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Hey Flower2021!
Firstly, congrats on those results! Such a great accomplishment
I would just like to start off by saying that most people (at least those from my school) experience a fairly substantial increase in grades between year 11 and 12. Personally, I found year 12 much easier than year 11 because I had already had a test run of all of the assessment. So I would say if chemistry is the science that you want to keep, try not to stress too much about trying to improve your grade because there is a good chance you will see some improvement just from having a greater familiarity with the types of assessment.
That being said, dropping a subject certainly can be helpful for improving grades as it does allow you to devote that time to other subjects. I don't have any first-hand experience with chemistry, but I do have a friend who did both bio and chem. There is a lot of content in both subjects, but from my friends experience chem is less intuitive than bio and requires more work. Whether you find a subject difficult really comes down to the person, so I would recommend keeping the subject that you enjoy the most (because chances are, if you enjoy it you are more likely to study if more effectively).
I, personally, wouldn't worry too much about scaling. There was a girl at my school who primarily studied subjects that typically don't scale as well (music, HPE, gen math, gen eng, SOR, & psych) and she got a 96+. So I wouldn't stress over how well your subjects scale, rather just put effort in and try your best
You don't need to study your brain out all the time to get a high ATAR as well ahaha, just prepare well early on, ask questions, and take care of yourself.
If you were to go into a bachelor of science, what are you hoping to study in that? Because determining that could also help with answering this question. You can get into that degree with either bio, chem or physics, but if you were to major in chemistry I would recommend keeping chem and if you were to major in bio I would recommend keeping bio. If you were planning on going into advanced science, however, you would need to keep both.
In summary, you need to do what you think is best for you. It is super important to take care of your mental wellbeing so if you are finding it too stressful to manage all of those subjects, then I would really talk to a staff member to see what you can do to relieve you of some of that pressure. Whether you drop bio or not comes down to your own preference really - do you enjoy it? is the workload more manageable than chem? what do you want to study in uni? Whatever decision you make try not to worry too much about scaling because, in the end, if you are aiming for a high ATAR scaling doesn't matter as much as how well you perform in your subjects.
Hope this helps! If you have any other questions or concerns feel free to give us a shout
Good luck for this year
- Katelyn