Can I Change my A-Level Subjects?

There are many reasons why you might not be happy with your A-Level choices and be thinking about whether you can change your A-Level subjects to something you might enjoy more. Let’s be honest, when you chose which subjects you wanted to study, you probably didn’t have any clue what was going to be involved with studying them.

It’s not uncommon for students who are new to A-Levels to suddenly realise that they don’t enjoy the subject their studying, this can relate to one or all of the A-Levels they have decided to study and can be quite a devastating realisation to make. In some rarer cases, students discover they are finding their subject choices too easy and not challenging enough and so they too are thinking of changing their A-Level subjects.

Whatever the reason for a student not wanting to study a particular subject anymore, there are always options available for them to change their A-level subject and not all of them will mean a massive change or delay to their learning progress.

If you’re thinking of making a change to your A-Level subjects, the first thing to do is ask yourself what it is about the subject that you aren’t enjoying. Is it too hard? Too boring? Or doesn’t relate to anything that interests you? Once you know the answer to what it is about the subject you’re not enjoying you can start looking at changing to a more suitable course.

Depending on how far into your studies you are, you can either make the decision to drop out of the course you’re not enjoying and change to a new subject, or switch to a similar subject that might focus on aspects that you are more interested in. For example, if you’re studying A-Level English Language and you’re finding it a dry subject, then a simple change to A-Level English Language and Literature might be just the tweak you need to spark your interest and passion for the subject again.

When making the change of A-Level subject, it’s important you look at all your options before taking the leap. If you’re at a traditional school or college, it may be a case of you not being able to study a different subject there and you may have to make the decision to drop the A-Level subject and start studying the one you want via distance learning. The timing of your change of subject is also very important, if you’re a month away from exam time, it might be worth you at least sitting the AS examinations for the course before dropping it, just so that you gain some UCAS points from your year of studying the course. Additional UCAS points are always valuable!

Once you have decided what you feel the best pathway is for you, then it’s time to get going to ensure you don’t lose too much time. Thankfully, if you opt to study A-Levels online, you won’t have the same constraints of studying at school or college and so, even if you’re a year into your studies, you could still complete all your A-Levels at the same time ready for you to progress onto university.