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A Level students; Has anyone actually revised the night before...?

and gotten a decent grade?

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Reply 1
Well, it worked with my GCSE English Lit
Reply 2
yup for critical thinking, not really a decent grade, I got a C


but then again, I revise 3 months in advance for my Maths and got a B...
(edited 11 years ago)
Psychology Unit 3. Thankfully got an A, but it's the easiest exam ever, on WJEC, and I would never get a good grade doing this on anything else. I would say don't do it, but we all know how hard it is to actually get down and revise.
Reply 4
January AS revised the night before got C's
June AS revised the week before got B's
January A2 revised a couple of weeks/a month before got A's

Depends what you consider a decent grade.
Reply 5
AQA A Psychology Unit 4. I wrote out all my notes weeks in advance, but actually sat down to learn them 1 1/2 days before the exam. Came out of the exam hall thinking I'd scraped a C. Turns out I got 100/100 UMS. AQA have clearly got my results confused with someone else's...
Reply 6
Biology, got an A. Though I revised until abut 3am and got up at 6 to revise more so it probably would have been better the revise properly and sleep.
Yes to varying degrees of success. Did s2 (83%), s1 (80%), fp1 (82%), pc2 (100%), chem 1(97%), chem 2 (84%), physics 1 (91%), physics 2 (92%) bio1 (90%) all exclusively the night before.

It didn't always work however, i revised the following also only the night before and got much worse grades: bio2 (69%), fp2 (70%) and d1 (77%), retook it did nothing again except the night before (self teaching course) and scraped an A at bang on 80%.

Also it matters what you mean by "revise". If you actually know your stuff as you go along you don't have to revise to do well. That being said, if i had taken mocks for these exams (all except for pc2 and phys 1) the morning the day before the exam i would have been E-D standard.

The thing is with revising late that you often need to be lucky with the questions that come up. For instance in my bio2 and fp2 exams i could have definitely knocked out 90%+ scores but unfortunately both exams catered perfectly to my weak areas (yes, learning a course the day before leaves you without much experience!!! dont do it!!). I genuinely thought i had aced my d1 exam :confused: .

Take that as you will.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 8
Original post by In One Ear
Yes to varying degrees of success. Did s2 (83%), s1 (80%), fp1 (82%), pc2 (100%), chem 1(97%), chem 2 (84%), physics 1 (91%), physics 2 (92%) bio1 (90%) all exclusively the night before.

It didn't always work however, i revised the following also only the night before and get much worse grades: bio2 (69%), fp2 (70%) and d1 (77%), retook it did nothing again except the night before (self teaching course) and scraped an A at bang on 80%.

Also it matters what you mean by "revise". If you actually know your stuff as you go along you don't have to revise to do well. That being said, if i had taken mocks for these exams (all except for pc2 and phys 1) the morning the day before the exam i would have been E-D standard.

The thing is with revising late that you often need to be lucky with the questions that come up. For instance in my bio2 and fp2 exams i could have definitely knocked out 90%+ scores but unfortunately both exams catered perfectly to my weak areas (yes, learning a course the day before leaves you without much experience!!! dont do it!!). I genuinely thought i had aced my d1 exam :confused: .

Take that as you will.


Is it wrong that you've inspired me to revise the night before for my exams? Lol.
Reply 9
Original post by britchick
AQA A Psychology Unit 4. I wrote out all my notes weeks in advance, but actually sat down to learn them 1 1/2 days before the exam. Came out of the exam hall thinking I'd scraped a C. Turns out I got 100/100 UMS. AQA have clearly got my results confused with someone else's...


looll at your sig by the way, "anglia ruskin, cambridge" but not "aston, birmingham"
Original post by Zuki
Is it wrong that you've inspired me to revise the night before for my exams? Lol.


Its possibly mildy dangerous :tongue:. Your life though!

Bear in mind i did *really* revise the afternoon/night before. Like pick up that chem textbook and sit down for 6-7 hours straight (stopping only to eat) absorbing as much key information as i could and gleaning understanding of the theory.

I only managed because i ignored the popular advice that goes around on here that is to smash out endless past papers. I wouldn't have had the time. If pressed for time to learn for exams (certainly chem/phys exams) don't TOUCH a past paper. Just spend every second making sure you really understand the material.
Reply 11
Original post by In One Ear
Its possibly mildy dangerous :tongue:. Your life though!

Bear in mind i did *really* revise the afternoon/night before. Like pick up that chem textbook and sit down for 6-7 hours straight (stopping only to eat) absorbing as much key information as i could and gleaning understanding of the theory.

I only managed because i ignored the popular advice that goes around on here that is to smash out endless past papers. I wouldn't have had the time. If pressed for time to learn for exams (certainly chem/phys exams) don't TOUCH a past paper. Just spend every second making sure you really understand the material.


Haha xD. Will do, thanks for the advice.
Reply 12
well I winged gcses and came out alright with 5A's and rest B's
winged alevels and came out with BCD -_-
AS -all night before revsion and got AAAB (biol, phys, maths,chem). A2 - attempted the same for jan modules and got ACE. I'd say you can get away with it AS if you're reasonable intelligent but not A2.
Original post by In One Ear
Its possibly mildy dangerous :tongue:. Your life though!

Bear in mind i did *really* revise the afternoon/night before. Like pick up that chem textbook and sit down for 6-7 hours straight (stopping only to eat) absorbing as much key information as i could and gleaning understanding of the theory.

I only managed because i ignored the popular advice that goes around on here that is to smash out endless past papers. I wouldn't have had the time. If pressed for time to learn for exams (certainly chem/phys exams) don't TOUCH a past paper. Just spend every second making sure you really understand the material.


Very, very good advice - I did the same for AS and was mega nervous because of everyone discussing past papers and me not having done a single one! Night before = time to learn, not to test yourself.
Reply 15
I did the MORNING of the exam.
I still ended up with a passing grade B for AS's and C's for A2 but this is NOT RECOMMENDED!!
Reply 16
Original post by joker12345
Very, very good advice - I did the same for AS and was mega nervous because of everyone discussing past papers and me not having done a single one! Night before = time to learn, not to test yourself.


What grades did you get? ^^
It would never work again but for AS History I was resitting one paper for the second time (3rd time altogether) and just thought I don't have time and give in, I'm stuck on a B and that's it.

Read a book on the course the night before and got 90 UMS.

No idea how it happened. I doubt it'd ever happen again and was helped greatly by the fact I'd had two previous attempts.
Did it last year for Film, History and English AS, got 90%+ in them. Spent about a week revising Economics cause I weren't so confident, got a B. Moral of the story: don't try
Reply 19
Did it with French, got an A. I revised for about two hours the night before my writing exam. Did no revision for speaking, listening or reading either.

Languages are different, though - if you're good at them and naturally retain vocabulary and grammar and the like, it's okay. With subjects that require more memorising or understanding how it works, I certainly wouldn't recommend it. (I was ill during my exams and that was probably the only revision I did at all.)

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