Should I take Economics HL or Biology HL?

[IBBack]

I am getting to the point now where I have to chose my subjects for the IB. Luckily I already know that I want to be a pilot as it has been a dream ever since I can remember. For this I need Maths, English and Physics.

I plan to take:

English A HL

Psycology HL

Maths SL

Swedish B SL

 Physics SL.

The problem I am having is whether I take Biology or Economics HL. I am interested in Biology but am not great at memorising and have heard it is hard. I have never taken economics but heard it is easier to get higher points in which I need considering I am going to struggle with physics. 

Don't really need either but have to choose HELP!

Edited November 24, 2017 by IBBack

[tim9800]

Though I haven't done Biology myself, I can tell you for a fact that any HL science will be very hard. From what I have heard from friends, I would say there is definitely much more to learn in Biology than in Economics.

Here's my perspective on Economics, which I did as an HL: I found Economics to be a huge bore, and taking the wrong attitude into economics is probably the number one 7-killer (i.e., the "easy-7" attitude). I was among one of the people who adopted this attitude for much of IB1 and most of IB2, and it was only until I reached the last quarter of IB2 that I realized that I couldn't just walk into the exam room and get a 7.

Elaborating on what I mean by boring, much of the last topic of Economics - Section 4: Development Economics - is immensely boring, as it essentially a huge criticism of classical economics split into thousands of tiny criteria and indicators, and what we must do to ensure "sustainable" economic growth. An equivalence for this would be the Ecology in Biology, or Energy Production in Physics... but its a quarter of the whole syllabus. OK, that's an exaggeration, but what is not an exaggeration is the fact that 15% of your final grade will be assessed via Development Economics in Paper 2, which sucks.

Additionally, there is an HL-exclusive topic in Economics called Theory of the Firm, which is part of Section 1: Microeconomics. TotF often generates mixed reactions from those who study HL for two reasons. Firstly, because some regard its content as straightforward, whilst others find it complex. I personally disliked it (but you might not) as it came across to me as the latter - the rest of microeconomics was much lighter and easier to understand. Also, it should be noted that ToTF takes up a significant portion of Microeconomics' content (from memory, it was about a third of the section). Secondly, and more importantly, is because of the way it allows one to possibly*** cut down on the content one learns for Economics Paper 1, in which Microeconomics is assessed. This is due to the way that Paper 1 is structured: there are always 4 question in Paper 1: two questions for Microeconomics and two questions for Macroeconomics. You choose one from each section and answer them. Now, if we focus on the two questions for Microeconomics, we would assume one question is TotF-oriented and the other is non-TotF, as the former is a third of the content and the latter is two-thirds, right??

Well, no. This assumption was what kids "banked" on since the start of the new syllabus in May-13 - common sense would say "TotF = 1/3, non-TotF = 2/3. 1/3 < 2/3. Therefore, study TotF" - and generally, they weren't wrong! That was until Nov-16 came in with no TotF question in Paper 1, throwing a lot people who had relied on that assumption into the dark, as they had not studied any non-TotF content.

Apart from TotF and Development, the rest of Economics HL is pretty straightforward, and in general, requires a large, but not unmanageable amount of diagrams to be memorized. About what you said in your post about how you weren't that good at memorizing, perhaps diagrams in Economics will help out? Personally, I found that visualizing the diagram actually helped me remember all the theory behind it, and if not, at least I could make educated guesses as to what each point on the diagram meant.

So that's what I would say about Ecos HL... maybe someone who did/is doing Biology HL could offer their opinion on this?