Can I do 4 subjects in year 12?

[rosella1305]

Hey everyone, I’m pretty new here and this is my first post so I hope I’m doing right hahaha.
I’m doing 5 subjects this year in year 11 and I HAVEN’T done any vce subjects in previous years. Can I do 4 subjects in year 12 or will I still have to do 5 because I haven’t fully satisfied the vce requirements? so confused.
This year I’m doing
English 1/2
Psychology 1/2
Media 3/4
History Global Empires 1/2
Health and Human 1/2

Any insight would be appreciated thanks

[tiredandstressed]

Since you are doing a 3/4 in year 12, you can do 4 subjects in year 12. Since you have done a sufficient amount of units, however, you might need approval from your school to only do 4 subjects in year 12.

[sk2000]

Hey everyone, I’m pretty new here and this is my first post so I hope I’m doing right hahaha.
I’m doing 5 subjects this year in year 11 and I HAVEN’T done any vce subjects in previous years. Can I do 4 subjects in year 12 or will I still have to do 5 because I haven’t fully satisfied the vce requirements? so confused.
This year I’m doing
English 1/2
Psychology 1/2
Media 3/4
History Global Empires 1/2
Health and Human 1/2

Any insight would be appreciated thanks

A friend of mine got away with doing 4 subjects in Year 12, but only because he did two 3/4's in Year 11. Most of the time this is up to the school, however, because even if you do a 3/4 in Year 11, some schools will still make you do 5 subjects in Year 12.

If you do two 3/4s in Year 11 schools will be much more willing to let you only do 4 subjects. You could ask the subject coordinator (or whoever is in charge of that) but they won't be as likely to agree if you're only doing one 3/4.

[sweetiepi]

You can definitely do 4 unit 3/4 sequences, but ask your school first- they may have some policies regarding that.

Related but also slightly unrelated: My sister did 4 unit 3/4s in year 12 last year, and didn't do any 3/4s previous to year 12- and still got her VCE certificate at the end of the year- I think the minimum is 4 unit 3/4 sequences, which after year 12, you'll have completed 5 if you do 4 next year

[J_Rho]

Adding on to insanipi's point about policies, some schools only let you drop to 4 subjects if;
a. you're really struggling and won't pass under the stress of 5 subjects
b. you have already completed a 3/4
c. you have very good grades and will still score well with only 4 subjects
However, definitely ask your coordinator

[Sine]

I "technically" did 4 VCE subjects in year 12, although, I did add on a MUEP subject so really 5

As others have said you can definitely only do 4 subjects in year 12 - that will give you a total of 5 vce subjects completed by the end of year 12. This will impact on the potential of your ATAR (if you are going for high 99s) but other than that this can be an effective way to maximise your time studying since the max aggregate addition you could've got would only be 5 (since they only take 10% of your bottom 2 subjects). So, for most people that 6th subject would actually only be 3-4 points since not everyone gets 50s/high 40s in all their subjects.

Anecdotally I know of a few people who only did 5 subjects but they still managed 98+ ATARs. So you can still do really well if you ace those 5 subjects.