What do you think of these A level choices?

[pinotnow]

My ds's school always makes them choose 4 A levels with a view to the vast majority of them dropping one. Maths and Biology are his favourite subjects and, in the case of maths, his strongest (got high 8 in the Y10 mock). With biology he has been slowly improving throughout Y10 and is now on a 7. He has always said he'll do chemistry as well in case he wants to go down a medical or other stem route. He gets 8s in the end of topic assessments but got a 6 in the mock, so we are waiting to see what he gets in the mocks that are up and coming, but he is determined to take chemistry - school will allow as long as he gets 6.

After saying for months that history would be his fourth subject as he enjoys most of it and got an 8 in the mock, he has suddenly said he's going to put psychology for his fourth subject and has pretty much admitted it's because his best friend is doing it.

My question is, if the step up to chemistry proves too much and he ends up dropping that, what would maths, biology and psychology be like as a set of 3? I'm worried it's not enough traditional stem but he will have closed the door to humanities as well. He is good at German and the teacher is trying to persuade him to take that but he's adamant he won't and I'm sure it's because he knows it would be a small class with people he doesn't know/like and he would have to talk a lot.

I'm worried he's choosing things for the wrong reasons and is going to make things harder for himself down the line. Thank you for any opinions/advice.

Sounds ok, Psychology is a science - which I actually didn't know until DD did it.
If he goes for Med the lack of Chemistry may be an issue though, DD is doing a STEM at Uni and her lack of Chem means she has to work harder

Thank you so much for all these replies. He has to officially submit his application to school at the end of this week. I assume they allow changes later on but they work out the blocks from these applications so further down the road some combinations might not be possible.

I think he is more likely to want to go down some sort of STEM route so if psychology is considered a science that's good. It's just when I look at jobs linked to psychology they are (not surprisingly) linked to people and not particularly science-based, but obviously that's after a degree so I am really getting too far ahead!

Yes fair enough.
Tho again, if you wanted to do the E or the M of Stem you might well need physics for engineering and FM for maths, at least in the most popular unis. Also chemistry degree would be out - but I infer that’s not likely anyway.

I am a Psychology teacher. If your son genuinely has no interest in it, his grade is going to be low and it is going to be a slog. People think Psychology is all 'fun' - but it isn't. Yes, it is fun but the questions are finickity and there is a HUGE amount of content. We are a science and it is not an easy option. The students in my class who have taken it because they think it's 'easy' or because their friends take it and they need a third are all struggling (regardless of how much extra help I offer them!)

I don't think it matters much here that Psych counts as a science, if he has Maths and Biology anyway. I don't think there are many courses that generically require their 3rd subject to be a science. It's more relevant (1) when the candidate only has one or none of Maths/Phys/Chemistry/Biology and the course requires one or two sciences or (2) as a bit of insight into scientific methods for students specialising elsewhere. I'm happy to be corrected.

He has plenty of time to decide if he is not interested, but if he sticks with 2 of Maths/Chem/Biol they will tick the science box enough for most courses, and he can afford to go more off piste with his 4th choice.