Please help! What to take for VCE, Chemistry or Psychology? (VICTORIA)

Yona

I am currently in year 10 (Victoria) and I have subject selections very soon for VCE.
The subjects I'm thinking of choose are, English, Biology (all already doing unit 1 and 2 as an early VCE), Japanese (SL), art making and exhibiting (previously known as studio arts?), Maths methods, and either Psychology or Chemistry.

My averages from all the scores recorded for each subject are 93% for biology, 90% for maths (accelerated - preparation for methods), 85% for English and 98% for Japanese. I didn't take art this year but I've taken it in year 7-9 and enjoyed it quite a lot I believe I can do well, my year 9 teacher definitely recommended me to take art for VCE (as I got really good scores then, but previous years they were around 80s-90s).
However I don't want to overestimate myself because its only year 10. I keep thinking my scores in VCE will further go down because it definitely gets harder.

I want to be a neuropsychologist or a neurologist (doctor), I am aware of the long years and the further studies it takes (such as honours and masters), but I've heard getting a bachelor of psychology or a bachelor of science is considered "useless" and causes low employment rates. I am leaning towards becoming a neuropsychologist as my first choice but I'm worried because I obviously want to be able to get a job to get the hours I need for internship (I have also heard that you need to pay just to do internships??? because most require a psychologist supervision but there is a low shortage here, and I don't know if I can financially take it).

A bachelor of psychology requires only English I believe (in VIC), and a bachelor of science requires math methods with any science?

So my last choice, I am debating on psychology or chemistry. The reason why between the two is that Chemistry offers more open pathways into medical? I know in Monash you need chemistry (according to what I've been told), and then go do the UCAT + an interview to get into medical school. Going by bachelor of science is longer but I'm not exactly sure how that works. Chemistry also scales up by around 5. I'm a bit hesitant to pick chemistry because I didn't do the basics of it in year 10 (only in year 9), thinking I didn't need it (also feeling discouraged by my brother who did chemistry in previous years), but I don't exactly hate it and it seems interesting, I could learn to like it.
Is chemistry really math orientated though? Is it hard maths and problem solving?

For psychology it scales down around maximum 2? but I have somewhat a passion for psychology and I believe I like it better than chemistry (I've looked through the study designs and I can tell I already love the unit topics). It looks fun and enjoyable and I can see myself engaging well in it. Its also said to be "easier" but content heavy, how is it different in relation to chemistry?

Although psychology is not a prerequisite for anything I'm just stuck between taking my interest or a requirement that opens my options.
I've been stressing about this non stop especially when subject selections are soon (I've talked to these careers specialised people that help with this stuff, at school but it generally left me still quite confused).

I know there's always other alternatives but I'm just worried in the end it'll be a waste of time and I'll be filled with regret.

Billzene

I can't provide any suggestions into what subject to take because this is ultimately your career so you should be the one entirely responsible for it. One thing I want you to be clear on is that you shouldn't do subjects for their scaling. If you're interested in psych, you should definitely take it, especially since you indicated that you'd prefer to being a psychologist to becoming a doctor

From what I hear, psych isn't a great degree because the competition for clinical degree spots after a BPsych is insane. However, one can say the same about postgrad medicine because you need good uni GPA/WAM (ie grades), GAMSAT percentile (med admission test) and good interview scores to get in. You should definitely ask your career counsellor more about all of this since they're professionally trained to provide you with this tea.

From my observations as a chem tutor, people usually don't do well in chem unless they really love the subject or are already good at it. This is in spite of any tutoring, no amount of tutoring can correct for the lack of interest and/or effort, although sometimes parental pressure may provide some students the external motivation to do well at chem. It's one of those subjects that have a massive learning curve once unit 1/2 starts. If you're not confident about the chem covered in years 7-10, then chem 1/2 will be very scary. Like when I was in years 7-10, I was cruising through chem in science, but once I'm in year 11, the mole concept and organic chem hit me like a truck. Although chem is supposed to be a problem solving class, sadly VCAA designed the course to be very pedantic just like bio where you have to include very specific keywords in responses to short answers otherwise your answer will be marked wrong even if it's 100% valid. The maths involved isn't hard, nothing beyond year 9 maths is necessary. Stoichiometry is an application of ratios and thermochem calculations are just plugging and chugging from formulas in the provided data book

Yona

Billzene
Thank you for your reply. If I do chemistry will it be difficult to catch up? Considering I didn't do the basics in year 10
(as per suggested by my school), will unit 1 and 2 involve a lot of pre-knowledge or will most of the basics be repeated and more advanced?
Since from my experience of doing unit 1 and 2 for Biology, much of the stuff I've learnt before wasn't as necessary as the new content I learnt during those units. Do you know if It'll be similar to that or is that just me?
I've been researching more and since psychology isn't a prerequisite for bach of psy, do you think doing it in high school helps?

charl

I think in the long run you would benefit more from doing Chemistry than Psychology. I don't think BSci is a useless degree as well, it's a pretty flexible degree that offers great opportunities if you're unsure exactly what you want to do.

I'm doing Psychology at the moment and it is a pretty interesting subject, probably my favourite subject, however, the new study design doesn't give it the breadth and depth it deserves as it did previously.

Psychology also doesn't really open doors as chemistry would. Chemistry is a prereq for majority of undergraduate medical courses in Australia, so if you have medicine in mind and want to have the opportunity to give undergrad path a go, then you have to do chemistry.

Yona

charl
Thank you for your suggestion.
I was thinking that, however I believe I could still go into medical through bach of science (with prerequisites of any science and math methods?), although it'll be harder and longer? Many of some other bachelors I researched don't really need chemistry unless its those direct high ATAR access ones specifically for med. And to be honest I'm not too quite sure about going into med school as I'm still thinking. So I'm trying to be as open minded as I can with my options. Do you think its realistically possible if I don't take much high scaling subjects or take subjects that scale down a lot (like art), whilst still being able to get a high enough ATAR. I know scaling doesn't really matter but I'm still quite worried about that idea.
I think now some universities are changing their prerequisites, where some don't need chemistry or math methods as much as they used to.

What exactly do you mean about how the new study design doesn't give much depth as it did previously? Did that impact you a lot with psychology?

Billzene

Yona You do need good foundations from years 7-10 for U 1/2, but the thing is everything you learned in previous years gets covered in the first 3 weeks of U 1/2 chem. It’s all new stuff from then on. I think it’s easy to catch up on your own though, because year 7-10 chem is extremely repetitive with rates of reaction and periodic table being covered a million times. Just be prepared to be hit with a massive difficulty spike when you start learning about the mole and stoichiometry, but you can definitely get through it if you think of it as ratios and unit conversions

I don’t know much about BPsych and how much of VCE psych is relevant, but I thought you may wanna know that it’s common knowledge among Monash students that psych units are ran horribly

charl

Yona

I'm not exactly sure how post-graduate medicine works but I think some medical courses require you to take certain university classes in your undergraduate course, including Chemistry classes. Doing chemistry will set you up in a good position to do this in my opinion (could be wrong, I don't really know how university stuff works).

Also keep in mind you should choose your subjects with the possibility that you might change your mind in year 12. You're only in year 10, maybe in year 12 you might want to give undergraduate medicine a go and regret not picking chemistry.

The study design for psychology is very short this year, the content has been reduced quite significantly. It hasn't impacted me in a negative way directly I just think it's disappointing, and it will also probably affect graded distributions.