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decisions decisions.....


J35u5-Fr34k

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[font="Trebuchet MS"]Hi there IBers
I am currently an AS level student at Alton college in england. I've allways wanted to do the IB but my GCSE results were not good enough since I was homeschooled, had no teachers and only studied them for 4 months, I am also a year ahead at the moment.
I am going to do the IB next year and I am having trouble deciding about which science to do. I am very much a sciency person and I want to do psychology along with two sciences at higher level.
I am very good at Biology and am definetly going to do that as group 6 and I also want to do chemistry.
Problem is, I have never done chemistry in my life and I don't know wether I will be able to do it. I am currently doing Environmetal studies, Economics, business studies and english. I want to either study medicine or do pathology/environmental forensics stuff at university.
I think both of these require chemistry but I'm not sure I will be able to catch up on the gcse stuff everyone has done when I am so behind everyone else. I could buy the gcse book or revise it and look stuff up before the time, I am very good at learning this way since I have done it all my life.
Please give me some advice here, I really don't know what to do.
Is IB Higher chemistry the sort of course that I will be ale to pick up as I go along???

Thankyou very much
-Jem
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Typically your past courses don't matter too much in IB. Think of it as starting with completely new slate. I took higher physics after taking it at IGCSE lvl and found that none of what we did was ever mentioned, or even broached in my 2 year course.
What little does come up, your teacher will likely review for the sake of consistency for the entire class. I recommend you know basic atomic structure and familiarise yourself with how the periodic table works. But other than that you'll probably be fine.

Edited by EconSurvivor
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  • 1 month later...

could you start out at HL, and then if you think that you can't handle it drop to SL? maybe you should jsut think about that. i found chem HL really hard, and i thought aht ati was good at it going in, but each person learns in there awn way and i just couldn't find a good way to learn it.

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eek, if you have never done chem before HL might be a bit intense.
I did 3 courses of chemistry before doing HL and I was doing great and I was predicted a 7.
However, I did fall short of that.

That being said, there was this one guy in the year lower than me than had zero knowledge of chem and he did really well. So it can be done!

You just might need to do some extra readings and practice to get the hang of it.

Also, you don't need HL for med school (although maybe you do in UK, I haven't a clue)... but you SHOULD take chemistry regardless.

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Oh, you do need at least one science at HL (this could be bio in your case) to get into a reasonable good medical school (and definitely get good grades in that and whichever other science you take). Definitely for the UK. Chemistry HL, I've heard from a few friends does go in deep at the end of IB (probably way easier than physics though). Personally, I'd recommend chem SL for you though, I take it and it is so easy. However, for anything you take in the IB (esp the sciences), you do need to have a basic grounding before, otherwise you'd fall behind pretty quickly.

Therefore, you should go and buy some chemistry study guides or chem for beginners and see if you are even interested in the subject before taking it!

I'd do the same for bio though, especially look over genetics. However, bio is mostly about memorising so I'd imagine you'd be okay with it.

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