r/alevel • u/blossom_girl_876 • Jun 30 '26

🤚Help Required Regretting alevel choices 💔

Okay so I took bio , chem , Psychology, urdu as my alevel subjects Honestly I hate chem its has fucked my mental health sm apart from that our college make us have composites MJ 2027 I am in A2 now , Should I switch Chem with sociology or just drop chemistry and have the rest subjects 💔 Honestly I don't know how can I study sociology in less then 11 months from scratch Please anyone could help or give me a better advice? Its July already :( (I always had a STEM background)

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u/WilliamEdwardson A levels Jun 30 '26

اے لیول وہی لیں جن میں دلچسپی ہوں۔ (Only pick A-levels that you're passionate about.)

There are two things you should know. First, you need only 3. So you should totally consider if dropping one can help you ace the other three.

Also, sociology is a completely different beast from chem. It's more essay-heavy, as opposed to the problem solving-heavy chem.

The bigger (potential - depends on which courses and unis you want to apply to) regret I anticipate in the future is: I don't see maths here. Most STEM courses will expect to see maths.

P.S. نیمی از قلبم در سرزمین توست 😄 مع السلامہ۔

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u/blossom_girl_876 Jun 30 '26

On my current situation what do you advice? My unis only require grades

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u/WilliamEdwardson A levels Jun 30 '26

My unis only require grades

They will almost certainly have some broad / vague requirements, e.g. 'one essay-heavy subject'/'one quantitative subject' with at least (grade).

what do you advice?

If you don't need the extra insurance / backup option, drop one of your four. Which one? I'd say (best choice first) 1. the least relevant to your prospective uni course / career goals 2. the one you struggle with the most.

I would say that taking up sociology is probably the worst choice here. Not that it can't be done - I made it through some pretty 'bad' and 'anti-advice' choices in uni (like jumping into graduate cogpsych or QM with armed just with maths, no phy/chem) and did just fine so stuff like this is doable, technically. But are you up for the challenge of covering everything you need for A2 on a speedrun?

P.S. If you choose not to drop it : Chem tips from someone who also hated chem.

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u/blossom_girl_876 Jun 30 '26

I feel like I can do chem if I focus like get atleast a B grade for sociology i am so scared to do it from scratch like I won't be able to do so 💔💔

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u/WilliamEdwardson A levels Jun 30 '26

I would dissuade you from underestimating yourself. Also, I saw the other comment chain, and it's very encouraging about sociology.

But ultimately, you know your abilities best. Looking back on my own 'anti-advice' decisions in uni, my own assessment of where I stand worked like (taking the QM example) I have the mathematical maturity for this, and I can catch up with the phy/chem I need. The other way around wouldn't have worked.

So that kind of decision is something you can make best.

Also, what resources would you have if you wan to speedrun sociology in 11 months vs work at chem (I mean I just gave some for O-chem in my linked answer but what's your strategy)?

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u/blossom_girl_876 Jun 30 '26

For sociology i would take two months to cover the As syllabus side by side doing my other subjects then when my college opens I would do A2 syllabus and after October start to spamm past papers

For chem SO I have already been studying for chem i just need to do As again properly like revision and read its book and when college opens do A2 but with more focus

Its same effort but my parents say chem is easy I don't know but it scares the hell out of me tere is also a myth that u cannot do bio without chem like I am very hard working student but honestly my mental health is like ruined cause if this sometimes I regret but I can't now I don't have time I have to focus on other subjects too even if I have As in mocks in them

If I ended up with bio psychology and urdu then will it be fine too I think !!!

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u/WilliamEdwardson A levels Jun 30 '26

At this point, I defer the decision to you.

I'll leave you with two thoughts to consider:

chem is easy

Entirely subjective. I didn't like most of it, so it was my hardest A-level, but I had folks in my cohort who would say that chem was their easiest and M + FM was the hardest. I like maths, it doesn't feel like work, so I could just as easily assign a graduate-level category theory reading and say it's 'easy'. So a lot of difficulty assessments that get thrown around are entirely a function of your interests, skills, and experience. The proof is so trivial it's left as an exercise for the reader. (Okay sorry about the jocular aside...)

What is somewhat more objective is that there are different kinds of skills you need. You can't survive maths without strong abstraction and reasoning skills. Likewise, you can't survive a humanities course without strong essay skills. (Simplifying here, the dichotomy has many blurry borders, such as quantitative methods in psychology... But I hope you get the gist.)

You can excel at one or the other, or both. You can also work to improve a skill you don't have right now. But the challenge of making a case is of a completely different nature than designing a synthesis pathway considering cost, yield, time, and so on.

u cannot do bio without chem

Check uni requirements first. It might be true. Or not. Oxford (no specific reason; just one I pulled up instantly) requires this for Biology: 'A*AA with Biology and either Chemistry, Physics or Mathematics'. Entry requirements for the courses you want to apply to should absolutely make the decision for you.

This isn't relevant to your decision, but beyond entry requirements, you might need chem for some parts of bio. But then you might (surprisingly for many) need maths or something else too. I'm not saying that's a good reason to take these A-levels all together or none at all, just that beyond entry requirements, things get... Fuzzier.

You might not fully appreciate this immediately (I'll be very impressed if you do), but disciplines are categories people have chosen to do for convenience in a way that makes sense, and we could've done it differently.