Which Subjects Should I Take in VCE?

What are the best VCE Subjects?

It depends who you ask. Do you follow your heart, or do you use your head? Naturally you will put in more work into subjects you enjoy, and it follows that you will do better in these subjects. However, it’s not simple.

There are many factors that can affect your ATAR score. Different subjects have different workloads, difficulties and scalings. Moreover, what you enjoy today may not be what you enjoy tomorrow. Many students have no idea what they want to do in the future, and even those to do, are likely to change their minds in the coming years.

It is best to be prudent in subject selection, especially in VCE where the subjects you take can significantly affect your time at university, or for that matter, which course you can even pursue.

It’s important to realise that many university courses have pre-requisites subjects for entrance. Many bridging courses exist; however your life will be much easier having prior knowledge, and will likely result in better grades and less stress.

VCE subjects – what are my choices?

English is a must and many courses have a minimum score required for entrance. You have the choice between English, Literature, and the English Language. English Language is the best choice from a scaling perspective; however Literature is a close second and will not require you to know the convoluted and often boring intricacies of the English language.

Next we have the core sciences: biology, chemistry and physics. The sciences compliment one another and therefore it is highly recommended to pick more than one. In some cases they even have overlapping topics.

The sciences have a significant workload and will require a large amount of memory work. Be careful if you plan to do all 3 in one year. The sciences provide a fantastic opportunity to scale and often make up pre-requisites for many university courses, although usually taking one is sufficient to meet requirements for most universities.

Mathematics is comprised of 3 subjects: further math, math methods and specialist math. Math methods and specialist math are especially difficult and therefore offer great scaling – although to score well you will require an enormous amount of work. Math methods is the minimum requirement for many math and science orientated university courses.

There are many other subjects to choose from. Languages are a fantastic way to boost your ATAR as many scale well. Caution needs to be exercised, however, as those not commonly taught at Melbourne schools will have especially tough competition from native speakers.

Many other useful subjects such as IT (information technology), business and legal subjects unfortunately have poor scaling and may hurt your ATAR. Arts subjects typically have especially poor scaling. In saying this, if you are particularly good at what you do scaling will not affect you as much as it would affect an average student. Why? Find out HERE!