Bio/Psych .......................or philosophy/accounting :(

[Scooby]

Ahh I've been reading the biology section of this forum and you guys are scaring me. I thought bio was those subjects you can pick up in year 12 but from what I'm hearing, biology is a whole lot harder than I thought o;

Bio is definitely a subject you can take without 1&2! At least 75% of those who took Bio at my school last year did so without taking 1&2 (they were all year 11s since we didn't have any year 12s). Everything relevant in 1&2 is reviewed in 3&4, so you won't be disadvantaged in any way. After all, you can catch up and prepare for 3&4 over the holidays. Bio's a subject that isn't too hard to self-teach

As for whether you should take Bio or Psych - you should have a look at the study design of both. Maybe take a look at Bio and Psych textbooks. It just comes down to which one you find more interesting. Don't worry about scaling or about how competitive they are when you're making the decision. If you choose a subject you don't like just because it's less competitive, you'll probably become demotivated and find it really hard to study, and you'll end up doing worse than you would've if you chose the more competitive subject that you enjoy more

[nisha]

You seem to be quite good at English (as you are taking Lit and English) and so I would either pick Psyc or Philosophy. Bio is a lot of work (similiar to chem) and even tho it might be beneficial, the basics should not be that difficult to pick up when you get to uni. Take Accounting only if you want to become an accountant.

I think Philosophy scales up by quite a bit too? idk.

In the end, I would definately pick Philosophy. I wish I had done it.

[WhoTookMyUsername]

perhaps if you told us your aims it would be easier to answer you original question. What i've found for biology is that typically to achieve a top score (i'm talking 48+) you need a huge knowledge base and time to spam lots of practice exams for application, if your aiming for a slightly lesser score of say ~45 this isn't as absolutely necessary and it's still a viable year 12 subject (of course this is a generalization, but accurate in many cases).

[theresalim]

I've had a look at both textbooks, to me psych seems to be about rote learning whereas biology is more of a challenge. I did lit 1/2, english and philosophy last year and when exam time came, half of my exams were based around writing essays. T'was slightly a nuisance but I do enjoy philosophy but it is kind of mind boggling sometimes.

Well if I was to do biology(/philosophy), I think i would be very happy with around 40+. For psych, I would possibly aim higher, maybe 42+ ?.

Would you say biology takes a lot of your energy? Because I know the people at my school complain about the amount of work there is to be done for biology, like during their exam they had to hand up a 20 page assignment on the ecosystems or something. :\ And what's worse is my school is completely new so we don't have students from the higher grade to kind of give us guidance on certain subjects.