A level Biology

I'm currently in Year 11 and am in the process of choosing my A levels. I am set on doing psychology as that's the sort of field I want to go into and i'm also pretty certain on geography as i'm consistently getting 8s and 9s at GCSE and find it really interesting. For my final option, I'm considering Biology. I do triple science at GCSE and got an 8 on my last mock, my school do OCR A for A level biology, does anyone have any advice on whether you think biology is a good idea as i'm very torn at the minute? :smile:

Reply 1

bluefrog1066

Biology is a very interesting subject but definitely a huge step up from GCSE biology. GCSE biology is by far the most simplified version of biology you will ever cover. I think it will be alright considering you got an 8 in your mock for triple science. But definitely be prepared for a big plunge into topics such as immunity, respiration and muscle contraction. If you want an idea of what it will look like search up Miss Estruch A level biology videos. Also 50% of a level biology content are application questions, so you won't directly be asked to name a process but it will be applied to a scenario and you need to recall back to the knowledge you have learnt and apply it to the scenario. Also the amount of content you will learn is very big, the biology specification is very big same with psychology but the difference being psychology isnt hard its just the amount of content, whereas biology can get hard so it is crucial you understand everything.There are also a lot of maths questions and statistical testing so be prepared for that.

Reply 2

Umayzing

Hi, I’m currently in year 12 doing Biology (also OCR A) and I really love it! It is quite a big step-up from GCSEs since there’s so much content (you end up learning multiple key concepts in one lesson) so you do need to revise for it quite often. In my opinion it’s a whole lot more interesting than GCSE Biology was, but it is quite a hard A-level and it’s a lot of work.

I’d also imagine that Biology is quite useful for Psychology related degrees (if you do decide that’s what you want to do) since it is quite related. Some of my friends who do both A-level Biology and Psychology say there is also some overlap in the A-levels in some of the Maths we do but not a lot.

I’d recommend going to any induction days that any of the sixth forms you’re applying to offer, since it’ll give you some proper insight into whether A-level Biology is right for you. And if you decide you hate it, you can usually change your options on results day or even a week or two into sixth form. So, it’s not like there’s no chance to back-out. I hope this helps!

Reply 3

mehet07

I did psychology, English lit and biology, I hated bio wish I dropped it for geography. It’s a difficult subject purely due to the harsh mark scheme and has a few hard concepts. That being said, it was enjoyable to learn about but I just didn’t like getting assessed on it. It worked out in the end, I got an A, but I think if you genuinely like GCSE bio and do well in it, A-level bio should be fine.

Reply 4

DerDracologe

Study Forum Helper

Original post

by Leyton1790

I do OCR A biology as a year 13, id recommend it if you enjoyed gcse biology and want to do something in science in the future, including psychology 🙂 Feel free to ask me any questions about it if you need!