subject selection help y10 (1 Viewer)

rubz07

New Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2022
Messages
25
Gender
Female
HSC
2024
Hii, I'm in y10 and just concerned about my subject selection for y11 and y12.

My goals:
- a high atar, high 80's, low 90's or more
- doing something in the medical line
- uni
- med school?

What I am thinking of doing:
- Mathematics Advanced + Mathematics extension (I might try out extension math's, just because I have a chance to move down it its to hard for me and I can't move up later)
- Chemistry (research and found out that its a prerequisite for many university's as I wanna do med stuff)
- English Advanced (I'm kind of bad at English and I definitely will need motivation for it)
- Biology (another science subject, just because :( )
- PDHPE (i kind of don't know why I'm thinking to pick pdhpe but I think it might be relevant to my career path - maybe)
- CAFS: Community and Family Studies (I'm not sure if caf's is a good subject to pick, but i did some of my own research and found that caf's isn't as hard compared to the other subjects, so I could probably put some time into others subjects instead of caf's_

What do you think? Are these subjects okay for aiming for a high atar and getting into med school?

All help is appreciated :)
 

jimmysmith560

Le Phénix Trilingue
Moderator
Joined
Aug 22, 2019
Messages
4,116
Location
Krak des Chevaliers
Gender
Male
HSC
2019
Uni Grad
2022
Generally speaking, you can achieve a high ATAR (including one in the range that you specified) with any combination of subjects. You should also keep in mind that, although a high ATAR is beneficial, there are usually additional requirements that you need to fulfil in the case of multiple institutions in terms of admission into a Doctor of Medicine program, such as favourable performance in the UCAT and/or an interview, meaning that they can extend beyond just your ATAR.

Regarding your subject selection, you should consider subjects that you are interested in as well as subjects that you believe you can perform well in. Your choice of Mathematics Advanced and Mathematics Extension 1 seems completely justified as you are giving yourself the opportunity to experience both levels throughout year 11 (where none of your results contributes to your HSC results or ATAR), allowing you to decide whether to keep them, keep Mathematics Advanced only, drop down to Mathematics Standard or take Mathematics Extension 2 by the end of year 11. Mathematics Extension 1 also scales well, meaning that it can assist you in achieving your ATAR goal as long as you can ensure a reasonably high level of performance in this subject.

Additionally, despite not being treated as a prerequisite or assumed knowledge, it seems that taking PDHPE would be beneficial since it would allow you to expand your knowledge of human health, which seems to be emphasised within the HSC course, through topics such as:
  • Health Priorities in Australia
  • The Health of Young People
  • Sports Medicine
From your thoughts on Community and Family Studies, it can be inferred that you may have the potential to perform well in this subject. In such a case, you should also consider whether you would be interested in the content of this subject (as most students tend to avoid subjects that they either dislike or not interested in taking), or whether there may be other subjects that you might enjoy taking. For instance, have you considered an HSIE subject (such as Business Studies, Economics and/or Legal Studies) or a language subject? Do you find any other types of subjects appealing?

I hope this helps! 😄
 

THElorax17

New Member
Joined
Feb 14, 2022
Messages
27
Gender
Female
HSC
2023
Hi
So just from reading your subjects it’s seems like they aligned pretty well with what you want to do going out of uni. I think you need to think honestly about whether doing english advanced is going to benefit you. If you really thoroughly enjoy english and understand deeply the different concepts and contexts then I would highly recommend it but if you have a very surface level knowledge about context and English then I would suggest standard as the contemporary texts that you do in that are much more relevant to our time and easier to grasp. It’s not a bad thing to do english standard and I feel a lot of people treat it like that, this isn’t a personal thing I’m just talking about experience. I’m currently doing PDHPE and I have a friend who does both CAFS AND PDHPE there is some really good intersection between them but I would suggest doing PDHPE more as it aligns better with your biology subject. I can kinda tell that you steer away from a lot of subjective and content heavy stuff like the humanities so I would recommend maybe food technology, you would get a good idea on nutrition and that sort of parallels the medicine line. Hope this makes sense and helps!
 

idkkdi

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 2, 2019
Messages
2,454
Gender
Male
HSC
2021
Hii, I'm in y10 and just concerned about my subject selection for y11 and y12.

