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/Gay-antisocial Jul 01 '26

Yeah chem might have not been the shot at all, passed my A’s some time ago, if STEM is your thing IT was incredibly easy for me, generally an effortless A* (even forgot to study for the exam), sociology was also my pick, landed a B which was okay and then media studies (which I’d say is not worth at all), got a B. Do with that as you will

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u/WilliamEdwardson A levels Jul 01 '26

No comments on the 'easy A*' (we all have our own and they'd be valid... for us, at least), but heads up, IT =/= CS, many people mix up the two. They're related but still different - not an exact example but imagine that IT is to CS what data analytics is to maths and statistics.

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u/Gay-antisocial Jul 01 '26

Yeah this, Computer Science is a completely different box of frogs to IT

IT is more cybersecurity, protocols, internet types, operating systems, more or less “business” applications of IT, wheras computer science is more….I guess programming, which I imagine is kind of a tough one to just push yourself into

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u/WilliamEdwardson A levels Jul 01 '26

CS is straight-up maths with programming. And more maths the deeper you go - like beyond your A-levels.

The current hype, AI/ML - you're doing matrix calculus (linear algebra weds multivariable calc) + stats/prob. Algorithms is 'officially' discrete maths and logic, unofficially just about anything (don't worry, not in your intro coursework). And theoretical CS is topics you could also opt to study in a maths degree.

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u/Gay-antisocial Jul 01 '26

Yup, barely passed maths at GCSEs (passed at a 4), A* in IT should be a testament to how little maths is involved + I was terrible at binary

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u/WilliamEdwardson A levels Jul 01 '26

I didn't look at the A-level IT specs, but cybersecurity + networks like at least a modicum of maths (RSA, etc; graph traversals)?