Should I change one of my subjects to Bio or Chem (1 Viewer)

[mengfei]

Hey guys

Firstly if this is Tl;dr the short question is at the bottom to save you the read haha

Background info:
My school requires 13 units mine are

2U maths, Geo, Eng Adv, Eng Ext1, Business, SOR2, French Cont

I'm interested and I believe I'd be well suited to a health career as well. I'm bright, compassionate and caring. my ultimate career goal is to help others.
So in this case, my options are:
- Nursing (no assumed knowledge, bio or Chem recommended)
- Med (hard to get into I know, no assumed knowledge, Chem recommended)
- OT (no assumed, bio or chem Rec.)
- PT (maths 2u, bio or chem Rec.)

So I have all the assumed knowledge I need for any of these courses as is thanks to adv eng + 2u maths
But for half of these, chem or bio is recommended.
I have the option of changing thankfully.

I can change either Business, Eng Ex or French to Chem or Bio.
- Business: chill, no interest whatsoever, boring, bad teacher, BUT easiest subject to get high marks in
- Eng Ex: a lot of hard work, interesting, great teacher, BUT hardest subject to get high marks in for me
- French: sooo fun love it so much and it's hard to get high marks in but I enjoy it so I CAN do it.
If I were to drop Eng Ex like I was thinking I could take Biology only.
If I were to drop Bus or French I could only take Chem
I could take both but I'd have to drop two
I'm good at sciences, got B's and A's

So seeing I've blurted out all this background information

To prepare me for those health courses
1)do I need to do Biology or Chemistry
2) Which one is more useful
3) and if so, what do you think out of Bus, French or Eng Ex should be swapped

Thankssss

Tl;dr for a career in health + med, change French or business or eng ex -> Bio or chem or both

 

[Queenroot]

tbh you should do what you like, HSC bio and chem knowledge isn't actually that much and most courses recap it at the beginning of the course.

 

[dan964]

if you are actually interested in medicine/nursing go for it
if the only reason is because someone wants you to do it or because it is a high pay, then forget about it.

you probably only need to switch a subject to chemistry, don't bother changing too much.

 

[redjnr]

I'm not too sure about other health degrees but for medicine you don't have to swap any subjects if you don't want to. Only Monash med requires chemistry for applicants, and having done HSC chemistry, I don't really think it has greatly helped my understanding in med thus far. Any required chemistry knowledge is taught (albeit very hastily). Having said that though I do not know anyone in my class who didn't take bio or chem...

So if you are set on swapping subjects I'd suggest you take chemistry over biology and swap it with whatever you are likely to do worst in [unless you know already that you can get a high ATAR and hence your last subject is "just for fun"]. Consider that even though language may not be your strength, being greatly interested in french can motivate you to study harder and hence attain a higher mark than business. (Also don't forget about subject scaling!)

 

[WrittenLoveLetters]

Do subjects which you enjoy and know you are "better" at; most simplest advice.

However, I also think Chemistry > Biology. I know a lot of Year 11s dropped Biology if they were taking Chemistry, Physics OR Chemistry AND Physics - unless they were some hardcore Science god - because the content was very heavy! And since its going into Term 2, I feel like you might be overwhelmed because you missed out on Term 1 content.

I also kind of disagree with redjnr, although scaling can play a factor, I have seen many students who took "low-scaling" subjects such as Business Studies and Legal Studies and achieve a high 95 - 99 ATAR because the subject was fortunately easy (I know this from my Accelerated Business Studies class) and they were able to rank high and attain a high internal AND external mark. This is of course, coupled with some "high-scaling" subjects such as Chemistry, Physics or Economics.

 

[Ambility]

Just a note on scaling: Scaling is designed to cancel out the hardness of a subject. If one subject is intrinsically harder than another, it is scalled up only enough to cancel out the hardness of the subject. That's why 4U maths scales so well, it's a hard subject. The mark a student would get in 4U is less than what they would get it 2U, so 4U is scaled up so they're not at a disadvantage to do harder subjects. Don't let the scaling affect your decision making for choosing a subject, higher scaling subjects are harder to get good marks in, which will cancel out the effect of scaling.

 

[clown50nh]

I suggest switching business to biology or chemistry. If you don't enjoy business there is not much point doing it. Personally I would suggest switching to chemistry because there is not as much content to cover, and having missed term 1 it would be hard to catch up with biology which would put you at a disadvantage. But if you like biology more, then go with biology.