My goals:
- a high atar, high 80's, low 90's or more
- doing something in the medical line
- uni
- med school?

What I am thinking of doing:
- Mathematics Advanced + Mathematics extension (I might try out extension math's, just because I have a chance to move down it its to hard for me and I can't move up later)
- Chemistry (research and found out that its a prerequisite for many university's as I wanna do med stuff)
- English Advanced (I'm kind of bad at English and I definitely will need motivation for it)
- Biology (another science subject, just because :( )
- PDHPE (i kind of don't know why I'm thinking to pick pdhpe but I think it might be relevant to my career path - maybe)
- CAFS: Community and Family Studies (I'm not sure if caf's is a good subject to pick, but i did some of my own research and found that caf's isn't as hard compared to the other subjects, so I could probably put some time into others subjects instead of caf's_

What do you think? Are these subjects okay for aiming for a high atar and getting into med school?

All help is appreciated :)
you're going to have to aim for a lot higher if you want undergraduate med, especially if you don't get bonus points. think 99s.
 

rubz07

New Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2022
Messages
25
Gender
Female
HSC
2024
you're going to have to aim for a lot higher if you want undergraduate med, especially if you don't get bonus points. think 99s.
what can I do to aim higher? any subjects you recommend?
 

rubz07

New Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2022
Messages
25
Gender
Female
HSC
2024
Hi
So just from reading your subjects it’s seems like they aligned pretty well with what you want to do going out of uni. I think you need to think honestly about whether doing english advanced is going to benefit you. If you really thoroughly enjoy english and understand deeply the different concepts and contexts then I would highly recommend it but if you have a very surface level knowledge about context and English then I would suggest standard as the contemporary texts that you do in that are much more relevant to our time and easier to grasp. It’s not a bad thing to do english standard and I feel a lot of people treat it like that, this isn’t a personal thing I’m just talking about experience. I’m currently doing PDHPE and I have a friend who does both CAFS AND PDHPE there is some really good intersection between them but I would suggest doing PDHPE more as it aligns better with your biology subject. I can kinda tell that you steer away from a lot of subjective and content heavy stuff like the humanities so I would recommend maybe food technology, you would get a good idea on nutrition and that sort of parallels the medicine line. Hope this makes sense and helps!
thank you so much for you help!!
 

rubz07

New Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2022
Messages
25
Gender
Female
HSC
2024
Generally speaking, you can achieve a high ATAR (including one in the range that you specified) with any combination of subjects. You should also keep in mind that, although a high ATAR is beneficial, there are usually additional requirements that you need to fulfil in the case of multiple institutions in terms of admission into a Doctor of Medicine program, such as favourable performance in the UCAT and/or an interview, meaning that they can extend beyond just your ATAR.

Regarding your subject selection, you should consider subjects that you are interested in as well as subjects that you believe you can perform well in. Your choice of Mathematics Advanced and Mathematics Extension 1 seems completely justified as you are giving yourself the opportunity to experience both levels throughout year 11 (where none of your results contributes to your HSC results or ATAR), allowing you to decide whether to keep them, keep Mathematics Advanced only, drop down to Mathematics Standard or take Mathematics Extension 2 by the end of year 11. Mathematics Extension 1 also scales well, meaning that it can assist you in achieving your ATAR goal as long as you can ensure a reasonably high level of performance in this subject.

Additionally, despite not being treated as a prerequisite or assumed knowledge, it seems that taking PDHPE would be beneficial since it would allow you to expand your knowledge of human health, which seems to be emphasised within the HSC course, through topics such as:
  • Health Priorities in Australia
  • The Health of Young People
  • Sports Medicine
From your thoughts on Community and Family Studies, it can be inferred that you may have the potential to perform well in this subject. In such a case, you should also consider whether you would be interested in the content of this subject (as most students tend to avoid subjects that they either dislike or not interested in taking), or whether there may be other subjects that you might enjoy taking. For instance, have you considered an HSIE subject (such as Business Studies, Economics and/or Legal Studies) or a language subject? Do you find any other types of subjects appealing?

