Drop Bio for senior science? (1 Viewer)

[ShadowLighte]

So I have a few more days left at max. to stick my foot in the door of the opportunity to study senior science in Year 12. Right now I'm doing Biology, my half yearly mark was 82% which is I suppose okay but that was only the half yearly. Yearlies are coming up and I'm worried about not doing well as in recent topic tests I've been getting around 60% and that is a fail in my books. So in all, I'm struggling a bit with biology and next year is only going to get more difficult and I'm worried about failing class.

I honestly don't remember ever being given the option of doing senior science in Year 11. I pretty much hated science except for the nature part of it if that makes sense. Ecology and such, which is why I chose biology. It's turning out to be less than what I imagined and way more in depth than I thought and I'm just like, why do I even need this? Right now senior science is really appealing because I like all the topics and how it relates quite well to normal day to day life but the thing is that it scales really badly.

Should I take the risk of doing senior science (which for now is an offline class) or doing biology and maybe hopefully understanding it next year and getting a reasonably okay mark? It's a pretty big risk and I don't know what to do.

 

[bedpotato]

I would advise you to stick with bio. The HSC is waaaay different to prelim. More interesting. Wait till yearlies and see how you go. I got 72% for yearlies for prelim, but I'm not doing too bad now. Just needed to put in the hard work. Also, try out bio in year 12, and if you don't like it, you should be able to drop to senior science. What other subjects are you doing?

But at the end of the day, it depends on you. Good luck.

 

[ShadowLighte]

Hm, yeah okay I'll wait and see. I don't know about dropping because I'll have to somehow catch up from what I missed at the beginning of the year. I'm doing Standard English, 2U Maths, Biology, CAFS, Modern & Ancient History so yeah, not a sciency-y person. I guess it does, thank you for your thoughts.

 

[immaveggie]

I did the swap and it was one of the best things I've done, SS is so much easier and my bio knowledge helped a lot with some of the topics. I was failing bio last year and this year i was going well in senior science but i had a great teacher to help me with it. we created the class for year 12 and we found no need for the year 11 work. however i have herd from people that stayed in bio that it was good and they enjoyed it but it is a harder science.

 

[Makematics]

Stay with bio, im pretty sure itll scale a lot better, despite the fact that its hard to get a band 6

 

[Duxify]

Prob worth considering scaling as well before you make the decision.

If you beat 62% of people who take biology, this will count as much as beating 81% in senior science when it comes to ATAR calculation. When I say people, I mean everyone in NSW taking biology/senior science in your age group.

In other words, you have to beat more people in senior science to get the same contribution to your ATAR.

 

[Duxify]

Note, these scaling factors change as well according to how well you do... If you do well in both (i.e. beating 90% of people) it doesn't matter as much... but if you are average, makes a huge difference when it comes to ATAR.

 

[watapple]

the amount of content in senior science is pretty high but these stuff are pretty logical