[HELP NEEDED] Year 11 Subject Selection (1 Viewer)

[kevin1100]

I’m currently in year 10 moving to year 11 next year and I am in the process of selecting my courses. It is due on Thursday (25/7/2019) so all advice and replies would be much appreciated.

I need to select 12 units and so far, I have chosen:

Advanced English (2 units)
Advanced Maths (2 units)
Maths Extension 1 (1 unit)
Studies of Religion (1 unit)
Business Studies (2 units)

All of these so far add up to 8 units.

I need two more courses but the ones I have in mind are:
physics
chemistry
economics

History is alright but I don’t know if I should do it.

I need help on picking my two last courses. In my mind, I’m thinking of physics and chemistry, but from what I’ve heard, two sciences is really stressful whilst chemistry is also extremely hard.

 

[jazz519]

It depends on your strengths, if you are better at like doing calculations and problem solving do the science subjects. The scaling there is somewhat rewarded in their difficulties. if you are someone who is better at writing essays and writing short answers then do the economics

 

[D-BOSS]

Why 12 units? Most people do 6 subjects/10 units. I recommend dropping studies of religion and add physics and chem or even biology. Economics is basically redundant (legal studies for that matter) if you choose Business Studies over it, but if you want to, add it. Don't do history.

 

[kevin1100]

Why 12 units? Most people do 6 subjects/10 units. I recommend dropping studies of religion and add physics and chem or even biology. Economics is basically redundant (legal studies for that matter) if you choose Business Studies over it, but if you want to, add it. Don't do history.

For Year 11, you need 12 units. In year 12, where 10 units is needed, I may drop a few subjects and also pick up 4 unit maths.

 

[kevin1100]

It depends on your strengths, if you are better at like doing calculations and problem solving do the science subjects. The scaling there is somewhat rewarded in their difficulties. if you are someone who is better at writing essays and writing short answers then do the economics

I'm alright with both calculations and writing, however, science is not too strong for me. I'm not sure about economics but I've not the greatest at writing, however, I've been getting A's for commerce for year 9 and year 10.

 

[Drdusk]

Why 12 units? Most people do 6 subjects/10 units. I recommend dropping studies of religion and add physics and chem or even biology. Economics is basically redundant (legal studies for that matter) if you choose Business Studies over it, but if you want to, add it. Don't do history.

Some schools force you to do at least 12 units.

I'm alright with both calculations and writing, however, science is not too strong for me. I'm not sure about economics but I've not the greatest at writing, however, I've been getting A's for commerce for year 9 and year 10.

I would suggest then picking up one science and eco. At the end of the day only 10 units count so if you feel like Chem/Phys is not your cup of tea, then you can just drop it.

Considering your doing 3u Math's, HSC Physics shouldn't be that hard for you. The calculation questions are quite trivial and considering you have a good background in Maths, you should be all good for it.

 

[kevin1100]

Some schools force you to do at least 12 units.


I would suggest then picking up one science and eco. At the end of the day only 10 units count so if you feel like Chem/Phys is not your cup of tea, then you can just drop it.

Considering your doing 3u Math's, HSC Physics shouldn't be that hard for you. The calculation questions are quite trivial and considering you have a good background in Maths, you should be all good for it.

Thanks for the reply. I would probably be doing physics.

Do you have any experience on economics, chemistry or history or any advice in general?

 

[kevin1100]

Thanks for the reply. I would probably be doing physics.

Do you have any experience on economics, chemistry or history or any advice in general?

If it helps, my dream career would be either business/finance or medicine, so I'm just confused on if I should pick up economics or chemistry.

 

[Drdusk]

I did Chem in year 11 and found it extremely boring, so I dropped it. Jazz will be able to give you advice on Chem.

Advice in general I would say make sure you try and gain an understanding of the Physics you learn if you do take Physics. It's very easy to treat it as a memorize and regurgitate subject, and even though you can get a good mark that way, its better if you understand what the concepts mean. That way if NESA asks something a bit different, you'll be good.

Economics I would say is quite supportive of a business/finance career.

For medicine, it depends on what medicine your talking about. The Doctor of Medicine doesn't require Chem but Medical science requires you to do first year Chem. Jazz is a Chem major so he can tell you if HSC Chem actually helps with first year Chem or not. Regardless they teach everything from scratch, but knowing some of the concepts would make things a bit easier.

At the end of the day, if you like the subject you should take it. It's good to take in peoples opinions but everyone's experience will vary.

 

[kevin1100]

I did Chem in year 11 and found it extremely boring, so I dropped it. Jazz will be able to give you advice on Chem.

Advice in general I would say make sure you try and gain an understanding of the Physics you learn if you do take Physics. It's very easy to treat it as a memorize and regurgitate subject, and even though you can get a good mark that way, its better if you understand what the concepts mean. That way if NESA asks something a bit different, you'll be good.

Economics I would say is quite supportive of a business/finance career.

