VCE Subject Tier List

Studyholic

Hello People!

Now that most of us have completed our coursework for our subjects and are in the process of refining our exam skills, let's talk about what our most liked and disliked subjects this year were. I've always wondered what other people's personal tier lists for their subjects would be. Of course this is opinion based btw!

Rei Plush

God

Oooh… good Idea!

My subjects ranked in terms of difficulty: (hardest - easiest):
A. English (being rural, no one teaches u how to write essays; which is real fun esp given I did no work for it in y11); Methods (I did this in y11, and the exam was so much harder than the coursework through the year)

B. Chem, Bio, Spec (the sciences need so much memorisation it’s very painful. If i hadn’t done methods/physics, spec would probs be A tier)

C. Physics (compared to everything else - super easy)

_sophiestudies_

**My subject tier list:

Biology (2022) -> Love this subject so much! I've genuinely loved pretty much all of the topics, especially the immune system AOS. However, I haven't really enjoyed the evolution topic/AOS (I find it quite dry and boring to learn haha), but I was expecting that anyway. That said, bio has a very special place in my heart, with human biology (aka immunology) being what I hope to study in the future.
Visual Communication and Design (2021) -> Despite the many mental breakdowns over my folio during lockdown, I really loved this subject. There is something so rewarding about folio subjects and seeing everything come together after pouring so many hours into it. I will say, the exam was not the greatest (just very different to all the pervious VCAA exams and company exams) and it was kinda a pain to study for (especially with all the drawing tasks, and only having 90 minutes to complete the 90 minute exam + 15 min reading time -> It really isn't much time with everything that must be completed).
Further Maths (2022) -> I've really enjoyed further this year. I've especially enjoyed statistics, as well as graphs and relations. I've found it to be a pretty doable subject and it has probably been my least stressful subject.
Chemistry (2022) -> Chemistry, chemistry, chemistry. As much as I genuinely love you, you are so so hard! I definitely preferred unit 4 over unit 3, since I really like organic chem, analytical methods and food chem over fuels and redox (it comes more naturally to me). I like to call it my mood swing subject, since I both love it and don't at the same time. I do plan to study some chemistry units next year in uni though, since I do love it deep down hahaha.
English (2022) -> Ok, this was expected. I do like writing, but there's just so much grey area, and studying for english takes so much energy! I have really enjoy the texts I've studied this year though, and I've had an amazing teacher (all my teachers have been amazing this year haha)!

That said, I do genuinely love all my subjects, so making this list was kinda hard haha (like I'd say further and chem would really be in the same place, and they do switch depending on the topic and week).**

Joseph41

Based on the VCE subjects I did, probably something like:

S TIER: EngLang 3&4

A TIER: VCD 3&4, HHD 3&4, Psych 3&4

B TIER: VCD 1&2, EngLang 1&2, Psych 1&2

C TIER: Methods 1&2, Art 1&2, Further 3&4, BusMan 3&4

D TIER: BusMan 1&2

F TIER N/A

aurora

This would change depending on my SS of course;;

S: English Language
A: HHD
B: Japanese SL
C: Methods (was kinda fun but hard)
D: Chemistry (......)

Autime

Based on how much I liked them,

S: Study Period
A: Data Analytics
B: Business Management
C: Physics
D: Specialist
E: Methods
F: English

Emmy

Mine ranked from favourite to least favourite:

Psychology - despite having a lot of concepts, the content is the most relevant to my life, also a personal interest
Chemistry - tossing up putting this second because it is by far my hardest subject and I struggle quite a lot with it, however the challenge is nice sometimes and it feels so good when I finally understand a question/concept
English - first of all, I hate Shakespeare. But I do enjoy expanding my critical thinking and analysis skills, English has always been a strong subject of mine
Health and Human Development - far down the list because the content is super general/ stereotypical and overall a bit dumb, some of it is useful to my life though like learning about Medicare etc.
General/further maths - I’m not great at maths, not much more to say about that. Note if I had a different class and teacher I might have enjoyed it more

Anthony_Watson

Chemistry. Honestly the best thing that happened to me ngl. The subject is so interesting and everything just clicks in - and it's one of the only two subjects that I actually enjoy working on. If someone told me that I need to work on only one subject for my whole vce prep period, I'd probably go with this. It helps that my grades kinda reflect my love for chem too.
English. Yeahh this one was a tough choice. Like in the beginning of the year I rlly despised the text response and creative but things started to look up to me when we started to do language analysis. By the time I was speaking my oral I realised how fun english can be especially language analysis. That being said, I can't avoid text response bcos it is like a third of my end of year exam.
French. Same story as english tbh. For those who don't do language, one of the major challenges that we language learners face is a)staying in touch with it over the holidays so we don't forget the basics, b) gradually improve our skills (grammar, vocab and all that) over the course of the year. Unlike some other subjects, u rlly can't "cram" french into a day or a week, it really comes down to practice - something I completely neglected. But after doing oral (I really must have an affinity for speaking haha), I started to enjoy the language in general. Hoping to get a high score cos it will most likely be with my top 4 haha.
Specialist. It's honestly not the content. It's the questions.IMO, the content for spesh is not as difficult as methods (in fact I found probability even easier), but I absolutely hate how much examiners can twist the question. (It's like in those memes I've seen b4 where they're like "Class: 1+1 =2, HW: 4*2 =? and Exam: e^pi -2 = ?" 😆). TL;DR I have a love-hate relationship with the subject, here's hoping it improves in uni.
Physics. Easy to understand subject and interesting too. So why is it last? Too bad, I don't really have the best teacher in Victoria. For most of the year, I only went thru the content by myself and even then I neglected it for my other subjects. And tbf I'm partially to blame cos i may or may not have procrastinated too much for our motion sac and ended up almost failing - and that only made me dislike the subject more. Note: I say "dislike" not hate bcos hate would be too strong here, and I'm sure if I had access to a better teacher ( I did request class swap but it was rejected by my school 🙁 ), maybe it would have even been my 1st, who knows? But I have a feeling that I'll probably enjoy uni physics (if I end up doing it at uni anyways, it's still a little early to decide for me XD).

