests you- maybe look into some potential fields youd like (look over uni course modules, watch some videos maybe even do a MOOC!). But dont feel pressured to decide right now, I think as long as you’re doing subjects right now which you enjoy and work well together (which yours do i would say) then you should a lot of options which will appeal to you in the future.

Honestly, I didn’t really have a problem with GCSE Chemistry. It wasn’t too difficult to understand, but the last minute content overload was what really did not do me justice as on top of it I had to balance it out with Biology and Physics. I do believe that if I was organized, I could’ve done well. I regret it but what’s done is done. I spoke to my Chemistry teacher and he said that if I put the work in, I should go for it. He said that even if I don’t get into clinical medicine, there’s plenty of other options with Biology and Chemistry in the research field. I completely agree with you about the 6 being quite low for a step up to A level…now that I check my results, I was a couple marks of a 7 but realistically I do feel I have gaps in my knowledge. We’ve agreed that although my school gives Fridays off, I am willing to come in for extra Chemistry work to fill those gaps. My parents are also willing to arrange a tutor for me if necessary. Would this be helpful?

Even for Biomed you will need Chemistry.