For medicine, it depends on what medicine your talking about. The Doctor of Medicine doesn't require Chem but Medical science requires you to do first year Chem. Jazz is a Chem major so he can tell you if HSC Chem actually helps with first year Chem or not. Regardless they teach everything from scratch, but knowing some of the concepts would make things a bit easier.

At the end of the day, if you like the subject you should take it. It's good to take in peoples opinions but everyone's experience will vary.

Thanks for the reply! I'm not sure which medicine it is but I'm talking about a general practitioner, basically your local family doctor.

 

[kevin1100]

Which one would be easier to get a good ATAR with, chemistry or economics? (or maybe history but i might/might not be doing it)

 

[fan96]

Which one would be easier to get a good ATAR with, chemistry or economics? (or maybe history but i might/might not be doing it)

It's whichever one you're personally interested in more.

Scaling is nice, but if you don't enjoy the subject then you'll need to put in a lot of effort to get a good mark.

 

[kevin1100]

Would Economics and Business Studies be too much as they're content heavy and have lots of writing?

 

[jazz519]

So if you do any chemistry in uni it's really helpful to have done it in HSC already. Unlike the physics which myself and a lot of other friends did in HSC, everyone basically said it was close to nothing like the uni physics (because the HSC physics has a lot of writing questions that you won't see at uni) because the whole exam at uni is like calculations essentially. Chemistry was somewhat similar to this in the old syllabus, but now I would say if you have someone who did HSC Chemistry compared to someone who didn't there is a massive advantage. The reason for this is that 50% of the things you will learn in first year Chem are taught within the new syllabus. Not entirely at the same difficulty (because they discuss more difficult examples and new content), but the thing is they don't really cover any of the basic fundamentals you learn in HSC chemistry, they just assume you already know it. So if you have to do a chemistry subject at uni you probably have to do some bridging course first (which personally I would say is not taught very well most likely because you end up learning what people learnt in 2 years in 1 semester). At UNSW there are different levels of chem though I did the higher first year courses, so not really sure how much easier the normal one is (because they have different exam and sometimes different lab), but without that HSC knowledge you will struggle to get a mark above 80 in either of the courses. But in saying that lets say your degree just needs you to do first year chem and then you don't have to do it afterwards, you can probably survive without HSC knowledge and still get above 70 (because there are lab components, weekly quizzes). But if you have to do any 2nd year chem courses you will probably struggle a lot. The first year courses are very easy compared to these because later on you start doing things where you can't just memorise everything you actually have to understand it because in the organic chemistry I'm doing at the moment there is close to 200 different reactions in the course which obviously is impossible to just rote learn

 

[jazz519]

Would Economics and Business Studies be too much as they're content heavy and have lots of writing?

Can't speak personally about economics, but business studies is a very easy subject. There's really no tricky concepts to it. It's one of those subjects that if you put in the effort and time to memorise the content and write answers in the specific ways you need to, then you will do fairly well

 

[kevin1100]

So if you do any chemistry in uni it's really helpful to have done it in HSC already. Unlike the physics which myself and a lot of other friends did in HSC, everyone basically said it was close to nothing like the uni physics (because the HSC physics has a lot of writing questions that you won't see at uni) because the whole exam at uni is like calculations essentially. Chemistry was somewhat similar to this in the old syllabus, but now I would say if you have someone who did HSC Chemistry compared to someone who didn't there is a massive advantage. The reason for this is that 50% of the things you will learn in first year Chem are taught within the new syllabus. Not entirely at the same difficulty (because they discuss more difficult examples and new content), but the thing is they don't really cover any of the basic fundamentals you learn in HSC chemistry, they just assume you already know it. So if you have to do a chemistry subject at uni you probably have to do some bridging course first (which personally I would say is not taught very well most likely because you end up learning what people learnt in 2 years in 1 semester). At UNSW there are different levels of chem though I did the higher first year courses, so not really sure how much easier the normal one is (because they have different exam and sometimes different lab), but without that HSC knowledge you will struggle to get a mark above 80 in either of the courses. But in saying that lets say your degree just needs you to do first year chem and then you don't have to do it afterwards, you can probably survive without HSC knowledge and still get above 70 (because there are lab components, weekly quizzes). But if you have to do any 2nd year chem courses you will probably struggle a lot. The first year courses are very easy compared to these because later on you start doing things where you can't just memorise everything you actually have to understand it because in the organic chemistry I'm doing at the moment there is close to 200 different reactions in the course which obviously is impossible to just rote learn

Thanks for all the useful information! Both chemistry and economics seem too content heavy and time consuming but I might consider that. Also, should I consider one of the history's if the other two are too heavy for my current selection. I'm alright at history and I've been getting A's for both normal and elective history.

My subjects now are:
adv english
adv + ext maths
studies of religion
business
physics
chem/eco/one of the history

 

[hwantaa]

really depends on how hard u work but i've always been told that it's hecking difficult to do extension maths with physics and chem