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Further education

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

Original poster

Maths GCSE requirement for A level Biology

32 replies

DorisLessingsCat · 27/08/2024 18:26

DD applied to two colleges and one sixth form for A levels, including biology.

College A (her preferred choice) asked for a 6 in maths.
College B and the sixth form asked for a 5 in maths.

DD got a 5 and College A has said she can't take Biology. She's gutted as it's her number one subject. She's confident that she can cope with the maths element in the Biology syllabus and really, really really wants to go to College A. Does anyone have any advice or insight on how to approach them? They still want her as a student but offered her Environmental Science instead of Biology, but she wants to go on to health/sports/exercise science after A levels.

(For additional context, she got an 8 in Biology, a 7 in Chemistry and a 6 in Physics, as well as a bunch of other 7s and 8s in the rest of her GCSEs).

OP posts:
Love2dance8 · 28/08/2024 06:43

My dc college was a 4 in Maths. He got an 8 in gcse biology and 4 Maths and he's managing with the course.
So many schools and colleges seem to have different entry requirements.

Pythag · 28/08/2024 06:41

I’m personally not convinced you need a 6 in maths to do biology….

Original poster
DorisLessingsCat · 27/08/2024 18:43

@prepareforharvest thank you, that's helpful and gives us another option.

I don't know how oversubscribed the college is for biology, but she applied really early and was accepted (subject to conditions) straight away.

Her other two options are really not as good (for her) so I hope we can convince them!

OP posts:
prepareforharvest · 27/08/2024 18:37

Depending on whether the college is oversubscribed you could ask if she could take biology as a fourth up to October half term and see if she's able to cope with the content.

A word of warning though...the maths content at A level isn't majorly harder than GSCE maths but as they go through the two year course, students not doing maths tend to perform worse and worse on the maths parts as they're not practicing the basics eg percentage changes, ratios, etc. If she does choose biology make sure she keeps her maths skills ticking over somehow so they don't get worse. There's a decent CGP book on it but I'm sure there are others out there if you look. I hope she manages to work something out that's she's happy with

Original poster
DorisLessingsCat · 27/08/2024 18:36

Sorry, name change fail!

11 marks off a 6.

OP posts:
GinForBreakfast · 27/08/2024 18:35

11 marks off (although grade boundaries have changed a lot this year) so probably not worth a regrade, unless anyone thinks otherwise?

objectsensationalize · 27/08/2024 18:28

How close was she to the grade boundary for a 6? Would a remark be possible to try and boost her grade?