I hope this helps! 😄
hii, thank you so much for your help. I don't really enjoy hsie subjects as much, but I was thinking to do legal studies as I've enjoy it, however, I'm not sure if I would have the motivation to put effort in it.
 

jimmysmith560

Le Phénix Trilingue
Moderator
Joined
Aug 22, 2019
Messages
4,116
Location
Krak des Chevaliers
Gender
Male
HSC
2019
Uni Grad
2022
hii, thank you so much for your help. I don't really enjoy hsie subjects as much, but I was thinking to do legal studies as I've enjoy it, however, I'm not sure if I would have the motivation to put effort in it.
No worries, and fair enough. If you feel that HSIE subjects may not be for you, you can probably give Community and Family Studies a try and see how you go, i.e. proceed with your current subject selection. If you end up enjoying it and doing well in it, then great! If not, you could drop it by the end of year 11.

Alternatively, you could take Legal Studies in year 11 and determine whether you enjoy the subject and perform well in it. If this is the case, then also great! If not, you could also drop it by the end of year 11. If CAFS features a lighter workload, however, I would question the choice of taking Legal Studies, given that it is a subject that will definitely bring a heavier workload, potentially making your study strategy (including aspects such as time allocations) trickier to develop and manage.

Either way, going by this selection, you can drop up to 3 units worth of subjects if you wish, so it is good that you have that kind of flexibility. :)
 

Nacseo

Newest Member
Joined
Aug 12, 2020
Messages
156
Gender
Male
HSC
2023
Hii, I'm in y10 and just concerned about my subject selection for y11 and y12.

My goals:
- a high atar, high 80's, low 90's or more
- doing something in the medical line
- uni
- med school?

What I am thinking of doing:
- Mathematics Advanced + Mathematics extension (I might try out extension math's, just because I have a chance to move down it its to hard for me and I can't move up later)
- Chemistry (research and found out that its a prerequisite for many university's as I wanna do med stuff)
- English Advanced (I'm kind of bad at English and I definitely will need motivation for it)
- Biology (another science subject, just because :( )
- PDHPE (i kind of don't know why I'm thinking to pick pdhpe but I think it might be relevant to my career path - maybe)
- CAFS: Community and Family Studies (I'm not sure if caf's is a good subject to pick, but i did some of my own research and found that caf's isn't as hard compared to the other subjects, so I could probably put some time into others subjects instead of caf's_

What do you think? Are these subjects okay for aiming for a high atar and getting into med school?

All help is appreciated :)
Bro I literally do all those subjects, except CAFS. In terms of getting into med, I think the prerequisites are good for getting into med as I'm also aiming into the health profession. PDH and Bio overlap at some parts so it can come in handy and if you have good foundation for maths adv, then ext 1 can be aight for you. Chemistry is the prequisite that is the most important for undergrad med so it is definite u gotta do that. English advanced is definitely the subject that is the most, well, 'subjective' because the different teachers just mark it differently(mine marks it a bit strict), but you in order to be good in English, you have to step up your game. Ultimately, u don't need motivation, u need discipline, if u plan ahead and just DO THE WORK, then you can surely see improvement in all aspects. Hope this helps.
 

idkkdi

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 2, 2019
Messages
2,454
Gender
Male
HSC
2021
what can I do to aim higher? any subjects you recommend?
i like different things, so my recommendations wouldn't be helpful.

tho, i wouldnt take cafs. seems like the units would be better used for testing one other possible subject that you might decide to keep in y12. for me, i would do physics.
 

rubz07

New Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2022
Messages
25
Gender
Female
HSC
2024
Bro I literally do all those subjects, except CAFS. In terms of getting into med, I think the prerequisites are good for getting into med as I'm also aiming into the health profession. PDH and Bio overlap at some parts so it can come in handy and if you have good foundation for maths adv, then ext 1 can be aight for you. Chemistry is the prequisite that is the most important for undergrad med so it is definite u gotta do that. English advanced is definitely the subject that is the most, well, 'subjective' because the different teachers just mark it differently(mine marks it a bit strict), but you in order to be good in English, you have to step up your game. Ultimately, u don't need motivation, u need discipline, if u plan ahead and just DO THE WORK, then you can surely see improvement in all aspects. Hope this helps.
thank you!!! what's the other subject you're taking?
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top