SUBJECT SELECTION: GEOGRAPHY or ECONOMICS?? (1 Viewer)

[cocobean]

Hi everyone,

I am currently in Year 10 and am so confused about subject selection.

I am good at Maths so am looking at doing Ext Maths
Adv English
Chemistry
Physics
SOR
but not sure if I should do Geography or Economics.


I have done well in Geography in the past, but all my friends say I should do Economics as scales better and gives me more options for Uni.
My problem is that I have not done any Commerce and not sure if this will disadvantaged me if I do Economics.

I spoke to my teacher about and she said that there is a lot similarities between the two, which only confused me more???
I don't know anyone who did/doing Geography, who can tell me how they found it.
Any help[ would be much appreciated!!



So confused !!!!!!

 

[Lumenoria]

I can't speak for Geography, but I'm currently taking Preliminary Economics. While I did commerce in Year 9 and 10, I do believe that I could've done just as well without it. Economics is more of a 'theory-based' and more 'conceptual' subject, but there is still a degree of memorisation involved - definitions, stats and so on. However, it is generally an extremely heavy content based subject and cannot just be grasped through just rote learning, you have to actually understand the concepts taught and apply them in order to do well. It is considered one of the more difficult subjects in comparison to geography, history etc, hence the higher scaling. Don't choose a subject based on scaling or future prospects, the subjects you study in high school most likely will have little to no relevance in university or your career. The subject can be ridiculously tedious to get through because the concepts are, more often than not, boring as fuck but can simultaneously also prove quite interesting. Since you haven't done any commerce-like subjects in the past, there is really no way of knowing if you'll enjoy it or not. To get an idea of you look at in the course, you study the forces of supply and demand, the implementation of macroeconomic policies, evaluate changes in unemployment patterns, the government's role in sustaining long term GDP growth (eg. through initiatives presented in the Federal Budget), inflation, consumer sovereignty, price elasticity of demand and supply, variations in competition etcetc. That's all I can come up with from the top of my head right now, so maybe consider searching up these terms on YouTube or something to see if you'd be somewhat interested in it? Also, scaling is meaningless if you do shit... which is often what happens when students take on a subject that they have no passion for at all. Bottom line is, you need to LIKE a subject to CARE for it. If you don't care for a subject, it's difficult to persevere and retain information. I learnt this the hard way.

 

[Frostguard]

I didn't choose Geography myself but I have a friend who did - he says it's much better than Year 10 Geography and there's a lot more field work and going out instead of being stuck inside classroom learning about how to read a weather map - jk you still do that but i guess it's a lot more interesting, that is if you're a Geography kind of person. Unfortunately his class has like 15 people because not a lot of people have interest in Geography so there's less competition but I'm sure the teacher who will take the class is very enthusiastic.

I did though choose Preliminary Economics- I honestly think that you not choosing Commerce in Years 9/10 will not disadvantage you, people (like me who did choose Commerce will only benefit a little bit because we may already know some terms and concepts, but they are extremely minor eg what is a good or service and stuff but this stuff is a tiny portion of what Economics is really like). Just like Lumenoria said, it'll be up to you to find out if how you enjoy Economics or not. In my cohort we have 70 people taking the subject, but that figure will probably drop to 35 because of the amount of sheer content thats involved in Economics (there's 6 topics in Prelim course and 4 in HSC and it'll be very hard to remember every single concept because one can only remember so much, I myself have 35 pages of notes, or 70 sides of paper and I'm only halfway through Topic 5, but don't take this as a sort of 'woah there's so much stuff' I think im just making it more scarier than it is hahahaha, but I think you can cope with it especially since you can cope with Maths Extension. There's not really a lot of mathematical concepts in Economics, but the ones in there are mostly easy, mainly subtraction, division, multiplication, that sort of stuff. Plus it'll be a good refresher from your heavy maths and sciences subjects, but it'll be a lot of essay writing, short answer and mutiple choice.

But yeah good luck with the future and hopefully choose the subjects you love/have interest in. You could always drop Eco and pick up Geo if you don't prefer it anymore and vice versa. )))))

 

[cocobean]

Thank you so much .

All everyone is talking about at school is scaling and I just got caught up in it. But what you say makes sense. I need to get a better idea about the subject before committing. I'll have a look on YouTube.

Good luck with your studies! I really appreciate your response

 

[cocobean]

Thanks for your response Lumenoria

What you say makes sense. I need to make a more informed decision.

good luck with your studies

 

[blackbird_14]

Personally, I loved geography. It's a cross between the social sciences (mainly business) and bio/chem sciences. If you took a look at the syllabus, you'll see its nothing like year 9-10 geo (thankfully). It's probably the easier of the two (and probably scales lower than Eco), you mainly have do remember stats for your long responses and write concisely for short answers, and if you've got a solid skills base already (like interpreting topographic maps), then you've got at least 16 marks in the HSC paper that you don't have to worry about too much. It probably helps if your teacher is pretty enthusiastic about teaching you too, as mine would find news articles for us to read to be update to date about the most recent developments that concerned our case studies, such as viticulture (my people and economic activity in year 12). There's also a project in year 11, the senior geography project (ay fancy name), but it doesn't count towards HSC anyway, and there's no project in your HSC year.

If you're going down the science route at uni, then geo can give you some bonus marks for it, whilst Eco won't. In addition, you don't need to do Eco in order to study it at uni, but it just makes your first year a bit easier.

So yeah, if you like learning about how people and science and economic factors can relate, then perhaps this is for you (you can always drop it but personally year 12 is better than year 11).

 

[cocobean]

Great to hear from someone who has done Geography.
I found the skills questions okay in my last test ( which was in Year 9- just about to start Year 10 Geography this semester)
I really don't know what I what to do at Uni, I have looked at everything from Dentistry to Engineering to Psychology and back again.
But I did not know about Geo giving you bonus points in science at uni.
My next move is to look at the syllabus again and maybe a past paper.

Thank you soooooo much