Since the entry into force of the general baccalaureate reform at the start of the 2019 school year, second general students, who then remain in the general series, must choose three specialties, or “triplet”, which they will follow in first year.
If 13 specialties are offered by National Education, not all are available in all high schools, only 7 of them are guaranteed in each establishment: Mathematics, Physics-chemistry, History-geography, geopolitics and political science, Economic sciences and social sciences, Foreign languages, literatures and cultures, Humanities, literature and philosophy, Earth sciences and life.
“The students are not constrained by triplets of specialties, they take the ones they want, but their schedules can have a lot of holes,” underlines Cédric, head teacher in a high school in Cluses, in Haute-Savoie.
In our establishment which offers 10 specialties, there are 120 possible combinations!
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Fortunately, teachers are there to guide students in their choice.
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“In my high school, we have been working on it for an hour every two weeks since the start of the school year,” explains Renaud, head teacher of a second year class in a high school in Sarthe.
They first work on their tastes, then we make them do research on the orientation, and then on the specialties.
» For the exercise to be effective, the teacher makes them work in groups: “Each group must present a specialty to the other students, which forces them to question what we study in each specialty.
This is essential because they often have a reductive view of this or that spec.
For example, a student who likes English but who does not like studying texts has no interest in choosing the Modern Languages, Literatures and Foreign Cultures specialty, because it is a very literary specialty!
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Be pragmatic
“Students often choose their specialties based on their tastes first, then their professional project and finally based on their results,” points out Romain, second year head teacher in a high school in Seine et Marne.
I advise them to be more pragmatic, because the coefficients of the specialties weigh heavily on the baccalaureate: first take into account your professional project, if you have one, and the choice of specialties that it imposes, then your grades, and finally his tastes.
“Choosing a specialty in which you have bad grades is obviously not a good idea”
Romain, head teacher
What if the student really has no idea of a professional project?
“I would advise him to choose his specialties based on his second grade grades,” replies Romain.
Choosing a specialty in which you have bad grades is obviously not a good idea - and we must remind our students of this every year!
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In terms of timetable, it is a choice of 4 specialties that the second year students are invited to make before the class council of the 2nd term, this to allow them to consider their final choice.
The teachers then give an opinion on this choice of specialties, advising or disadvising certain ones.
Before the 3rd term class council, the 3 final wishes are decided by the students.
Dig into the data
In addition to the advice of their teachers and the information gleaned from sites such as Parcoursup or that of Onisep, the seconds have since this year a new tool which is worth exploring: Sup Tracker.
A free tool, built from data from Parcoursup 2022, which allows you to visualize the most frequent orientation choices based on the choice of specialties in final year.
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By clicking on the “Orientation by specialties of the baccalaureate” tab, and by submitting your choice of doublet, it is possible to consult the distribution of wishes of the final year students who had chosen this doublet in final year in 2022, as well as the proposals for the admission they received, and finally the courses in which they were admitted.
The search engine works with all doublets, including the least frequent, such as Art / Physics-Chemistry or SVT / Humanities.
Suptracker also allows you to check the most common specialties of those admitted to this or that training.
For example in 2022, for the L.AS License (health studies) sector, Suptracker shows that 68% of new general baccalaureate candidates had chosen one of the following two duos: Physics-Chemistry/SVT (34%), Maths /Physics-Chemistry (21%) or Mathematics/SVT (12%).
A really useful tool for the most lost high school students.