Active discussions

Help protect children from gaming harms.

Take our survey

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Further education

You'll find discussions about A Levels and universities on our Further Education forum.

Original poster

How hard is A Level Biology

33 replies

goosebumps · 04/11/2023 09:29

My DD is Year 11 and was thinking she'd like to be a primary school teacher but now thinking of nursing. We don't want to rule anything out by picking the wrong A 'Levels and she won't consider a college course. She's thinking she should pick biology but is doing Combined Science with possibly a 5/6 grade if she works hard. How does the combined science grading work (i.e will it show that the 6 is biology?) and if she's allowed onto A'level how hard is it to get a C grade. Thank you.

OP posts:
Dotcheck · 04/11/2023 10:18

Why does she want to do Biology? If she ends up with a 5/6 she may want to consider an applied biology or Health and Social Care

WeeDove · 04/11/2023 10:16

I did honours biology and there was a lot. Lc not A level but so much detail ! Sometimes I think the overview is interesting but they break it all down to the pointvwhere it's so detailed and its just memorising. I thought I'd love it but there was a lot of memorising imo

DaftyInTheMiddle · 04/11/2023 10:15

I did it a million years ago now, I got a fairly standard C in biology gcse, my god the A level. The AS level was hard, it took me 3 resits to scrape a D and then the A level year was impossible. Now I’m not bright and did have ADHD but there is an element of chemistry she will need to understand (which wasn’t explained in our class as “you all do chemistry a level” except I didn’t!) , maths too. Are there papers / texts she can look at to look at the level of understanding? A decent teacher, a genuine passion and lots of hard work will be required.

ShanghaiDiva · 04/11/2023 10:14

It’s not as difficult conceptually as chemistry (imo) but there is a huge amount of material.

titchy · 04/11/2023 10:12

It's very hard. My oldest got A stars for triple science and ended up with a B in Biology A level which was her favourite subject. (Did a Bio degree, and PhD though!)

Bert2e · 04/11/2023 10:11

She'd need a 7 to get a place in A level biology in my school I'm afraid. A 6 would get her a place in some schools but honestly she would struggle.

Monstermunchy · 04/11/2023 10:09

There’s a huge difference from GCSE to A level - the latter is all about application rather than memorising. My son found it hard and this came as quite a shock to him

Pinkpinkplonk · 04/11/2023 10:07

There’s an awful lot of volume in A level biology!
Some maths is needed, and a little understanding of chemistry in places. I’d say it’s manageable, but she’d really need a good memory.