There are lots of reasons to choose to study psychology (or psych) at VCE, but the one consideration that students keep using to pick their subjects is the difficulty.
Naturally, we'd all love to live in a world where we can just choose our favourite subjects and not have to worry about how difficult they are, but we also need to be realistic and think about how our results are going to affect our future.
This puts students in a precarious balancing act between choosing the subjects they want to do and choosing the subjects that will put them in a good position for the future.
Generally, the more academically successful a student is, the less they have to worry about this decision, but for most, it's important to pick the right subjects while also ensuring that said subjects will also lead to good results in assessments.
Let's take a look at VCE psychology, the various VCE subjects and how difficult they are, and which subjects students are choosing and why.
Is Psychology a Good VCE Subject?
Whether or not VCE Psychology is a good subject to choose depends on your reasons for choosing it.
If you're interested in learning more about psychology and it's a subject that's always interested you, then you'll likely enjoy it. You can always look at the VCE Psychology Study Design (the nearly 60-page document outlining the course) to find out more about exactly what VCE Psychology includes.
Consider reading a bit of the study design (we wouldn't recommend reading all of it just to make your mind up) as this will likely help you to get a better idea of whether or not the subject is right for you.
For students interested in a future career in psychology, then you should really be giving some serious thought to choosing psychology as a VCE subject. There are still university psychology courses you can do without having previously studied psychology, but it will certainly help to get some experience with the subject as soon as you can.
Which Are the Easiest VCE Subjects?
No VCE subject exists in a vacuum and it's fairly common for discussions around difficulty to focus on whether a given subject is easier or more difficult than some of the other VCE subjects being offered.
Psychology is one of those subjects that tends to be mentioned as an "easier" subject because of scaling (more on that in a bit), but really, the way scoring and scaling work means that the difficulty technically comes from the other students studying said subject and the other subjects.
If you applied this logic to athletics, you could say that the 100m sprint is easier than a marathon because it's shorter, but to win the Olympic gold medal in either, you have to beat the other runners.
Because the exams and students are different every year, there's really no good way to perfectly gauge how difficult a subject is since different subjects test different things and even a single subject will change what's on its exam.
Try not to think about how difficult a subject is and instead focus on achieving your study goals and getting the best possible results that you can through effective study, organisation, and determination.
If you're interested in studying psychology, then you can study psychology and it doesn't matter whether or not it's considered an “easy” subject or otherwise because to do well in it, you still have to outperform other students across Victoria.
What Is Scaling and Why Are VCE Study Scores Scaled?
In practice, all subjects are adjusted to account for any variance in difficulty. This difficulty may come from the subject itself or because of the difficulty of a given examination or assessment. After all, it's impossible to make every exam equally as difficult year after year.
Similarly, it'd be impossible for all subjects to be given a standard difficulty, especially when every student is different.
To account for this, exam scores are scaled. This means that it isn't really you against the exam or the assessment, but it's you versus all the other students taking the exam (so make sure you're using the best VCE psychology resources).
A low score isn't necessarily a bad score if every student scores low. In this case, especially if students scored highly in other subjects, then the scores are scaled up to be more reflective of all the students' abilities.
Conversely, when there are exams in which all the students score highly but much lower in other exams, the scores will scale down.
Basically, this means that you can't really play the system and just pick a bunch of "easy" subjects because your scores are ultimately adjusted to make everything more comparable and allow students to pick subjects they want to do rather than subjects that they think will give them better results.
What Are the Most Popular VCE Subjects?
While all subjects are numerically adapted to be as equal as possible through scaling, the numbers can't really be altered or adjusted in terms of enrolment and which subjects students are deciding to take.
The most popular VCE subject was English, with over 40,000 enrolments in 2022. However, calling this “popular” could give a false impression since one English subject is compulsory in years 11 and 12.
The second most popular subject was further maths with over 30,000 enrolments and the related maths methods in fourth place with over 15,000 enrolments. This popularity can likely be explained by the mathematical requirements for both maths and science degrees and careers.
Sandwiched between those two mathematical VCE subjects is the subject that we're interested in today: psychology. With over 18,000 enrolments in 2022, VCE Psychology takes the bronze and remains a very popular subject for students to select.
If you've been nervous about choosing it, don't be. Many students are still opting to study VCE Psychology and if you've ever considered a future in psychology or expressed an interest in the subject, now could be your chance to study it.
The other popular VCE subjects include business management (busman), health and human development, biology, chemistry, physical education (PE), and legal studies.
Which VCE Subjects Are the Most Useful?
To get anything done, you need the right tools for the job and when choosing VCE subjects, you need to choose the subjects that will help you do what you want to do in your future education and, ultimately, your career.
However, some subjects are regularly required by university courses and can go a long way to getting you accepted into university. For the sciences, we've already mentioned that maths subjects are useful, which is why so many students choose to study them.
Other VCE subjects, like business management or legal studies, for example, are very useful for students interested in those fields and are pretty much essential choices for students wanting to go into business or law respectively.
While there are university psychology courses that will accept students without VCE Psychology, the smart choice is to study some psychology as soon as this will not only make your first psychology lessons at university easier but give you an opportunity to see if psychology is right for you before committing to it at university.
If you're still uncertain about what you want to do in the future, it can be useful to pick subjects that are versatile like maths and English, but if you have a specific interest in something more specific like psychology, business, or law, then you owe it to yourself to try out these subjects in years 11 and 12.
How Can I Find Out More About VCE Psychology?
It's much easier to make an informed decision so try to find out as much as you can about VCE Psychology before you choose to study it.
The first and most obvious place to find out more is through your school. You can ask teachers and staff members for more information on the course, how students find it, and whether or not they feel the subject would be right for you.
If you want to find out exactly what makes up the VCE Psychology curriculum and how students are assessed, the VCE Psychology Study Design makes for essential reading. The same goes for the study designs for any other subject for that matter.
You can find all the study designs for the VCE subjects on the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) website. Just make sure you download the one for the appropriate accreditation period.
Finally, students already studying VCE Psychology can always get help from private psychology tutors. You can find experts on VCE Psychology both locally and online and they can help you with tailored sessions and lessons to make sure that you're learning as effectively as you can and that you're doing everything in your power to get the best possible results in your assessments and exams!
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