Accelerated VCE General Maths or Maths Methods?

[Cetria]

I just joined a few minutes ago to ask this question but I have received an invitation from my school to participate in VCE general maths in year 10 (I'm yr 9 now), but it will mean that I won't be able to do maths methods, as I would have to continue general. If I decide not to choose this option, I can still go for media or business management, which I would also like to do but wouldn't set me up as much as maths would.

What should I choose? Is methods really good enough to give up on accelerated general maths?

[AngelWings]

Welcome to AN, Cetria!

Did you mean you can’t take Methods at all, or just that you can’t take Methods accelerated?

If it’s the former, this is really odd unless you go to a small high school where your timetable “block” for General is at the same time as the Methods class (i.e. both classes run at the same time) and there’s just one of each class. (And if this is the case, I would look into whether you need Methods as a prerequisite for future courses, and into distance education, typically by VSV. Or if your school blocks taking Methods U1/2 in Year 11 if you do General accelerated for some reason, ask why.) 

If it’s the latter, then you could just simply take Methods normally and General accelerated  i.e. take two maths in Year 11 (Further U3/4 and Methods U1/2), assuming that both classes don’t run in the same block. This has been a common way to navigate around this problem for students who are better at maths and/or need the Methods as a prerequisite for their desired courses after Year 12.

If I decide not to choose this option, I can still go for media or business management, which I would also like to do but wouldn't set me up as much as maths would.

What should I choose? Is methods really good enough to give up on accelerated general maths?

Methods is a prerequisite for some uni courses. This means that if you don’t take Methods in high school you have to find a longer and usually more expensive way to your desired course, so it’s advised that if you know you might want these courses (which you can check by researching online at websites like VTAC CourseSearch), then take Methods sometime in high school if you can. You do not need to accelerate it for it to count for prerequisites. You just need to do it eventually.

As for what to accelerate, this depends on the person. The subject you accelerate has the benefit of giving you a taste of VCE early and it also allows you to complete your accelerated subjects with a tad more time to spare (since you won’t be balancing other U3/4s in Year 11 unlike your Year 12 classmates). At the end of the day, it doesn’t usually matter which you accelerate, just that you’ll have more time to dedicate to it. In this case, I would generally pick a subject that you like and/ or think you’ll need more time to dedicate to accelerate.

Regardless, you can still do these subjects normally (i.e. U1/2 in Year 11), assuming you have a class that runs the following year for that subject. It’s not uncommon to see people take 2 maths simultaneously, whether it’s normally, one accelerated or both accelerated.