Oh yikes all 3 of these? Prepare to enslave yourself to the world of essay writing imao
tbh 13/14 units is a lot for the Preliminary Year, especially since you only need to do 12 but hey whatever works for you
First of all, what aspects do you enjoy about these three subjects?
Do you like learning about war, writing many essays and generally learning about the events of personalities within history? Do you want to learn about events and historical factors that have shaped society to what it is now? Then pick Modern History, and also if you like and do well in modern history, you'll be able to pick up History Extension, which is more focused on the History of History (basically historiography where you learn about why people wrote things and what influenced their construction of history). Just be prepared to write a lot of essays, you may do the occasional oral presentation or a historical investigation so its up to if you love history.
Or if you prefer to learn about the economy, how is it run, what is made of, god there's so many things you can talk about, economic policies or supply and demand, you'll generally know how the economy sustains itself and what small or large factors can influence economic growth, economic development, unemployment, inflation, etc there's so much. This subject will also be very essay-based and topic-test based, if i remember correctly Y11 has 6 topics, which basically means 6 topic tests and Y12 has 4, so mainly 4 topic tests. This is a subject that is very different to normal humanities subjects in that it's not necessarily about rote-learning or memorising the whole syllabus, you need to actually understand and engage with the content or you will fall behind. This subject has A LOT of content but if you've got a knack and interest for learning how the economy works, then Im sure youll perfectly understand the concepts and enjoy its good scaling
(remember dont let scaling influence your subject selection!!!)
This subject is also more focused on examinations, not so much presentations or investigations, its purely in class essays and topic tests, so be careful of that.
Or do you love law?? The prospect of law is super cool but Legal Studies is only a minor aspect of law itself, you'll learn about basic concepts, law reform, society's reactions to legislation, changing values, and all sorts of interesting stuff, especially the case studies and media articles where you learn about what people have gone through. This subject is similar to Modern History, just with more emphasis on law itself. You'll learn about Crime, Human Rights and two of other options in Y12, Shelter, Family, Consumer, World Order, etc. Y11 is just a small fraction and will teach you to how to properly write a good Legal essay. Legal essays are much more structured and i think has a lot more memorisation compared to Modern History, where you basically only to remember the content and some historians quotes, Eco is mainly statistics and trends but Legal has a format called LCMS, which stands for Legislation, Case, Media and Statistic which means to receive one of the top bands, you must incorporate legislations, important case studies, relevant media articles and current statistics. So, it's a lot of effort for legal essays, but if you really love law/legal stuff, I'm sure LCMS essays wont be too overwhelming.
Good Luck with your decision, all 3 subjects are very heavy in content, you're gonna drown in essays like I did so please be good at writing essays or the essay gods will come and punish you haha im just joking, but yeah I hope I've cleared up some things and helped you decide which 2 subjects you want to undertake in your Prelim/HSC years.
(P.S. personally i pick:
1. Modern History
2. Economics
3. Legal Studies (only because I'm not doing well in it anymore LMAO)
