As level Psychology

[Boo2]

Has anyone taken AS Level Psychology? What did you think of it and what topics did it cover? Many thanks.

[missjef]

i did it from sept 04 till summer 05 - i did enjoy it although some bits do get a bit hard. The other thing is which i didnt realise till we did it was how much maths is involved, i only got a D at GCSE and struggled a bit with the maths part as there were equations and such like and formula's.

It depends what you want to do i suppose, whether you want to do it with a view to go on to do something similar at Uni. In this case it would come in very handy - one of my friends who was going to apply to do Psych. at Uni was told that she didnt have high enough grades in Maths at GCSE to do it and wasnt doing Maths at As level.
I honestly only liked half of it - at our school we had half the lessons in one week with one teacher and the other half with another, and i found that in both Sociology, Psych, and Law that i only really enjoyed half of the lessons in the week.

The topics that we covered in AS were (if i can remember rightly!) Child Development (very interesting mostly), a lot of things were to do with Theories, then there was a kind of Social Pysch part. The other lessons were Cognitive development, all to do with the biological side really (this is the lessons i didnt like so much).
I didnt take maths or biology at As level, and found some of the Psych work to be heavily based round these subjects. a lot of people didnt realise how biology/maths based it was.

I think mainly it depends on what you want to do at uni (if you go). The other thing that i didnt realise when i picked it was that they had taken out the crime/murder type section - which i was looking forward to doing!
If you are planning on doing Sociology too, these 2 subjects blend very well together in parts which makes it easier in a sense.
my favourite subject was media though not Psych! (i got a U i think at AS).

hope this helps, what other subjects are you planning on doing?


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[Boo2]

Thanks for that missjef. I am actually thinking of taking it as an evening class having already been to uni. I am now a stay at home mum and thought it would be an interesting thing to study and help get me back into using my brain again! Didn't realise there was a lot of maths involved - i only got a C at gcse and that was in 1993 - have forgotten most of it now! The topics you covered sound interesting and i am tempted to give it a go despite the maths. Thanks again x

[missjef]

i say go for it :-) you can always stop if you dont like it.

i highly recommend taking media, because its fun, lol - though i have to say you cant watch tv & films in the same way without thinking about why they did things in them and such like!!

[Calon]

i did it :) and im carrying it on to an a level,i loved it,although its not for everyone,we did things like cognitive psychology,memory and stuff like that. The coursework it a bit tricky. But i think if you like things like how people work and stuff youll enjoy it.

[Boo2]

Thanks for that Calon, it's interesting to hear what other people though of it. I have now signed up and my first class is in 3 weeks!