Hi there!
Let’s cross some stuff off first:
- you must do an English subject, so English, English Language, Literature or EAL has to be one of your subjects. In your case, you’ve picked English.
- Chemistry is a prerequisite for some medicine courses around the country, including Monash Uni’s undergrad medicine course. (It’s the only undergraduate medicine course in Victoria.) if you’re serious about studying medicine, I’d suggest you take Chemistry to ensure you have as much opportunity to get in, as the only ways around a prerequisite is to go somewhere that doesn’t have that prerequisite (which means going interstate), take some equivalent subject (usually at uni/ college) or try at a later stage (i.e. postgraduate courses, which mean you’ll have to take another undergraduate uni course that satisfies the postgraduate course requirements before entry and typically takes about 3-4 years longer).
- if your school makes Religion and Society compulsory from U1-4, then you’ll have to do it. Not a lot of choice there.
- Besides these three, the rest is a bit up for grabs and pretty much dependent on you, what your goals are and what you like. I’d recommend going by what you enjoy studying the most.
- Biology/ HHD/ Psych would probably be helpful on the forensic science and medicine front, but aren’t compulsory.
- Legal Studies would be helpful for law, but also isn’t compulsory.
- Methods is a prerequisite for some STEM courses that are related to forensic science and medicine e.g. biomedicine/ biomedical science or science, so that might be something to consider. In some STEM courses, maths might be a prerequisite, so Further might be suitable if the prerequisite says “any mathematics”. Note that a Bachelor of Forensic Science at Deakin has only a raw 20SS English requirement (25 raw SS for EAL) though, so maths is not necessary. (University of Melbourne and Monash University, which are the Victorian unis that tend to have the courses with the highest/ most prerequisites, don’t offer a specific Bachelor of Forensic Science.)
- If you like Italian, by all means, take it! Although LOTE subjects can often be quite a bit of work, they’re often great for you in the long term: you build soft skills, it opens up your world a bit, great for your resume and often quite good for scaling (but do not focus on scaling for subject selection). I’m a little biased though, so, take with a grain of salt.
In regards to recommended number of subjects, it’s typically around 6 subjects as this is how many “count” towards your ATAR but it’s up to you. You can switch subjects after each semester except between Unit 3 and 4, so you can rearrange your subjects as you see fit.