Advanced Highers and crash Highers - anyone else's child choosing options for Sixth Year?

[AgentProvocateur]

Just a week after the trauma of helping DS2 to pick his Highers for next year, DS1 has come home with his option form for sixth year.

He's thinking 2 AH (Music and English) and 2 crash Highers, because they have to pick four subjects.

Has anyone any experience of crashing Modern Studies or Biology (has S grade from S4 biology)?

If he has S grade biology then a higher is certainly achieveable. Was it a good grade though? Modern Studies Higher is offered as a crash in many schools as it doesn't require prior knowledge (ie s or I grade) but a good pass at English at S or I is usually required to cope with the stle of the coursework/exams.

Yes, 1s for S Grade, and - to my disbelief - good mark predicted for H English too. You think Modern Studies would be doable?

Not had the options form yet, but I'm watching this thread with interest as I expect it won't be long. They are in the middle of Higher prelims at the moment.
No direct experience of Modern Studies Higher, but friend of DD's is doing it. Seems to be quite a lot of work. Standard Grade Modern Studies was quite a lot of facts and analyzing information. Very useful stuff and by no means a soft option. Did DS do History at standard grade or Higher in 5th year? If so should be able to cope with Modern Studies.

Yes, doing Higher History this year, and enjoying it. I think MS would be really useful, because he's quite clueless about things that happen in the wider world.

One thing to watch out for is university entrance requirements - DS found that for the course/uni he was applying for, his AH in Music wasn't going to help at all, because he had already got an A in the Higher. He needed a fourth Higher, at a good grade, to make the terms of his conditional offer.

So your son should think about whether the AHs are going to be a good use of his time, or whether focussing on getting the additional Highers would be more beneficial. The extra depth needed for AHs is great training for studying at uni, but you still need to focus on the entry requirements first.

He needs AH for music, because that's what he's hoping to study, and the other subjects will hopefully just be time-fillers (if he gets five decent Highers this year). The thing is, the "easy" highers like art and photography (and I mean easy in terms of less studying at exam time) need a lot of input throughout the year, and his musical committments mean that he has no spare time to put together an art/photography portfolio.

It's so hard, isn't it? It just seems like a bit of a waste of a year, and so many of them stay on for a sixth year now.

I did a crash Higher in Modern Studies, it was brilliant, and I loved it. Great for filling up a timetable, but at the same time really useful for real life. Every 17yo should study it imho.

But that was 30 years ago, so probably not much help to you sorry...I also did crash Economics - which was a bloody waste of time, though I did win the Economics prize at school

As long as you're confident that he'll get 5 decent grades this year, then that's less of a worry. DS only did 3 Highers in S5, and had a conditional offer needing another B in one of the two he was doing in S6. It was a bit of a surprise to find out that no matter how well he did in the AH music it wouldn't make any difference at all to him meeting the conditional offer.

I'd agree that he should avoid "portfolio" subjects if he's already busy with music, as I've heard that they take up a lot of time every week, and if he's doing lots of music then it'll just be too much.

Thanks for your advice. He's still undecided. Thinking about hospitality, which I presume is waht we used to call Home Economics (I am middle aged!) Does anyone know if there's much work needed for this outside school hours?

Info on Higher Hospitality is on the SQA website here www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/40480.html
Looks more like professional cookery than what Home Ec was like.

Still waiting for options here, but they are only just finishing prelims plus DD's pupil support teacher (or what used to be called guidance teacher) is off sick. DD wants to do 3 advanced highers in 6th year She's done well in her prelims, so should be OK and on course to get her uni entry based on 5th year. Just hope she knows what she is taking on.

Any advice from anyone else whose dc did 3 advanced highers?

I'm a secondary teacher and 3 Advanced Highers are fine if your child did well in the Highers and will commit to the work.

In my day it was SYS (just as rigorous) and the majority of pupils did 3 SYS.