A Level Choices?

[Jssy]

I went to college for a year to do hairdressing and decided I want to go back to school in September to do A Levels. I'm quite interested in psychology & nursing. These are the A Levels I've picked but go see them in a few months to discuss final choices. At the sixth form of the school I went to you can do as little as 3 A Levels or as much as 6 and do an elective as well but can drop the elective after a year.
I've put down:
-Health and Social Care
-English Language
-English Literature
-Psychology
-Philosophy & Ethics
-Citizenship
-Sociology (Elective)

I'm thinking I'm going to drop the citizenship, but overall has anyone done these A Levels and found them enjoyable? I know pretty much all of them are gonna be quite a jump from GCSE, especially as I won't have even done GCSE's for a year. I decided to go with Philosophy and Ethics as I enjoyed R.E at GCSE and got an A in it. I really enjoyed English too and got a B in both. I got a distinction in childcare and h&s isn't that much different and involves child development.

[MKR&*42]

I did Psychology for about 2.5 months, then dropped it because I found it incredibly boring - but a few of my friends who have kept it up say it's gotten a lot more interesting and is definitely worth sticking at. If you're genuinely interested in it, then go for it, but if it's only a 'slight interest' you will probably find it boring.

Not sure if there's a massive difference between Philosophy & Ethics and just Philosophy, but I do philosophy and it's certainly one of the more difficult A Levels and is the one I enjoy most tbf. I do sociology as well and that's quite interesting, from what most teachers have said though (about all these subjects) they tend to be more enjoyable/interesting in the 2nd year.
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In psychology you cover research methods (tedious) and behaviour - stuff like classical conditioning, operant conditioning, social learning theory etc. I also learnt some stuff on gender, but I don't know what else is taught after that. Sociology is Family & Households, Education and Research Methods for us. <<< Think all this varies on exam board though, not 100% sure.

[Kardan]

I've not done any of them, but you'll probably struggle with doing 6/7 A-Levels. We could only do 5 at most, and I struggled with 5 and went down to 4. Most people do 4 at AS and 3 for A2.

[Sian]

I don't know if you want to do 6 a levels, they take a lot of work and it will be a lot of stressful exams to deal with each end of term, but if you think you can cope you might as well try.

I've never understood citizenship as an a level, but hey ho :p. Philosophy and ethics is a very good course, but you learn philosophy as one class and ethics as the other, ethics is very theoretical and all about who influenced what belief system (kantianism, utilitarianism etc) and when as well as fully describing and critique each one (there's a lot of them as you can imagine). Also they look good on your cv as of course does english.

I hope I've helped a bit?

[Samantha]

I did English Language and I did enjoy it, mine was split into two parts speech and written language. The first year for me was mainly the creative writing side, you had to write a fictional story or something like that and analyse an extract from a scripted speech. The second year I reviewed a game and analysed non scripted speech. I also learnt about theorists and seriously this does go onto other subjects too so it's not just limited to English Language like you'd probably use it in English Literature, Sociology (I think) etc. I'd suggest taking that. Are you allowed to take English Language and English Literature combined? That would free up an option for you but I'm unsure how it works :) x.

[Matthew]

I think you're giving yourself a lot of work.

I'm doing 4 A2s, and that's only because I don't think (or at least I'm not SURE) that I can get an A in further maths and so I'm taking A2 economics as I know I can get an A in that.

Basically too many will just mean you can spend less time working on each and so you may get more certificates, but you'll do worse on them.

[lawrawrrr]

Don't do so many. It's better to have 3 or 4 (maybe 4 or 5 for first year) and get better grades in them, otherwise you'll have so much work and not be able to get a good grade in all of them though.

Repping the philosophy though, so interesting!!

[Zelda]

yea 6/7 is a bit too much

im currently doing 6 AS's and it's A LOT of work and I have very little free time quite a lot, (currently do double maths chemistry physics music critical thinking, dropping critical thinking and music at end of this year)

can't really help for choices though, but one thing I would say is an elective that wont give you an AS is probably a good move if you want to do that many as they don't really mean much in most cases anyway

[Shar]

If youre interested in psychology and nursing id recommend doing psychology definitely because you need to do at leadt one social science or biological science at alevel. Philosophy and ethics will also compliment both psychology and nursing well. For the 3rd and 4th subject id choose something id enjoy.

[Kyle]

All of those A levels together would be difficult for anyone but to do them after a year of hairdressing - which I'm assuming wasn't wholly classroom-based - will be quite a shock. Go for 4 to start and see how you get on with those, you don't want to overwhelm yourself right from the start and end up becoming put off altogether.

In my experience English language was a bit of a leap from the GCSE and involved quite a bit more (mostly creative) writing and a ton of analysis based on what you're taught (lexicon, maxims, etc). I only did that for one year though so can't advise on the full A level but can't see it coming in all that useful if nursing is really what you want to do. Psychology and Sociology complement each other and are interesting cos you'll find that you can apply most of what you learn to everyday life and the developmental side of psychology will certainly come in useful if you do decide to go on the nursing route.

If you think you'll enjoy something then by all means take it but don't automatically assume that because you've gotten good grades in it before that you'll enjoy and perform well in the higher level equivalent.

My advice would be to take three that would be relevant to your chosen path and one or two throwaways that you think you might enjoy but won't have any real purpose for you later in life that you can drop if you feel you need to after a year. Health & Social Care/Psychology are pretty firm choices for nursing, build around those.

[Jssy]

Thank you guys, was really good to read all this. I think ive decided im not going to do citizenship so that leaves me with 5 A Levels & the elective so pretty much 6. If I struggle too much with the work load then it will be english lit that will get dropped. I did actually get told at the open evening the english language is about creative writing, travel writing and speech, I enjoyed those. Really enjoyed english literature too. Tbf the reason I'm going back to A Levels is I miss the work, research, studying etc. Hairdressing I do 3 hours in the classroom on theory a week.

R.e I got an A in and got told Philosophy & Ethics is very similar so I think I'll be ok with that. I've always been interested in religion, culture etc and its nothing to do with my chosen field but I guess it might look good. I definitely need to keep health & social & psychology for the nursing. I've also heard sociology compliments nursing well @Samanfa another sixth form I looked in to did english combined but unfortunately my old schools sixth form doesnt :( I realise though that even though I got good english & r.e grades won't necessarily get them at A Level. Think I need to have a serious think and discuss it with the head of sixth form when I next go. I've already looked at nursing at uni, and they just want three A Levels at BBC and at least a C in english language, science & maths at GCSE. Thank you very much everyone x

[dbgtz]

Regardless of the work, if you plan on going to university you should take into account the fact that they only really look at 3 (sometimes 4) A levels, so the amount of extra qualifications could be more damaging if it potentially harms the general results. So if you could get AAA by doing 3 rather but AABB by doing 4, you'd be better off doing the former.

On the actual subjects themselves, I know someone who does English lit. and he enjoys it more than his other subjects so I'd assume it's pretty good.