Triple or combined?

2

hey!!! I'm in y9 and idk whether i should aim for triple or combined science. i chose art and music for my gcses and history, but ive heard that art and music are like content heavy subjects and i really wanna do triple but at the same time i wanna have like time on my hands ykwim and idk if i'll be able to bear the stress of having to study for multiple subjects. what should i do?

Reply 1

iris hd

10

i did 11 gcses including music and triple science. i got 3 8s in triple and an 8 in music, i never once found myself thinking “ugh i wish i did combined” if anything it just meant we had more lesson time to cover all the content because i had 6 lessons a week instead of 4. I don’t know how your school runs things but personally i dont think it would be too much to do triple science

Reply 2

cacababy

OP

2

Original post by iris hd

i did 11 gcses including music and triple science. i got 3 8s in triple and an 8 in music, i never once found myself thinking “ugh i wish i did combined” if anything it just meant we had more lesson time to cover all the content because i had 6 lessons a week instead of 4. I don’t know how your school runs things but personally i dont think it would be too much to do triple science

tysm!!! 😁 do yk if triple is hard/any more difficult than combined? or is it like more or less the same

Reply 3

livkrk

8

I LOVED triple science (I didn’t like physics generally but it honestly made it more bearable). I think when doing triple science you don’t actually know what combined is like as you never did it so it doesn’t seem different to the norm - if that makes sense? By the end of my GCSEs I didn’t know what content was triple only so it just felt like I was doing the same, I didn’t really do any EXTRA work either. So realistically you would be fine doing triple.

If it helps I did history, french and film studies as well (obviously not very similar but there was decent work for film/history to be done). I still ended up getting 888 for triple, considering I got a U67 in my year 9 end of year assessments. I believe you will be fine!!!

Reply 4

earth.b

10

Original post by cacababy

tysm!!! 😁 do yk if triple is hard/any more difficult than combined? or is it like more or less the same

I do combined, and my friend does triple. (for context they picked statistics, german and business and I picked the same but IT instead of triple) From what I've seen, triple has a couple of more topics to remember and learn, but they have 15 lessons a fortnight, whereas I have 10. So the lessons balance out the content. Like what livkrk said, you don't really realise a big difference, and sometimes in combined they pop in a few triple-like questions.

You did mention that you will also do art and music, and I have heard that art can be quite demanding at times. As long as you like science, and the content isn't too hard for you to learn and recall, I think triple will be alright, especially if you don't have anything else to pick.

Ngl I kind of wished I picked triple, in y9 I thought I sucked at science, cause my grade was like a 3 (but that wasn't correct, I was doing well in tests and everything so I thought I was just bad at science) but I've got a grade 9/9 in both my mocks so far. The content just kind of flowed into my mind, revising little and often.

(edited 1 month ago)

Reply 5

Student room2333

6

Hi,
I do triple science. Its more work (more content), and the exam for OCR is 1hr 45, in comparison to combined, which is 1hr 10.
Its not too much harder than combined, its just more content to learn, but if you're prepared to work hard, and put the effort in, it shouldn't be too bad. I don't plan on doing something to do with STEM in the future, and don't plan on doing science at A-level at the moment, but I still chose triple because it seemed interesting.
In regards to the bit about having too much workload, I do history and geography and triple science, and at the moment, its not too bad, but we'll see...
If you want to focus on your other subjects like art and music, maybe it would be better if you did combined.
Having said that, if you wanted to do science at A-level, doing triple science could be useful, although it isn't necessary to do science at A-level.
Hope this helps :smile:

Reply 6

kamsi_pupil94

7

hellooo! i'm year 9 as well and i've already chosen my options!

i chose triple science SOLELY because my biology teacher talked to us about the benefits of taking triple science and how it's better for people who aren't as good at science as others.

obviously, if you're taking music AND art, it may be wise to just choose combined sciences (so that you're not as stressed!). also i'd advise getting a head start on revision during the summer holidays (you don't have to do TONS, but i'm going to do some too!).

i'm so nervous because i'm also taking music and, apparently, it's super hard 😭. but it'll be fine!

Reply 7

iluvpeachicedtea

7

Original post by cacababy

hey!!! I'm in y9 and idk whether i should aim for triple or combined science. i chose art and music for my gcses and history, but ive heard that art and music are like content heavy subjects and i really wanna do triple but at the same time i wanna have like time on my hands ykwim and idk if i'll be able to bear the stress of having to study for multiple subjects. what should i do?

Hi! I did separate biology and physics in year 10, and switched to combined/trilogy in year 11, so I have experience with both! I honestly preferred triple, because a lot of the interesting stuff that’s covered in triple gets cut out for trilogy. (Like astronomy for physics) Also if you want to take alevel science it’s best to do separate, because (at least at my school) if you do trilogy gcse you have to do lots of catchup over the summer. That being said, the trilogy grade boundaries are very low, so i would say that a high grade is much easier. Also if you have a worse science (for me it was chemistry - because i didn’t take it in year 10) the other two can balance it out, and when you sit the gcse you have a total of 6 papers to balance out any papers which you didn’t do so well on. Hope this was helpful, best of luck!!

Reply 8

BCU Student Rep

Official Rep

17

Original post by cacababy

hey!!! I'm in y9 and idk whether i should aim for triple or combined science. i chose art and music for my gcses and history, but ive heard that art and music are like content heavy subjects and i really wanna do triple but at the same time i wanna have like time on my hands ykwim and idk if i'll be able to bear the stress of having to study for multiple subjects. what should i do?

Hi @cacababy

I did triple science because I enjoyed science and knew that I wanted to do it at A-Level. You get to go into a bit more detail with some topics and there are also some additional topics that only people doing triple science do. This helped me feel a bit more prepared for A-Level, however I had classmates who had done combined science and were fine with it. I found that having a few extra lessons each week meant there was more time for us to learn all of the information.

For triple science you get one grade per science, whereas your grade for combined science is worked out based on an average.

Hope that helps!

Sophie.
BCU Student Rep.

Triple or combined?

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