Will

Here's mine:

S: FURTHER MATHS - Its so beautiful and is my baby
A: French - I love french its great
B: Methods & Chem - Methods is a nice balance between pain and enjoyment(best subject for a masochist), and Chem is just not too bad
C: English - Decent, only thing annoying about it is that it needs to be in top 4.
F: French - French makes me want to kill somebody and castrate their children
So incredibly trash it doesn't deserve a section: Biology

Billzene

Reposted from my response to someone who was asking me pretty much the same thing on Reddit:

I'll rank all my subjects FWIW

FM and chem go on my S tier. FM cuz it was easy and I had a chill class with heaps of banter. It was more than grades for me since my class taught me a bunch of life skills when we were chitchatting after we finished our work early. FM is also the most relevant maths to real life cuz I never had to integrate or derive anything after my methods exam 2.

Had a boring teacher in chem but I'm a Breaking Bad fan so I pushed through it. It's mostly intuitive and it's way less pedantic than bio. It overlaps heavily with bio so if you accelerate bio and then do chem the next year you'd have a massive advantage (not so much when they change the study design since they're removing a lot of the food chem stuff from U4 in the new one)

The mixed list are methods and bio.

Methods was great during the year, had an awesome teacher but always expect the unexpected from VCAA. I bombed exam 1 and did ok on exam 2 (2018). My teacher said VCAA is trying to make exam 1 more difficult than ever and they're making exam 2 more convoluted (but not necessarily difficult) than ever

While I like the content in bio, it is marked super pedantically and nothing pains more than knowing the answer but still having marks stolen from you just cuz you didn't kiss up to the Victorian Child Abuse Association by copying their stock responses. It really gaslights you, making you doubt your true capabilities. Honestly this sets you up for failure in uni bio cuz if you copy model answers for a uni bio exam, you can actually get a 0 for plagiarism

My wall of shame were English (duh) and French.

I hated writing essays but rip compulsory top 4 English so I grinded them so much. Half of the things I wrote were superfluous fluff that the VCAA examiners somehow loved, I mean, when someone wrote "the curtain is blue", they probably meant just that. Not "tHe CuRtAiN iS bLuE tO sIgNaL sAdNeSs AnD iT sYmBoLiSeS yada yada yada" or whatever VCAA examiners wanted us to write while tripping on acid. That being said I loved my teacher who wasn't afraid of pointing out the bullshit in VCE English.

I hated French because I had a really abusive teacher, some details of what happened aren't suitable for this sub. But the subject itself isn't bad at all, it was pretty chill for me were I not dealing with the "teacher" I had and I only fell 2 study scores short of my initial goal. Moral of the story: your experience in LOTE is HEAVILY dependent on your teacher

booksandpages7

omg love this..

S biology!! (2021) rests my fave subject, the content is so genuinely interesting (except for evolution) and my passion for the subject really kept motivated all throughout last year given lockdown and stuff
A chemistry is such a vibe, i honestly find it super easy and interesting, also unit 4 ties well with bio so its funnn
B englang yassss its cool as, i love discussing the contemp examples in essays and love being all philosophical sometimes its so cool to be able to basically rant and use swear words and have it be a nUaNCeD analysis
C pe's alright, but there's so much content that is kind of like inference based, as in there's no situation where you can memorise the answer cos it's always changing and highly specific to the situation and athlete. also the non-sciency stuff is really hard imo
D methods (2021). got baited the whole time into thinking i was doing alright and then i saw. my study score. its ok tho i'm not doing maths this year so i've moved on ✨
F french. yup, i'm just not really a talkative person so i don't really vibe with the whole oral exam situation. also the grammar makes me want to CRY

ilikepapaya

okay here are my subjects that i rank in terms of 1-4 (fav to least fav)

Further Maths- I did it last year and I decided to do it again to achieve better marks (I passed last yr but wanted to top up my marks by doing it again and drop out of methods) and to be completely honest it was such a vibe, the only thing it wasn't a vibe was my teacher. he can explain the work but he expects us to know it in one click and he wouldn't help others in the class with a question they were stuck on.
English- okay english is usually not my most vital subject but I had a really good english teacher that helped me and answer my questions very well, especially for my upcoming SACs which was my comparative. she's really lovely but VERY strict about the work. if you have a teacher like mine, you'll be okay.
Chemistry- in my opinion, I can understand the work but when it comes to unit 4 mass spectroscopy and sometimes food chemistry, it's fairly difficult I have a solid understanding of it and my teacher knows how to answer my questions well which is good.
Physics- the work in unit 3/4 is quite more challenging than in unit 1/2. it's kind of the same concept but units 3/4 have a deeper context especially when it comes to electrical physics, motion and wavelength. i wished i enjoyed the subject lots but i put it as the least favourite. if i had a physics teacher that can explain the theory pretty well and challenges us with some questions then i would have enjoyed it.